“I have all the time in the world,” thinks an 18 year old. Thinking about my career options, so did I when I was 18! Now that I am old, I can almost laugh when I hear someone asking a kid, “What would you want to become?”. In this respect, I can relate to most of what is written in this blog Why Career Planning Is Time Wasted except the one below.

The experiment outlined in the blog says the test group that got to choose a week in advance, different sandwiches for each day of the coming week turned out to be unhappy with their choices vis-a-vis the other group that chose spontaneously what they want each day as the day rolled in. The interesting thing is that the latter group chose to stay with their familiar sandwich for each day of the week. The point of this exercise was to prove the futility of making a choice in advance and the lesser likelihood that we would enjoy what we choose: it may as simple as ordering a sandwich or as big as making a career move.


My personal experience with sandwiches goes even further to prove the above theory (Miswanting). Being a strict vegetarian, by design, I can choose only type of sandwich at my favourite Subway restaurant viz. Veggie Delite. So that means turkey, tuna, egg, ham, roast beef etc are out. Restricted to just one type of sandwich, I should be happy with my choice isn’t it? Not really. Given the bewildering array of sandwich components offered, I have to carefully navigate my way to building my sandwich. Else I would definitely be feeling something is wanting. As tempting as it may be, it is treacherous to stray the course.

“Oh God! Why did I make this change today?” is often my response to any adventurous detour in the menu offered. I am not exaggerating. If you see the following conversation I have with the waitress at the Subway restaurant you will see why.

Waitress: What would you like to have?
Me: Veggie Sandwich
Waitress: Footlong or 6″ ?
Me: Footlong please.
Waitress: Brown bread or white ?
Me: White.
Waitress: Which bread would like to have ? (She points to a board with life size images of 4 or 5 different types of bread)
Me: Parmesan Oregano
Waitress: With or without cheese?
Me: With cheese.
Waitress: Which one – cheddar or mozzarella ?
Me: I point to the one I am more familiar with.
Waitress: Toasted?
Me: Yes please.
Waitress: Now choose your vegetables (She points to the neatly arranged bowls of fresh vegetables behind the glass partition: lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, onions, olives, pickles and more )
Me: Everything except Jalapeno. ( I want value for money, you know)
Waitress: What kind of sauce you want? (She again points to an array of sauces on display)
Me: Southwest sauce
Waitress: Anything else?
Me: A little bit of mustard would do.
Waitress: Is that all?
Me: Can you please top it up with some salt and pepper?
Waitress: Is it for here or to go?
Me: To go.
Waitress: Would like to make it as combo with a drink and a cookie or chips ?
Me: No just the sandwich would do.

By now, you are exhausted, right? So am I, at the end of my transaction. Believe me, any misstep along this maze of choices, I would have come out feeling miserable about my investment (!!) in sandwich.

This is just ordering a sandwich. Imagine how much more complex is planning a career move and your probability of liking it.


So, “What do we do? you may ask. Honestly I don’t have an answer other than to reproduce verbatim the conclusion in the blog:

“The best strategy for career planning is this: make your best guess, try it out and don’t be surprised if you don’t like it. But for heaven’s sake don’t mention this in your interviews.”