Finding purpose in work after 20+ years

Pretty interesting and profound book that may be interesting to those that have been working for 20+ years and are pondering the real questions — purpose, the why, to what end. His essential point is that we all suffer after say 20 years of working a decline in “fluid intelligence”, but that is compensated (if we look for it) by “crystallized intelligence” (essentially the beginnings of wisdom).

And then he goes on to describe how we typically fight this decline (to no avail), but the smart ones use this time to think about the next phase — finding a life with purpose, deeper relationships, closeness to God etc.. A couple of other things that caught my eye:

• Satisfaction = What you have / What you want
• A retired CEO said that “Within 6 months I went from ‘Who’s who’ to ‘Who’s he'”!
• “They say live in such a way to be always ready to die. I would say live in such a way that anyone can die without you having anything to regret” – Leo Tolstoy
• According to a study, “The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age fifty were the healthiest at age eighty”
• “The kind of people who don’t know how to manage social relationships outside of work get lonelier when their retire”. That describes a lot of successful people.
• The top two loneliest professions (per HBR) are lawyers and doctors. Hmm.
• If you cannot name at least two friends (work friends don’t count) outside of your spouse, then the chance of loneliness is very high.
• To share your weakness without caring what others think is a kind of superpower
• … you get the idea.

Worth a read.