Thinking of retirement? I don’t know about you, but I am!! But while many people wait for the moment they can finally be free from work, others have different feelings about it.
Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Harvard University and a columnist at The Atlantic joined the Working It podcast for the Financial Times and explained why retirement just might be redefined by those over 50.
These days, young people often expect to have several different careers by the time they reach their golden years. Perhaps older people could also have several careers– and several retirements!
As many find happiness through their value in the workplace, it might be fair to imagine that if your role isn’t bringing joy, you should find something that does.
In his book, From Strength to Strength Brooks talks about pre and over-50-year-olds and their bid to find fulfilment.
‘I have studied people over the trajectory of their careers, and I’ve noticed that a lot of people get incredibly frustrated because they notice when they’re still pretty young that they’re burning out, losing focus’.
He mentions the term ‘Fluid Intelligence’ coined by social psychologist Raymond Catell, which describes the journey between fluid and crystallised intelligence.
He shared: “Fluid Intelligence requires working memory, innovative capacity and individual focus…you have a lot of in your twenties and thirties [which] makes you good at what you do, but it doesn’t last.
It tends to peak in your late thirties or early forties and then starts to decline. And so what made you really good at your career early on isn’t something that persists and that’s sort of the bad news.”
However, there is another type of intelligence that tends to increase in the later decades, remaining into old age. This is called Crystallised Intelligence’. This requires ‘pattern recognition, teaching capacity and the ability to recognise quality in others’
So, your fifties is the perfect time to harness this type of intelligence and potentially apply it to a new career– even as an alternative to early retirement. Because you may not be unhappy with all work, you just need change to a different type of work.
He explained that he knows men in their sixties who are still working unhappily in big corporate jobs. But they don’t know what else to do. They don’t have the skills for a job on the same level, they don’t have the ability to connect to that life anymore but don’t know how to make that change.
This is where the simple explanation comes in. Brooks said: “They have spent their entire lives learning how to be special and they’ve never spent a minute learning how to be happier.”
So, when retirement comes, they’re scrambling because they don’t know how to not work, or who they are without the big job. That’s why he suggests transforming the way we think about retirement.
Michael Skapinker, a writer for the Financial Times explained that we should collectively retire the ‘R’ word. Instead of expecting to retire and flounder without work and commitments, you can do something different, stay in the same job but at a more manageable pace.
You could stay engaged in your field, keep up to date with your colleagues and take on roles that are leisurely. This would bring the necessary change and also provide that sense of fulfilment.
Just don’t overdo it.
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