Late Work: From Recreation To Re-Creation

Mastering the Art (and Appetite) for Re-invention

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

This is the first in a series that will continue next week with Retirement, Redundancy, Rejection: The Extreme Emotionality of Endings. Both are from the archive, originally published in FORBES and behind a paywall.

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Michael and Linda decided back in their 40s that they’d like to work together in retirement.

Clive doesn’t 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 3rd Quarters – the autumn 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 aren’t training for the long haul.

We aren’t 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 it’s bad for humans too.