The advice used to work well when the economy was stable; the rate of change was far slower, and competition was far more localized.
That, to state the obvious, is no longer the case.
If you don’t know what the world is going to look like five years from now, it doesn’t make sense to try to predict potential external factors in planning your career.
All you are doing is making guesses and you could end up looking pretty silly. (“Let’s see, it’s 2009 and I am associate marketing manager for the Eastern regional of a company that makes stand alone GPS devices The world is always going to be willing to carry or deal with an extra device like a GPS that plugs into the cigarette lighter of a car. No car manufacturer is going to want to go to the trouble of offering ‘navigation’ as a feature and who could possible come up with an app that does what we do? My future is secure.)
“So, I am going to plan on being a regional manager in two years and head of marketing for my company in five. Yep, that’s my plan.”