Late Work: From Recreation To Re-Creation – Forbes

What's next? (Sculpture from Dakar's Museum of Black Civilizations)

Michael and Linda decided back in their 40s that theyd like to work together in retirement. Clive doesnt even entertain the r word let alone the concept. Helga knows she has done her most impactful work in her 70s, after the earlier work-family juggle familiar to many women. Jonathan suddenly got laid off after decades with the same company and began accumulating a portfolio of occupations like pearls illuminating his values and wide-ranging passions. Deborah left behind the pursuit of profit and a lifetime in entrepreneurship for the pursuit of purpose, accompanying hundreds through a sageing process for later life. All are redefining how we live our third ages the September of our lives.

Increasing longevity has gifted humans with extra decades of healthy and active life. Companies and countries have not yet caught up with the consequences nor have most people. We still approach our 60s thinking about retirement, or are pushed into it by ageist employers, a phenomenon which accelerated dramatically during the covid crisis. Yet we are likely to have healthy decades yet to live. Careers are stretching from 30-year sprints to 50-year marathons, but most of us arent training for the long haul. We arent even thinking about it. A growing body of research is starting to show that inactivity is not only bad for our stretched and under-funded pension systems; turns out its bad for humans too.

While lifespans have expanded, mindsets have not kept up. Long lives require a rethink and a roadmap for transitioning gracefully through entirely new phases from millennials to perennials. Longevity will impact the young as much as the old as it redraws the very shape of what careers and lives will morph into and how to pace yourself across perhaps ten decades. The second third of life may one day be seen as the building block for the third our late work. Or what some summarise as the shift from roles to souls. At its best, this autumn season of life brings an extraordinary freedom to re(define) the narrative of lives and legacies. Yet many people experience it more as a shocking tumble into a phase of life they have not thought about and for which they are sorely unprepared.

There are a flurry of emerging concepts, from encore careers and un-retirement to the age of no retirement, but no real playbooks yet. Most of the people attending The Midlife Rethink workshops I run admit they have few role models for positive, purposeful maturity. Many of us are marked by how our own parents, some of whom were taken aback by their own, often unexpected, longevity (mis)managed it. There are many examples, and mountains of guilt, multiplied a thousandfold by the pandemic, of nightmare endings. Age has for too long been a negative. Weve internalised these messages in a strange form of collective self-harm. We all age. Too many of us still hate the idea.

The opposite is also on offer. A growing number of books present idealistic dreams of an army of wise elders who will rise up to save humanity from itself. That through mindfulness and meditation we will become mature adults, able to resist the loneliness of capitalisms care homes, reverse the breakdown of family structures, and fight inequality and climate change with grey-haired grandparents and inner serenity.

It sounds appealing, but Ive been looking for a modest middle ground. On the cusp of 60 myself, I am wondering how to design my own late work and have been interviewing people who seem to hold some part of the answer I am seeking. They are alive, engaged and vibrant. They are an inspiration, offering insights into alternative roadmaps for our collective ageing adventure. They come in all shapes, cultures and backgrounds. They share an energy I can only call joy.

There is a veritable explosion of models of how and what people do in late work. But it is generally a million miles from a model of retirement dedicated to recreation. Golf and cruises dont fill decades. And the loneliness of irrelevance can be far more brutal than we suspected when still locked in unsatisfying jobs. Here are some of the models Ive heard described (feel free to reach out with alternatives).

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox

There are obviously overlaps between them. They are offered here less to categorise than to start a conversation.

Transitioning Mechanisms

Transitioning consciously (rather than just stumbling oldwards) towards the second half of life may require taking some time to mine the first half for its lessons and treasures. You have to do the inner work the sages of all cultures, faiths and traditions advise. How, where and when people will do this is now the big question. You can find lots of financial advisors who will help you with your pension planning. Harder to find people and organisations devoted to helping you find your place and purpose in an ageist world.

They will come. Educational institutions could play a big role and are just starting to talk about what it might be. They may want to contemplate a subscription model suggests Sri Reddy, SVP Retirement and Income Solutions at Principal. You sign up in your 20s and your annual membership is geared to lifelong learning and regular re-invention (and perhaps your degree expires if you dont update it, like any professional certification). They urgently need to develop what Chip Conley calls long life learning which builds communities as much as content. He has done that with his Modern Elder Academy designing programs aimed at fostering communities of midlife peers who cultivate, harvest, and share wisdom with one another.

Companies and countries have a role to play, but Ill reserve that for future columns. They are just starting to awaken to the implications of one of the most dramatic demographic shifts in our human history. There is huge diversity and inequality in their stories. The gap in life expectancy between the well off and worst-off men in the US is an astronomical 15 years. A first major Global Report on Ageism has just been published by the World Health Organisation and a working group bringing together a cross-sectoral group of stakeholders at the World Economic Forum is focusing on Redesigning Retirement for financial wellness.

For the moment, its individuals who are moving first. A groundswell of change agents are rethinking, re-creating and re-designing late work for themselves, nudging the institutions to follow. The stories of these individual efforts are as yet little known and little told. But watch this space. Learning how to age well will become a key 21st century skill. It may also be an adventure, a calling or a revelation. Up to you.

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Late Work: From Recreation To Re-Creation - Forbes