Guess I'm Technically Retired

From Worthwhile, a quick insightful post about what people are doing when they semi-retire from their "real jobs"...some wonderful comments as well.

Looking Back at Potential

I love getting a glimpse into a stranger's reflections on their childhood potential. What did you think you were going to be when you grew up, and now that you're older, how did it turn out?

"Here I was, a really smart kid with lots on the ball--gifts that I hadn't even begun into tap yet--and I thought my life was over. I graduated from high school fearing the worst. I might eke out a few years in minimum wage jobs and then...magically expire. And it didn't help matters that I had a high school counselor for four years who gave me the excruciatingly mixed message of steering me toward a slate full of college prep courses only to tell me my senior year that she thought I had a great future ahead of me...as a legal secretary."

Thanks to Jory's ThirdAge Carnival for the pointer.

Post-Gasoline Future?

You Can 't Get There From Here - Or Can You? Over at The Future of Work, they're also thinking about what a future lifestyle might look like if almost nobody could afford to drive to work. It's a more optimistic vision than most, and isn't predicated on a global economic collapse. Some nice side benefits for communities and individuals:

"Oh, and there’s a little hidden bonus in this vision thing of ours – you get to keep all that money you’re currently dropping into your gas tank. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll spend some of that “free cash” on local businesses like restaurants, coffee shops, florists, movie theaters, continuing education programs, concerts, and art galleries. Up goes your quality of life. And up goes the health and well-being of your home town and its residents."

Think Arete

Brian Johnson on the concept of retirement:

"Who came up with that? Work like crazy doing something we're not passionate about so we can accumulate enough money to pay the bills from our stress-caused illnesses while we complain about what we should have done when we were still young."

I guess he wrote a manifesto a few years ago called Think Arete, and turned it into a site focused on an ancient greek word for the process of self-actualizing and striving to reach your highest potential. The site has wonderful quotes, notes and articles like this one about writing your goals. Lots of wisdom there, and it looks like he even offers consulting using his philosophy.

Thanks to Jill, who consistently stretches my mind.

Relationships

Rob Paterson often thinks and writes about what it means to be truly alive. One section in a recent post resonated with me and I wanted to save it. Most of us would say that our closest relationships were among the most precious things in our lives, but what's the first thing to get sacrificed when we get stressed and busy? Our friendships.

"Think of a time when you were so busy that you drifted away from others. How did you feel? More human or less? Think of a time when you were strongly linked to others. How did you feel then? The paradox is that when we have a difficult challenge in front of us, we often default in the doing and lose the connections and hence our power."

This connects directly to some of the thinking I've been doing about gaps between our stated values and how we actually choose to spend our time and money, and flies in the face of what we're learning about happiness. Rob's also pondering what kinds of lifestyle decisions we'll be making five years from now if the price of gas goes up a buck a year.

Out of Alignment

I think there's some real truth to this: passionate work takes less brain juice. When you're really engaged in work that matches your interests and skills, it isn't draining -- you lose track of time and have energy left over for the rest of your life. Curt bounces off an article about creativity to synthesize this insight. A quote:

"In contrast to that state of flow, I've found that following a career path that is out of alignment with who we really are can cause a steady hum of anxiety and effort, just to maintain the status quo."

Sleepism?

When you think about optimizing your life, you don't often think of huge chunk of time you spend each day sleeping. Sleep seems like an annoying obligation when you're trying to envision the most meaningful ways to spend your time and money, which is why it's often neglected by the busiest and most ambitious of us. Good sleep, good learning, good life covers and summarizes the latest research on sleep, and contains all kinds of lifestyle nuggets:

"Few upwardly mobile people in the modern rat-race society can live without an alarm clock. Increasingly, time becomes the most precious commodity in society where achievement is often associated with speed and perfect time-management. However, alarm clocks introduce two harmful side effects: stress and sleep deprivation.

The art of time-management makes it possible to live at high speed with the alarm clock on your side and actually be free from stress. However, the societal damage inflicted by alarm clocks used to regulate sleep is unforgivable. An alarm clock that interrupts your sleep damages your memory, your ability to learn, your mood and temper, your relationships with other people, your ability to focus and your overall intellectual performance!"

Thanks to Will for the pointer.

Worthwhile Risks

The Worthwhile blog has been excellent lately -- Evelyn's post a few weeks ago talks about taking risks to pursue the right kinds of work:

"Sometimes we make bets on our futures. We decide that the future's so bright we need shades, rather than going nowhere. We grow, rather than stagnate. We engage questions, rather than edicts. And we'll even take a job with a riskier, less-well-paying company to do vitally fulfilling work."

She also finishes off with a a question/challenge:

"How about you? Have you ever left a position to continue to grow and innovate? Or, gasp, even work pro bono because you were passionate about the vision (only because we're bootstrapping; I don't condone lining other's pockets on my sweat)?"

Cool Communities

"Hot Jobs - Cool Communities is a report card of the hippest places to live and work based on the metrics that matter to a new generation of talent."

