Encore career possibilities are endless. They can be lucrative and personally fulfilling. In their book, Don’t Retire, Rewire! (Alpha, 2007), Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners provide a step-by-step guide to help people approaching the second half of life discover their passions and purpose.
Noting that many people “flunk retirement,” they list many reasons for retirees to “rewire,” among them a need for mental stimulation and a desire to remain productive, do something meaningful and make a difference for others.
This husband-and-wife team recognizes that for some people, personal reasons predominate, like wanting to do long-postponed activities, find a better balance between work and play and continue to make money while doing something they love.
The authors put future retirees through their paces. They list and describe 30 possible reasons that people want to work, to help them identify their most important goals and find a good rewiring fit. They also discuss what people may lose when they retire, like involvement with others, the energy of the workplace and a feeling of importance.
Sometimes the best fit is to continue doing your life’s work but on a less demanding schedule. For example, I retired officially from the New York Times 10 years ago, after 32 years as a full-time science writer.
I have, however, continued to do the work I love most — writing this weekly column as a contract writer and speaking to lay and professional audiences about fostering good health.
The reduced workload enables me to spend much valued time with my four grandsons and good friends, as well as enjoy more cultural events, travel, physical activities and hobbies like gardening, knitting and crocheting.
But in reading the books mentioned above, I realize that I am still missing something — the personal (as opposed to financial) giveback to social causes that I might support, like helping parents and schools turn out healthier children and helping young people achieve a wholesome work-life balance.
Sedlar and Miners quote Norma Collier, a 62-year-old marketing manager who wants to make a difference: “Before I die I want to do something to make the world a better place, and this is the time to do it — not when I’m really old and decrepit, but when I’m still active.”
As these authors put it: “Rewiring is different from retirement because it starts from inside you. Rewiring is not about responding to someone else’s goals for you or living out society’s agenda for you. Rewiring comes from you, your personal motivators, your vision, your dreams, your goals and your values. That’s why rewiring is so satisfying for so many people.”
According to Freedman, the time is now to put in place a new model of retirement, both for the sake of individuals and for the society in which we all live.
Those who are pioneering this new model, he says, “are not celebrating their freedom from work, but rather their freedom to work, in ways that hold the promise of personal fulfillment, economic benefit and social renewal.”
By 2050, he points out, the average 65-year-old will live to age 90. Pressman has found his niche. What will you be doing with all those years?
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