Create your 10-year plan

Welcome to Level Up: Your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans. If you’d like to become a paid member, see the benefits here, and feel free to use this expense template to ask your manager.

Bill Gates said:

“Most people overestimate what they can do in 1 year but underestimate what they can do in 10.”

Bill inspired me (and it seemed possible) so I made a 10-year plan.

My plan revolved around my mission of helping others find career success and satisfaction and listing out 25 dream travel destinations (list below).

Writing the plan gave me confidence that I could pursue this mission and easily visit those destinations.

Why the 10-year plan is valuable:

We overestimate what we can do in 1 year because we are ambitious and optimistic.

We let our hopes and dreams talk us into believing we will do more than we can.

This overestimation happens less over a 10-year horizon.

We struggle to imagine where our lives might be in 10 years because it is beyond our experience. Our inability to envision where we could be leads us to estimate based only on what we can see and imagine.

This estimate is less than what can actually happen over a 10-year period.

Estimates based on the exciting things we can see and imagine are often too much to tackle in a year, but they are a perfectly reasonable amount to achieve within 10 years.

Try creating YOUR 10-year plan.

I doubt it will turn out as you imagine, but the act of trying will help you clarify your goals and ensure that you accomplish more than you would have without a plan.

Note: I update my plan every six months or so. In short, I iterate.

While the sprint/marathon analogy doesn’t exactly fit, a marathon can be seen as pieces. Update your plan every couple of miles.

Readers — if you have made long-term plans please share what has and has not worked for you. And, more importantly, share what impact it has had on you!

---

Would you like to see the world as a part of your job?

I've sent leaders overseas and helped others negotiate the corporate packages that come with this kind of opportunity.

Companies know how valuable it can be to have a leader from the "main office" go into the field to represent the central corporate leadership. I did some of this when I took a role advising the CEO of Twitch after their acquisition by Amazon.

My good friend David Markley is a Vice President in London on an overseas assignment from Warner Brothers Discovery.

While doing his job thoroughly and well, Dave and his wife have visited dozens of cities and countries across Europe while on assignment for the last 3 years.

He has led well and also lived his life to the fullest.

Watch our fireside chat about running a remote office, leading across cultures, leading when you are "out of sight" and "not in the room", the ins and outs of overseas assignments, and points of negotiations, taxes, visas, expenses, education for your kids, and more.

If my career advice has helped and you’d like to go deeper in leveling up your career, consider either my on-demand or live online courses.

Last week, one of our Level Up Newsletter & Community members and course alumni shared that she got a new role as Director in a big company, managing 10X more people than in her previous role. She got the job offer in exactly 4 weeks of applying and said my “Leadership Resumes That Get Results” on-demand course helped, specifically:

“Reading his resume was super helpful to understand how an exec words their bullet points and what’s important to communicate.

Understanding the importance of a summary that I didn’t have before - and how to craft it based on my experience + what the hiring manager is looking for. I also used the resume experience summary as the blurb for the hiring manager to get their attention immediately.”

---

Ethan’s travel destination list

This list was made in 2022 to finish it by the time I am 60 (2030)

10 Longer Trips (2-3 weeks)

1. New Zealand - DONE!

2. Patagonia

3. Australia

4. Japan - 2025

5. Vietnam/Laos/Thailand

6. Greece - 2026

7. Croatia and similar

8. Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, Denmark…)

9. Nepal & Himalayas

10. An adventure in a “stan” or similar. Way off the map.

18 Shorter Trips (1+ to 2 week)

1. Glacier - PLANNED SUMMER 2023 - DONE

2. Canadian Rockies in Summer

3. BVIs

4. France beyond Paris (Northern and western wine regions; Southern coast and mountains) - PARTIAL 2023 - DONE

5. Spain

6. Switzerland - Summer 2023 - DONE

7. Austria & Northern Italy

8. US Northeast (Maine, etc.) - 2024

9. Canadian Maritimes - 2024

10. Iceland

11. Galapagos - 2023 - DONE

12. Central EU (Romania, Hungary, etc.)

13. US Rockies in Depth (Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Yet more Utah - late fall 2023? (Not done in 2023)

Ski Trips

1. Cat or Heli in BC

2. Switzerland

3. Japan

4. Dolomites (Sella Ronda)

5. France

6. Jackson Hole

---

Member Exclusive Event: Fireside chat and Q&A with Dee Murthy (Co-Founder, Ghost)

​​​​​Level Up Newsletter & Community paid members are invited to join this live event where Dee Murthy and Jason Yoong will discuss "What a Series B Co-Founder looks for in their Leadership Team" followed by an open Q&A.

They will discuss:

1. ​What Dee looks for when hiring leaders & executives.

2. ​Dee's candid career advice.

3. ​Lessons from successfully starting and scaling multiple businesses.​

---

Connect With Ethan

• Follow Ethan on LinkedIn.

• Get Ethan’s career advice on YouTube.

• Explore Ethan’s website.

Level Up is your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans.