It’s pretty clear to most baby boomers that they will be creating, either by choice or circumstances, a very different kind of retirement from their parents, for whom it simply meant, stop working.
Retirement was first quantified in 1935, when the Social Security Administration gave it the number, 65. At the time, the average lifespan was 68, so it made sense to spend the relatively few years you had left exclusively focused on leisure.
Since then, however, life expectancy has expanded by almost 30 years, adding what some call a “third age” to the lives of those of us fortunate enough to benefit from longevity.
The question is, what do we do with it? And what do we call it?
Exactly what the new retirement will look like is as obscure as some of the new “re” words—rehire, rewire, renew—that have been coined in the attempt to move away from the old word (whose syllable “tire” connotes being too worn out to work).
Although I belong to the first wave of boomers moving toward retirement age, I feel very little anxiety about the next phase of my life because I have witnessed something more appealing than either retirement or protirement—non-retirement.
These spinoffs seem forced, as if they are trying too hard to remake this extended phase of life into something exciting and fun. They are also awkward. It’s hard to imagine throwing a rehirement party or sending a card wishing a colleague a happy rewirement or renewment.
This groping to rename the experience comes from the recognition that the old term is no longer adequate and that we need to come up with a new one which will inspire us to move forward into unknown territory.
But I can’t help associating these “re”-worked words with retread tires, and I have no desire to live my extended years as a second hand tire refurbished with a veneer of rubber.
NEW MEANING A HARD SELL
By replacing the “re” prefix, F. M. Hudson has taken a major step in the direction of a more positive and comprehensive view of this stage of life. In his book, The Adult Years: Mastering the Art of Self Renewal, he called it protirement.
Protirement is about making the choice to leave a profession earlier than the traditional retirement age in order to build and manage a “portfolio” of more fulfilling activities (e.g. a new career, education, community service).
The goal is self-enrichment through one’s own conscious initiative and planning, a concept which appeals to my belief that we can and should take leadership responsibility for our life at every age.
Yet even a cursory search for resources which could help reshape this stage of life illustrates how entrenched the word “retirement” and the activities it has traditionally represented are.
Googling “retirement,” I got 112,000,000 hits. I only got 741 for “protirement”— which probably explains why you may be hearing it for the first time.
A similar search on Amazon.com generated over 200,000 titles. Looking through them, our confusion about exactly what this phase of life is suppose to look and feel like becomes obvious.
The classic view that the quality of retirement depends on having enough money or moving to the right location is heavily represented by a vast array of investment manuals (e.g. Live Long Live Rich) and relocation guides (Choose Panama ).
Interspersed among them is an odd assortment of self-help books on everything from how to enjoy being retired (Leisureville), how to face the truth that retirement may include working (Retire Retirement), and how to cope with the aspects of retirement that can be challenging (For Better or Worse, But Not for Lunch).
Scanning down the list, I found myself thinking how depressing it would be if I were doing this for real, as someone overwhelmed by the need to create a new purpose for myself and figure out what I wanted out of the 20 to 30 years of life after work.
Although I belong to the first wave of boomers moving toward retirement age, I feel very little anxiety about the next phase of my life because I have witnessed something more appealing than either retirement or protirement—non-retirement.
ROLE MODELS
I am very fortunate in knowing two couples, Edwin and Sonia Nevis, and Charlie and Edie Seashore, leading voices in the field of organizational psychology, whose current work lives are a natural evolution of their authenticity.
The Nevises are in their eighties, the Seashores in their seventies, yet they have not retired. They have no need to seek an alternate lifestyle in order to find respite or renewal. Instead they have reshaped their work lives, as choice, circumstance and age have advised, so they can continue to:
- offer the world their highest level of contribution
- balance giving to and receiving from others
- remain vigilant to their own growth potential.
They live a rich and full non-retirement lifestyle, one we don’t see very often. By continuing to thrive in their work, they have firmly positioned their golden years on the opposite end of the spectrum from the traditional meaning of retirement.
Instead of moving away from the drudgery and limitation of work, as so many count down the years to be able to do, they have moved toward new venues for doing the work they love and freed themselves of self-imposed and cultural restrictions.
I see in them the ultimate fulfillment of the message of my book, Ground of Your Own Choosing. When a professional career is based on a conscious endeavor to find the work you were meant to do, you will have no desire to leave it at the arrival of your 65th or even your 75th birthday. As Edwin Nevis once said to me, he and Sonia “thought about retiring— for about 10 minutes.”
USE OF SELF
Non-retirement doesn’t mean you don’t modify how you work. In fact, it requires becoming more selective about what you do and how you do it.
For example, the formation of learning communities is an integral part of the experiential training Charlie and Edie deliver, and one of the ways they build connections between and among themselves and their students is to invite them, as many as 50 or more, to an open house.
They do not, however, take upon themselves the stress that comes with planning and executing such a large gathering. Instead, along with the invitation, they send out a request for their guests to form a committee to orchestrate the event.
Both of these couples are well equipped to retain the nucleus of their life’s work while channeling the energy of those who orbit around them because they are teachers of the effective use of self.
Throughout their professional lives they have practiced a set of skills essential to looking at the later years of life with new eyes:
- making conscious rather than habitual choices
- initiating and acting in their own best interests
- reframing challenges so that they provoke new understanding
Wherever you go, regardless of the size of your investment portfolio or your choice of location, you take the attitudes and skills you have nurtured throughout your career along with you. Doesn’t it make sense to keep your options open by intentionally developing the thinking and behaviors that will serve you well should you choose to extend your professional life beyond the traditional retirement age?
When your professional development includes the practices of effective leadership in the pursuit of self-actualization, retirement could simply be a non-issue.
I once thanked Edie Seashore for embodying this new model of retirement, and she shared with me how she responds when people tell her she should retire. Instead of defending her choice, she disarms them by asking, “What does retirement look like to you?”
To which they respond, “Doing what you love, giving back, traveling, having a good time.”
“Then I must be retired,” she says. “I love what I do, others benefit from it, and I have more frequent flier miles than most senior executives.”
