A few weeks ago, I wrote about an idea I’ve come to call career emergence over on Lenny’s Substack. Career emergence borrows from emergence in nature, where individual parts—bees, starlings, ants—follow simple local rules and, together, create complex patterns like beehives and murmurations that no individual could design or predict. The career version is the idea that instead of trying to design your career toward a clear long-term plan, you can clarify your principles, focus on the right next step, and trust that something you could never have planned might emerge. This isn't the same as drifting—you may not have a destination, but you do have a way of deciding what to do next.
As I worked on that piece with Lenny's team, I kept thinking about the last five years of my own career—both the magic of career emergence and how absolutely terrible it can feel while you’re in the middle of it. So I wanted to add just a little color and normalize the fact that not having a plan can be incred…
