Crumbs, I think I may be about to become an outlier!
My social media accounts seem to be filling up with contemporaries who have decided that enough is enough. They are calling a halt to their working life.
Me, I’m ambivalent about this retirement thing.
There are positives to bailing out in some cases. If I were perhaps commuting into the City of London daily, as I did for many years in a previous employment life, I can see the attraction of stopping, especially now that travel in almost any form has become such a horrific test of endurance here in the UK. Likewise, the whole idea of having to report to some useless nonentity on a regular basis would be like being hit over the head with a mallet – bliss when it stops.
But I do wonder whether everybody has completely thought this through.
In my experience the nanosecond after you question anybody about their retirement decision you receive a jocular, yet slightly over-vehement response along the lines of “Oh no I’ll have no trouble filling my days. It will be all I can do to find the time for all of my golf/fretwork/birdspotting, you mark my words.” I have a feeling that in fact a huge aspect of the decision to hand in the ID badge is based around the wish to stop the current horror of employment, rather than to get stuck into the next phase. It feels less like running towards something and more like the opposite.
Likewise, the state decrees that a certain date shall be the point where one starts to receive a pension. The inference being that that is the date when one should stop doing anything to actually earn an income. In the UK today you get your pension at 66. Now I don’t know about anyone else, but I really don’t feel in the least like I’m now so decrepit and spavined that I can barely type on a keyboard. On the contrary, I feel no better or worse than I did 20 years ago.
When the state pension age was reduced to 65 in 1940, said 65-year-old could expect to live another 11 years (A bit higher for women). Now the equivalent expectation is pushing towards double that. Indeed, those of us who have had the good sense to be born into a family with reasonable genes, who’ve avoided the ciggies and done the odd physical jerk etc, can expect to draw breath well beyond the actuarial check-out age.
The point here for me is that stopping work about, say 10 years before one is expected to hand in the old dinner pail, feels about right in terms of still being fit enough to do a job. For me I’m working on the assumption that 90 would be realistic, so 66 feels way too soon whatever the exact number.
But of course, there’s the obvious question that overshadows all this. Just because I’m physically capable why would I want to continue?
Well, there’s another attraction to work that I almost dare not mention….. I, um, well, quite enjoy it if you can believe that. Indeed, there are some elements that I enjoy because they are challenging and not necessarily in a positive way at the time, to the extent that they verge on the masochistic.
I enjoy, partly because I know it’s good for me, having to deal with the useless nonentities (see above). The intellectual challenge of getting them to understand my point of view and what’s good for them is fun, provided you don’t invest too much in the outcome.
I work in my own consultancy and the high point of the process of getting new clients for me is the meeting/interview prior to starting the contract. When it comes to actual delivery of the terms of my engagement I know I’m not outstanding, but I do know that give me 45 minutes of somebody’s time in an interview situation and I am in my comfort zone. I really enjoy the buzz of success after one of those sessions.
Additionally in recent years I’ve been partaking in an intellectual battle to avoid being seen as some kind of office elder, a.k.a. “the old guy in the corner”. I can remember old-guys-in-the-corner down the years in my own past. They had been kept on in businesses normally because they had some arcane, yet necessary nugget of knowledge that was useful. Or they were competent at doing some element of business that was deemed too expensive to automate. Whatever, they would appear in the same shirt, yellowing under the armpits, every day and follow a routine that was timed down to the minute, often carrying their lunch in a Tupperware container. Any request for information would always be preceded by an anecdote describing how things were 20 years ago, but was now supremely irrelevant.
So, I’m hyper-vigilant these days when talking to my younger colleagues, looking out for the internal eye roll that means they are thinking “Oh God, here he goes again”. I keep myself technically up to date and studiously avoid any topics that could possibly end up at the point where I might say something about how much better things were in 1995.
So for me, the challenge of work is enjoyable, plus it’s also overwhelmingly good for me.
Naseem Nicholas Taleb wrote a book that makes eminent good sense to me. It’s called ‘Antifragile’. It points out that a degree of stress and strain for almost any entity you care to mention, far from being a problem, is actually a very good thing. I thoroughly recommend searching it out. For humans the saying “use it or lose it” hits the nail on the head. We seem to be happy enough to acknowledge and even follow this mantra for our corporeal bodies, but rather less so for our minds. Doing the Times crossword I’m afraid doesn’t tick the stress-and-strain box in the same way as, say, dealing with some moron at work without actually losing your temper, does. It’s the element of compulsion that is missing. If you volunteer for an intellectual challenge you aren’t forced to push yourself as hard. The neural pathways don’t get utilised and they start to gather cobwebs.
Pointless of course, to deny as well that I like the things which having a reasonable income can buy. While we won’t starve when I stop, I do know that the coffers are being augmented while I’m continuing to work. The idea of having to become a bit more “careful” gives me the heebie-jeebies.
The other trick which I’m trying to pull off at the moment is to work out how to more fully integrate work and home life. Susie tells me she likes to see me around now and then (I know… weird), so I need to ensure that staying at work doesn’t mean long absences. Of course, Covid shifted the needle significantly in terms of whether a physical presence at work was necessary. These days I work from home almost exclusively, so from that perspective things have moved in the correct direction quite nicely.
And finally, there’s another question to answer. I might want to continue working but will I be allowed? Age discrimination no doubt does exist. But in all honesty, I think the generations below mine are much more vigilant about discrimination in all its forms. They don’t like it and I’m all for that. Anyway, I’ve not encountered it yet and frankly I’m happy enough to be considered the token geriatric, if that’s what’s needed.
So, as my erstwhile colleagues and my friends start to haunt the pubs and golf courses I’ll stay at my desk if you don’t mind. Thereby fulfilling a role I’ve often hankered after. I’ve been rather attracted to the idea of being thought of as eccentric since I could first spell it. Maybe this is the way to achieve that rather singular aspiration.
So, as that eminent philosopher Pinocchio nearly sang:
“Hi diddly-dee, it’s the outlier’s life for me”