There’s a shift taking place in how people conceive of their work. Perhaps it could be characterised as a move from a nine to five, “on-off” attitude to a fluid lifestyle where a typical day might include short bursts of productivity around bouts of lifestyle activities: exercise, food, social life, the outdoors. A move from the binary “that’s my work but this is me” to the holistic “I am my work”.
In the past few years I’ve seen people I know make this transition. Actually, few people I know still subscribe to the old time server’s retirement dream: clocking out one last time to a life of, what exactly? Travel, perhaps. A mobile home. I think a lot of people are now wise to the hollowness of such ungrounded aspirations.
We all know someone who, having reached their longed for retirement age, can’t bring themselves to pull the plug after all. It’s too destabilising, too unsettling — precisely because their lives have been imbalanced for too long. This is backed up by research. Recent studies found retirement increases the chances of clinical depression by around 40%, and of having at least one diagnosed physical illness by 60%.
Perhaps that’s why more people are working past retirement age — because it feels better — which is just as well because there isn’t enough money in private pension funds, never mind the state pension, for the ageing population as it lives longer. The great fear is that our longevity traps us into working jobs we don’t like to meet the unanticipated costs.
In their book The 100 Year Life Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott remind us that extra time is a gift, not a curse, but that a long life will feel cursed if it’s mismanaged: “…constant work, boredom, diffusion of energy, missed opportunities, culminating in an old age of poverty and regret.” It feels to me as if these are two extremes: on the one hand the idea of stopping work completely in your 60s for a life of doddering retirement — which may not be desirable even if it were still financially viable — and on the other the trap of being forced to work non-stop.
Many dental practice owners who sold out to corporates and are winding down today bought in when goodwill prices were 30% of turnover. But what about the millennials buying in at 130%? How are they going to pay for themselves in 40 years? Will they be condemned to the curse of eternal work? They’ll have to be creative and flexible to find diverse revenue streams, qualities that, at least, they don’t seem short of.
These are generalisations, but they are underpinned by structural changes, most obviously all the affordable and easy to use hardware and software that’s enabling us to work remotely and leverage our personal and business assets. Nearly one in nine men aged 70 and over are already working full or part time, an increase of 137% over the past 10 years. Imagine what that number will be when you hit the same age.
Meanwhile self-employment is on the rise, up from 3.3m in 2001 to 4.8m in 2017 because more people want to manage their lives on their own terms. I wonder if it has something to do with more people wanting to put a slice of the leisure and relaxation of a Florida retirement home into their working day. To work flexibly, early and late, as your clients and your personal life require, to save hundreds of wasted hours a year by avoiding unnecessary commutes and to feel healthier and more productive as a result sounds good, doesn’t it?
We support our clients to move in this direction, to develop financial sense around their values, enabling them to become their work, feel more vital and connected to it, and become more satisfied in their personal lives. Talk to us if you’d like to know more.
