The second half of life is important, so take the time to plan it properly

“Being 60 today is the same as 40 was two decades ago,” a close friend told me recently as she celebrated reaching an age once considered venerable.?

In fact, given that increasing life expectancy means we’re adding three months to our life with each year we live, along with the likely extension of retirement age, we would be foolish not to plan for the second half of our lives.?

The positive side of seniority is that after reaching the peak of our maturity, we tend to be more emotionally stable and hopefully have attained a certain professional reputation and saved money or acquired assets. It’s a time when we benefit from our experiences and can trust our own judgment.

Indeed, this could be the time to chart a new course in life and possibly reinvent ourselves. Perhaps Nancy Sinatra was right: “You only live twice, or so it seems, one life for yourself and one for your dreams.”

And reaching our fifties is the ideal moment to focus on fulfilling those??dreams. This is what Lucy Kellaway, the former work and careers columnist at the Financial Times, argues in her latest book,?Re-educated. How I changed my job, my home, my husband and my hair.[1]

Fresh, cosmopolitan, funny and packed with subtle ironies, the book explains how she moved to her new home in a different London borough from where she had lived most of her life, left her respected job to become a school teacher and divorced her husband (although she is elegantly discreet about the details) and how she even changed her hairstyle to reflect her new maturity.??

An exercise in self-examination written by someone whose work has focused on careers -the created the popular fictional manager Martin Lukes- and whose down-to-earth approach appeals both to the general reader and business professionals,?the book brings to mind Socrates’ maxim: “a life unexamined is not worth living.” Lucy’s engaging first-person approach will encourage even the most skeptical reader to re-evaluate the second half of their careers.?

That said, she admits that reinventing oneself later in life is hard work, a time when many of us are reluctant to change, as Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, observed: “It’s up to you to keep yourself engaged and productive during a work life that may span some 50 years,”[2]?He advised not to leave this task to others, to the state or the organization we work for.?

Lucy’s advice is not to think too hard about reinventing oneself and recommends “doing lots of things and doing them fast”. She even confesses to marveling at what she calls her “fickleness”, observing that a steady, organized life and career can be less satisfying than reacting to circumstances, changing direction and embracing chaos.

With Lucy’s story and Drucker’s advice to seniors in mind, I would like to share some personal takeaways:?

A time when we can put to use everything we’ve learned so far, as the Roman philosopher Cicero proposed. By the time we’ve reached our fifties, we may have taken the Ancient Greeks’ advice to “know thyself” and acquired at least a little self-knowledge. But as Drucker explains, few of us have any idea about our strengths and weaknesses. Introspection, asking for feedback from colleagues or coaches, the advice of friends, as Lucy suggests, are a good idea. In my experience, successful people either become arrogant and distant over time, or modest and accessible.?

Drucker poses a series of questions those of us entering the second half of our careers to help us know ourselves a little better, and so??get an idea of what we need to do: think about how we learn best, whether we’re readers or listeners, if we work well with other people or are loners, and whether we are decision makers or advisers. These are all relevant questions, because even if we’ve developed abilities that allow us to lead, even when we’re outside our comfort zones, it is always best to build on our strengths rather than to try to correct our weaknesses. This advice is particularly relevant in the second half of our life, given that it is harder to correct long-established behavior patterns, although this can still be achieved through systematic practice.

It still comes as a surprise when older people show an interest in what the young have to say, and who are open to new ideas and experiences. Cultivating an attitude of openness to change as the years roll on, is important, particularly if we are going to be staying active longer into the future. This requires humility, particularly with younger people: so much can be learned from them, as Lucy illustrates in her book.?

Little wonder that growing numbers of companies are implementing inverse mentoring programs wherein younger employees can open the eyes of their older colleagues to new trends, explain technology, and highlight the their concerns.

if we’re to stay active, productive and relevant. We need to continually renew our knowledge and acquire new skills over the years. An increasing number of studies show that using our memory and analytical skills helps generate new brain cells. And if executives can meet younger people when studying, then their education will be all the more enlightening. Study is a great leveler, and classrooms composed of students of all ages means that younger members mature, while older participants are rejuvenated. Lifelong learning is one of the most effective ways to stay young.

The second half of our careers can be an opportunity to change direction, for example starting a company, becoming a social entrepreneur, or working for a not-for-profit organization, as Lucy did by creating Now Teach, a foundation dedicated to improving the quality of primary education.?

Business schools are waking up to the opportunities this older student segment represents and creating programs for professionals that want to put their experience to use.[3]

Maturity is also a time when the personal values that have guided us over the years take on greater meaning and can form part of a narrative to be passed on to younger generations.

I have always believed that a knowledge and appreciation of the humanities and the arts deeply enriches the work of business people, after all, the values of philosophy really only comes to us later in life. Similarly, cultivating the humanities allows us to see our endeavors in the context of other cultures and other times.

The poet TS Eliot once said: “The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.”[4]Perhaps we are entering an age when the most productive and motivated generations will be those past the age of fifty, and perhaps the best poetry and novels will be written not by people in their thirties, but in their seventies. If so, I’m sure Lucy Kellaway will continue to be a benchmark for us all.

References

[1]?L. Kellaway, Re -educated. How I changed my job, my home, my husband and my hair (London: Penguin, 2021)

[2]??P. Drucker:?Managing Oneself, The Best of Harvard Business Review 1999

[3]??E.g., the Transformation with Purpose program at IE Business School or the Senior Fellows initiative at Harvard Business School.

[4]??Time, 23 October 1950