A key component in men’s Disquiet is the issue around work and career. A man’s sense of well being and being successful as a man is tied to his sense of success in his work. As the baby boomers hit retirement age, we are seeing new ways of entering the second phase of our life. Many are starting second and third careers. There is a great opportunity to create work that is meaningful and rewarding. This is from a great post I read on LifeTwo.com (www.lifetwo.com):

Interesting post at AARP about midlife career changes. If you are going to work until 65, then changing careers at 58 may not make sense as you only have 7 years left of your working life and are likely to take an earnings hit in the new career. You simply might not be able to afford to make the change no matter how much you want to do so.

However, let’s say that you are 58 but plan to keep working until the age of 75. You now have 27 years to work and more importantly 27 years for which you want to avoid burnout. If changing careers helps you avoid this burnout then you might not be able to not make the switch (double negative intentional).

Why would someone want to work past the earliest date of retirement? It turns out that the joys of not working can be vastly over-rated, especially for people who enjoy their job and the people they work with. Rent “About Schmidt” to get Hollywood’s take on it.

Furthermore, with the rising costs of healthcare and the expected gains in life expectancy, it might be prudent to work at least into your 70s. But that will be no fun if you don’t like your job and it’s hard to enjoy your job if you don’t like your career.

According to a 2005 study conducted by Merrill Lynch, 76 percent of baby boomers intend to “retire” and keep right on working and earning-most after launching a new career. “In many cases longer life spans and extended work spans translate into multiple careers,” observes Jeri Sedlar, coauthor of Don’t Retire, Rewire! (click here)

Of course the decision may be made for you by a corporate downsizing or layoff. The silver lining there is that this might be what was required to make the big step. However, even it won’t reduce the risks of entering into a new career or a guarantee that it will bring happiness.

Many men I know had an unexpected preview of things to come when they got laid off in the dot.com bust. They learned about the importance of work and had to quickly learn how to re-wire themselves. Think about how you have been holding your retirement. As you get older and it gets closer, do you find yourself thinking about what you will do?

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Tags: Men's Roles, Resources, The Disquiet, Work, Working with change, aarp, boomers, career, career change, happiness, midlife, midlife crisis, retirement

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 6:43 pm and is filed under Men's Roles, Resources, The Disquiet, Work, Working with change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.