People Management
July 28, 2026
The career does not fit into a single answer
Professional journey formed by projects demands skills beyond job titles
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” The question continues to be asked to children who are still learning to count, write their own name, or tie their shoes. Even with little knowledge of the world, they are expected to imagine a profession and project part of their own future.
This exercise can foster long-term thinking, reveal preferences, and create important conversations about interests. When a child responds that they want to be an astronaut, teacher, or firefighter, they may be talking less about a specific occupation and more about characteristics they admire, such as discovering, teaching, protecting, or caring.
The problem begins when this answer starts to be treated as definitive or necessarily unique. By saying that a child needs to choose between being a firefighter or a lawyer, for example, we limit imagination to a single scenario, A or B.
Imagining a profession from an early age can be valuable, but this choice stems from what the child knows at that moment and does not contemplate all the possibilities that will emerge throughout life. The answer in childhood does not define a trajectory, but the way we conduct this conversation can reinforce the idea that a career should follow a straight line. Thinking this way presupposes that it is possible to predict what will happen after each choice. This logic works better in closed systems, with few variables and more stable relationships between cause and consequence.
The professional life, however, is influenced by technologies, human relations, economic conditions, political decisions, organizations, and events that we do not control. The more elements interact, the more difficult it becomes to anticipate the effects of each decision.
Even so, we tend to organize careers as a simple sequence: choose a profession, seek training, enter the market, accumulate experience, and occupy higher positions. In this view, training appears before work. First, the person studies; then, they put their knowledge into practice. Formal study functions almost like a finish line, after which the professional would be prepared to occupy a stable position.
Many professions require undergraduate degrees and specific regulations. Questioning this linearity does not diminish the importance of formal education. It means recognizing that even extensive training cannot anticipate everything a person will do, learn, or decide throughout their life.
Creating plans remains necessary, but they don’t need to become boundaries for imagination. In a dynamic world, experiences can complement each other. It’s possible to work while studying, develop new skills, and bring together knowledge that was previously distant.
Therefore, besides asking what profession someone wants to pursue, we can broaden the conversation. What problems would this person like to learn to solve? What projects do they want to participate in? What capabilities do they intend to develop along the way?
By shifting some of the attention from the role to problems, experiences, and capabilities, we open up space for more diverse trajectories and futures that we cannot yet name.
Increasingly mobile professional paths
Technological advances, changes in labor relations, and increased life expectancy indicate that professional trajectories tend to become more mobile, both between organizations and in the nature of the activities performed.
A longitudinal study by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics tracked people born in the early 1980s and found that they held, on average, 9.4 jobs between the ages of 18 and 38. More than half of these experiences occurred before the age of 24. Although it analyzes work ties in the North American context, the survey helps to visualize this mobility in the first decades of professional life.
Occupations themselves are also changing. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 projects the creation of 170 million jobs and the reduction of another 92 million by 2030. The net result is positive, but accompanied by a broad reorganization of the market.
The study also estimates that 39% of essential skills will change during this period. Artificial intelligence accelerates this process by automating activities, transforming processes, creating roles, and altering professional expectations. Some skills will need to be updated, combined with new capabilities, or applied in different contexts.
In many cases, individuals do not abandon one profession to start another, but rather reorganize their repertoire and build a new professional combination. Throughout their lives, professionals will likely go through different jobs, roles, and projects, combining skills acquired at distinct times.
The career as a sequence of projects
The Project Management Institute defines a project as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. Two words in this definition are especially important: temporary and unique.
Every project has a beginning and an end and seeks to produce a specific transformation. Developing a system, organizing an event, or conducting research are examples. While operations maintain continuous activities, projects create, transform, or experiment with something new.
A large part of a career also happens this way. Throughout professional life, we participate in initiatives with objectives, deadlines, and deliverables. We take on responsibilities, face problems, work with different people, and complete stages that leave marks on our journey.
Therefore, a career can be interpreted as a sequence of projects. It is not a single project, as it does not have a definitive outcome or an exact end date. It resembles more a system formed by connected temporary experiences. Each project produces a deliverable for an organization, a community, or a client. At the same time, it leaves something with the professional: a skill, evidence of what they can achieve, a new relationship, or a broader understanding of the problems they wish to solve.
This perspective also changes the way we view professional transitions. Changing fields does not necessarily mean starting from scratch, but applying knowledge and experiences in a new context. Even a project that does not achieve all expected results can generate learning for the next ones.
The career ceases to be a ladder where each step necessarily leads to the next. It becomes a network of projects, experiences, and learning that connect, complement each other, and open new paths.
Formal education as a project
In 2024, Brazil surpassed 10.2 million enrollments in undergraduate courses. For the first time, distance education gathered more students than in-person education, with approximately 5.18 million enrollments in Distance Education and 5.03 million in in-person courses. The numbers show a shift in how people seek training. Flexibility, access, and the possibility of balancing studies with other responsibilities have gained importance in this choice.
Access to higher education, however, is still limited. In 2024, only 27.1% of Brazilians aged 18 to 24 were attending this stage of education, below the target of 33% defined by the National Education Plan.
Among people aged 15 to 29 with complete high school education up to incomplete higher education who were neither studying nor taking qualification courses, 48.6% pointed to the need to work as the main reason. Only 12.1% said they were not interested in continuing their studies.
The data show that the issue is not just a lack of interest. There is a tension between the time needed to study, the need to generate income, and the difficulty of realizing how the training could expand professional possibilities.
If the career can be seen as a sequence of projects, then formal education can be understood as one of them. An Undergraduate course has objectives, duration, stages, resources, limits, risks, and deliverables. Certification is one of these deliverables, but not the only one. Throughout the process, the student also expands their repertoire, builds relationships, has experiences, and develops new ways of understanding the world.
The competence to manage projects
Managing projects is not an exclusive responsibility of those who hold this title in their position. Throughout life, people conduct personal and professional initiatives with objectives, deadlines, resources, risks, and deliverables. Although they take different forms, these initiatives require similar capabilities: understanding problems, defining objectives, organizing resources, collaborating, adapting plans, and transforming ideas into results.
Therefore, project management can be understood as a transversal competence. This does not mean that everyone will be a project manager, but that more professionals will participate in temporary teams organized around problems, deadlines, and deliverables. The Project Management Institute estimates that the global demand for professionals linked to project work could grow between 48% and 64% by 2035. For Latin America, the projection ranges between 22% and 29%. Although the data deals with roles directly related to projects, it also indicates the appreciation of the skills required by this type of work.
Managing a project does not eliminate uncertainty, but it helps organize the path. By defining objectives, dividing the work into stages, establishing priorities, and monitoring results, it becomes easier to understand what has already been done and what still needs to happen. It is also not necessary to have control over all the details. The important thing is to create conditions for progress, adjust the course, and recognize achievements along the process.
Regardless of occupation, there will be projects to initiate, organize, adjust, and complete. Learning to manage them helps turn intentions into actions, better evaluate new opportunities, and carry learnings from one experience to the next.
The next project
Throughout life, we will participate in projects with different roles. Some generate income; others expand repertoire, deepen skills, create relationships, or open new possibilities.
Each project concludes a stage, but also leaves learnings that we carry to the following projects. Therefore, a change of position, a new training or the completion of a delivery do not represent the end of the trajectory, but are part of the construction of the career.
Perhaps the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” doesn’t need to disappear, but it can stop demanding a definitive answer. We don’t need to know all the projects that will shape our career. We need to recognize the next one, understand why it matters, and create the conditions to achieve it. The professional future is not chosen once and for all. It is built project by project.
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Who wrote this column
Lucas Tangi
