After 30 or 40 years as an employee, a midlife career change can require a surprisingly different set of skills. For much of a successful professional career, the rules of working life are relatively clear. You have a role. An organisation employs you. There is a salary, a job description, colleagues and perhaps a team to manage. Work arrives in your inbox. Meetings appear in your diary. Someone, somewhere, has decided that your skills are needed. Then, as you begin thinking

My late father-in-law, Jim, retired at 60 and spent the next 38 years pottering happily — gardening, grand-parenting and living life at a gentler pace. He represented the end of an era. For most people leaving work in their 50s or 60s today, the old model of work → stop → leisure no longer fits. Many don’t want to retire — and most simply can’t afford to fund a life-stage that could last 40 years. Welcome to the age of ‘the 100-year life’, the subject of a fascinating book