The first rule of career planning: Do not plan your career.

The world is an incredibly complex place and everything is changing all the time. You can’t plan your career because you have no idea what’s going to happen in the future. You have no idea what industries you’ll enter, what companies you’ll work for, what roles you’ll have, where you’ll live, or what you will ultimately contribute to the world. You’ll change, industries will change, the world will change, and you can’t possibly predict any of it.

The second rule of career planning: Instead of planning your career, focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities

People who manage money professionally don’t think about individual investments in isolation; they think of those investments as part of an overall portfolio. Each investment has its potential return—the benefit you get from owning it—and its potential risks—the things that can go wrong. A portfolio, then, is a set of investments, and the portfolio assumes the return and risk characteristics of all of the investments blended together.