By Donna Dunning

I work in the area of career planning, so obviously I think there are actions you can take to influence your future career direction. At the same time, I also want to acknowledge the role that chance plays in how our lives unfold. John Krumboltz, a well-known career theorist coined the term “planned happenstance” to describe this role of chance in our careers.

Krumboltz explains the theory in this on-line interview:

“(Planned happenstance) is the idea that really it’s not necessary to map out your entire career in advance. That a more important activity is to get involved in actions that are fun at the moment and please you and are exciting to you and do the best you can at them, see where that goes and if you like it, do more of it and if you don’t, try something else and you never know what might happen. Actually, in real life this is the way it almost always happens. But we’ve got this notion in our heads that we ought to try to plan our entire career in advance and if we can’t, then we are diagnosed as being indecisive. I think what this notion of Happenstance does is to liberate us from the notion that we have to plan our futures in advance and we can’t do it. I mean… nobody is smart enough to do it in reality but yet we have the expectation that we should be able to do it… we’ve got people that are still thinking along this line of just do this match and if somebody can’t make the match, well then, diagnose them as indecisive and blame them for not being able to do it. And of course my point of view is that the people that are unable to decide what they want to do with the rest of their life are really sensible people. And I myself am one such person. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life but I’m having fun right now.”

When asked in the interview how he feels about his own career decisions, Krumboltz comments: “Well I’ve never made one…You know I’ve tried a lot of different things and I’ve had a lot of fun doing a lot of different things and I’m still having fun doing lots of different things. And I continue to want to have fun doing lots of different things. And if I get tired of doing something, why I’m gonna try doing something else. But I’m not making a commitment as to what kind of work I’m going to do for the rest of my life. I don’t know. I don’t know what kind of opportunities are going to crop up in the future. I don’t know how my interests are going to change. So why should I commit to doing something for the rest of my life when I don’t have the slightest idea what it’s going to be. And I don’t want to be obligated to fulfill some kind of a promise that on which I might change my mind.”

I was thinking about how this idea of planned happenstance links to the personality type preferences of Judging and Perceiving. Those who prefer Perceiving may be comfortable with the idea of happenstance and would like not being pinned down to one kind of work or experience.

On the other hand, those preferring Judging may not be excited by the idea that our career is greatly influenced by changing situational factors and unexpected events. They may prefer to plan ahead and may find it harder to see the advantages in change and may not want to jump in and take advantage of unplanned opportunities.

As with most aspects of personal preferences, we need to be tuned into and access both openness and decisiveness. I think the planned part of planned happenstance is important as we decide who we are and take action to develop skills in areas that suit our personality, interests, values, lifestyle, and constraints. Then when we are out in the world we can be open to options and opportunities that may unexpectedly occur. When you are looking for something and prepared to change, things happen!

When we were driving through the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, Canada recently I wasn’t expecting the deer in the photo above to show up. Fortunately I was prepared to photograph the unexpected.