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Why retiring from a successful career can be more challenging than we expect — even when we’re looking forward to it. How Do I Reply When People Ask What I Now Do? One of the first questions we usually ask someone we’ve just met is, “What do you do?” For most of our adult lives, it’s an easy question to answer. I’m a lawyer. I’m a banker. I run a business. I’m a partner at a professional services firm. It’s a convenient introduction. But it also tells people something about our status,...

Studying again in your 50s is just one option for your next chapter The old three-stage life is disappearing. What replaces it? For much of the twentieth century, adult life followed a fairly predictable pattern. First came education. Then work. Then retirement. One day you are working. The next you are not. It was a simple, linear model, and for many people it worked reasonably well. You trained for a career, spent 30 or 40 years building it, and eventually stepped away from work into...

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 about your next...