An interesting phenomena has occurred recently: baby boomers who had planned for so long on retiring within a few years now find that their careers are going to last upward of 20 more years. In this article in The Financial Times yesterday, journalist Lucy Kellaway perfectly captured the issue:

When I was 20, I thought I’d retire at 60. By the time I was 35, I expected to retire rather earlier, at about 50 or so. Back then, it was fashionable for professionals to take early retirement – either because they found they could, or because their employers had tired of them and pensioned them off. But now that I’m 50 myself, I find that the finishing line has been moved once again and it looks as though I’ll be slogging away until I’m 70 and beyond.

So, for those of us who are still relatively early on in our careers – how does a much longer working life affect the career choices we make? When there realistically isn’t the likelihood of retiring at age 50 with lots of money and great health so you can travel the world, enjoying your career becomes a lot more important. For most of us, it doesn’t make sense to grind it out at a career you don’t enjoy if your retirement age is much more like 70 plus.

Although the thought of retiring into one’s 70’s seems a bit daunting, particularly on the days work is a grind, there are a few reasons why planning for a longer working life could have a positive affect:

1. There Would Be Less of a Hurry in the Beginning to Have it all Figured Out

If the assumption was from the beginning that you will be working for 50 years, dabbling in a more creative or “young person’s profession” would seem acceptable at first. It would be okay to go to law school in your late 20’s or early 30’s (rather than the thought you need to get started at age 22) if you knew you would be working for a very long time. Parents would probably be more likely to encourage their kids to experiment and even travel before making a commitment with long lasting financial and career related implications. This would also take the pressure off which path to take right away.

2. If We Assumed We Will Work For Most Of Our Lives, Taking a Long Break or Sabbatical in the Middle Wouldn’t Be So Risky

For women, this could be very liberating because there wouldn’t be the pressure of picking career or family. For many women, it’s an intense struggle between the two (as noted from all the blogs out there) and the topic is loaded with emotions. If we are working for 50 years, why would we plan for our peak career period and our most intense child rearing stage to happen in the same time period? That doesn’t make sense. If our society had a mindset that we are all in it for the long haul, then it wouldn’t be as big a deal to take a few years off. A short break in a 50 year working life, shouldn’t derail one’s career and take one off a track.

For men and women, taking a break for a year or so should be acceptable in mid career because you don’t need as much money to take a year off as you do to retire for the rest of your lives. Taking a year off to travel, write, learn something or just enjoy being alive wouldn’t be as risky if the mindset was there might not be a chance to do that in good health later on. Plus, people would come back to work refreshed. I know the arguments: clients would go elsewhere, people would take your work, etc. but if we all thought we might never get this chance, I think the risk of never doing this might outweigh the risks at work. (Also, nothing is impossible and there are ways to stay in contact from anywhere in the world if necessary. One would just need to trust whoever was working for them and delegate well.)

3. Most Importantly, It Would be Normal to Have More Than One Career

If we knew we would work for 50 plus years, why would we only want to do one thing? I would argue that it is rare to find one thing that you want to do for 50 years exclusively. Even if you love your work, variety, learning new things and challenging yourself is what keeps your mind sharp. Many professions such as being a teacher, doctor, or lawyer for example, require such specialization that it makes sense it would get stale after about 20 years unless you mixed it up in some way.

If we work for most of our lives, then change would be embraced and seem much more natural than having to pick one career for one’s entire life. Plus, as in the quote below – we would actually retire from our second or third career while we were still having fun.

One of my slightly younger Financial Times colleagues has just quit journalism and started to train to be a doctor a couple of days after her 40th birthday. Many people thought she was mad, but it actually makes perfect sense.

She’ll qualify in her mid-40s, become successful in her mid-50s and then, just when medicine is beginning to seem a bit less charming to her, she’ll be 70 and it will be time to retire. She will have applied to her career a tip I always try to apply to my social life: to leave a party when you’re still having a good time.