Launching a New Life Quarter

5 Priorities, at Any Age

Photo by Ave Calvar on Unsplash

I’m excited to take you for a spin of a whole new type of content to add to the elderberries project. Named Collaborations - this will be a place to play and dance with other generations, backgrounds and perspectives.

This first piece has been co-authored with Charlie Rogers, who I met on Substack’s 6-week Grow programme last month. His youthful determination (and extraordinary energy) to learn everything he possibly can about life - and manage it - as he steps into its middle decades reminds me a lot of … me. He’s also a coach, consultant and entrepreneur with a global background and an overflowing pot of ideas and initiatives.

He writes a newsletter that invites Mastery in Your 20s (says it all), about management, portfolio careers and inventing yourself intentionally. It’s full of tools, advice and research. Very impressive. Check it out here.

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Whether you are 25 or 55, you are likely to be asking yourself some big questions about how, where and with whom to create your next life chapter. While this may be expected in your 20s, it’s more surprising in your 50s and 60s. Everyone knows that the 20s are about moving into adulthood and discovering who you are. Few recognise that you’re doing exactly the same thing a quarter of a century later.

In our longer, trending-towards-100 year lives, there are four distinct quarters, each with their own priorities, generational contexts and developmental tasks. The 20s is the start of the 2nd Quarter (25-50), the 50s the start of the 3rd Quarter (50-75). Longevity has gifted us an increasingly healthy and vibrant 3rd Quarter, which is why it’s time to learn from our juniors how to begin. Remember?

We are two writers, coaches and consultants writing on Substack about our respective Quarters, Charlie on Q2 and Avivah on Q3. So we thought we’d get together to compare notes. What surprised us both was just how parallel our thinking was, and how in our 50s and 60s we seem to cycle round through the same questions we wrestled with in our 20s, but with more. More knowledge, experience, networks, maybe money. But the same questions. Again!