five year plans do work. Breaking down your goal into small achievable milestone that lead to the accomplishment of a 5 year goal is the best way to achieve your goals.
Plans for the future are good things to have, despite our current landscape. They give us something to work towards, give us hopes, and upon succeeding with one plan, give us strength to focus on our next plan.
If you have a plan (let's say to go to Disneyland), you will know when you got there and how you did it. You need a plan for a day, week, month and longer (until it gets too fuzzy - perhaps 2 years). With an objective, you can develop the needed skills and do the tasks to get the skills.
Five-year plans matter, not just for yourself, but for those you'll interact with socially. Career-wise, interviewers will usually ask some derivative of this question to feel out whether you intend to be at a company/firm long-term and have clear and concise plans to become a subject matter expert within a relevant field and rise within their ranks. I'm probably not going to hire someone for a tech job if their 5-year plan is opening a food truck.
I think 5 year plans still matter a great deal. Maybe not necessarily super detail oriented (although some would say the more the better), but overall having a plan of where you want your life to be can help you to make the conscious choices to get there. My spouse and i want to have kids within the next 5 years, and we are doing our best to save up the money necessary to go through IVF/surrogacy to accomplish that goal.
But, if you are too detailed with a plan then that might not be the best because you are already limiting what you want whereas trends and demands change over time especially over half a decade in the technology field.
