"Not long after I became an independent consultant nearly 20 years ago, I realised that the notion of a date on which I would retire no longer had any meaning for me." Roy Gaynor, Managing Director of management consultants' training and support network, Navisys Academy explains.
Under funded pension schemes exacerbated by the baby boomer generation, reaching an age when they are expected to retire, has triggered much debate about working longer.
In post-industrial societies, the notion of a job for life is a thing of the past. Now most people must expect to work with a number of different employers and to do a range of different things during the time they spend at work.
This means that we need to change our view of retirement and our view of work and its place in our life. I would like to offer my own personal journey as a window through which to consider the change of view we all need to make in order to have happiness, interest and security in our later years.
Not long after I became an independent consultant nearly 20 years ago, I realised that the notion of a date on which I would retire no longer had any meaning for me. My thinking had changed and from that point onward I thought of work and life as a range of activities, some of which I got paid for and some I did without financial reward.
I envisaged that I would always “work” but that as I grew older the nature and perhaps the intensity of the work that I did would change. This realisation was very liberating.
That was some years ago. Now I spend my time sometimes working as a change agent for big organisations, other times with charities for lesser fees or for free. I have taken up music again; something I was keen on in my teens, and now write songs and perform quite often, sometimes for money, sometimes to help local charities to raise money, sometimes just for fun.
Part of this personal transition involved saying yes when people asked me to help them. Before my usual response was to say that I didn’t have the time. And the more I said yes, the more I was asked.
What all this made me realise is that the opportunities for me to broaden my activities were much greater than I had realised when I was only focused on doing my day job really well and taking care of my growing family.