I was interested in the variables they used to identify and evaluate their cool communities -- just loaded with lifestyle factors, and why shouldn't these concerns trump all others?

• Air and Water Quality


• Recycling Rates


• Car Pools, Commute Times


• Traffic


• Public Parks, Trails, and Recreation Areas


• Sunny Days


• Farmers Markets


• Natural Foods Stores


• Fitness Centers


• Vegetarian Restaurants


• Rates of Crime


• Rates of Cancer


• Heart Diesease


• Obesity


• Smoking


• Life Expectancy


• Fruit and Vegtable Consumption


• Work Sick Days


• Rates of Depression


• High Blood Pressure


• Unemployment


• Charitable Donations


• Cost of living


• Poverty


• Concentration of Designers, Artists, Authors, Musicians, Actors and similar Professions


• Pertcentage of Community Under 40


• Population Diversity(ethic, religous, sexual orientation)


• Number of Bars, Nightclubs and similar per capita


• Number of Art Galleries, Museums, and similar per capita

Thanks to The Future of Work for the tip.

Third Decade

Doug writes a bit about challenges people hit in the third decade of their lives and offers some advice for the rest of us on how to help:

"The third decade is a time of emotional and spiritual adolescence. Whereas the first twenty years enable us to mature physically and mentally, we remain relatively undeveloped in our adult relationships and connectedness to meaning. In the crucial third decade, individuals are expected to shift from being 'cared for' to 'taking charge' of their own existence. This means learning how to be a good worker/parent/friend, finding a way to sustain yourself, and getting involved in fulfilling life activities that enable you to be who you are. Developing these capacities is not a simple task."

It's easy to criticize the twixters, yeppies and other awfully named twenty-somethings in a sort of extended adolescence, pointing out their inability to get on with their grown-up lives, but I like how Doug explains the different landscape they face now.

Update: Doug adds a follow-up to the original post, offering advice on how to help young people who are disengaged.

Another Update: Rockstar Max bounces off of Doug's posts and adds some personal experience and commentary to the mix:

"However, most of my generation is finding that neither what they are nor what they had planned to be are sufficient to reach their goals (not to mention out of alignment with each other to begin with). We are guilty of having bought the hype of the pop culture at the same time as--in many cases--having done everything that would have assured at least middle-class prosperity in generations gone by, only to find that the educational system and much of our forebears' 'wisdom' no longer applies."

Outsourcing/Offshoring Jobs

A great (but sobering) four-part series on trends in outsourcing jobs, with a local (for me, anyway) focus. U.S. Outsourcing Millions of Jobs, Outsourcing BC, BC's Big Outsourcing Bet and Outsourcing's Great Unknowns -- they're all definitely worth a read.

Update: Check out this NYTimes interview with the head of Infosys, one of the largest Indian IT firms. Via The Future of Work, which includes some solid commentary on the interview.

Storyboarding Your Life

I blogged this one last year, but the old link is dead and it appears to have been updated and expanded...so maybe this is a repeat, but it's a worthwhile one. I love this approach to storyboarding your life, as a way of envisioning where you want to be in the future. Thanks to Jill for the reminder.

What to do?

What to do, what to do...
This is an interesting glimpse into the thoughts of a high-school student thinking about future career options, after spending some time in a career planning site I helped design. It's fascinating to listen in on the process.

"Of course, I still have no idea what to do, other than my already considered ideas. Their tests, self-evaluating quizzes, and 'learn about yourself' assessments, all carefully weaved through, gave me some answers as to what careers are for me and which aren't."

More College Students Graduating in Four Years

College students getting degrees quicker

"Fifty-six percent of students entering Penn State's main campus graduate in four years, the highest rate in at least a decade and a share that is 14 percentage points higher than two years ago.

Included are students who studied abroad, tackled multiple majors and faced all the other stresses that caused most of their predecessors in the 1990s to switch to five-, six- or even seven-year plans."

This seems to contradict a lot of the data I've been seeing about increasing dropout rates, longer times to complete degrees, and multiple major switches. They also talk about one of the possible reasons:

"Tom Mortenson, a higher education policy analyst, argues the upswing should surprise no one. He says students who take longer -- usually the poor -- are being pushed toward community colleges and proprietary schools as many four-year campuses hungry for prestige target better prepared applicants, who tend to come from wealthier backgrounds."

Fun as Self-Actualization?

Worthwhile Thought:

"The key to a happy life is to accomplish things that you really feel like are good for somebody beyond just you. Nothing else will do it. A lot of people think happiness is about lots of time to play. I was a manic kayaker for a long time. And there were some people who just managed to arrange their whole life around kayaking and of course, we were all insanely jealous. But then, with the benefit of hindsight, that choice doesn't work out so great and I think it is because it's all about you. OK, maybe you like kayaking, but what are you going to be proud of at the end of the day? You may pass the time more or less pleasantly, but you're not going to feel too good about it. The same thing is true with getting rich." -- Green developer and Mindspring Founder Charles Brewer, interviewed in the Premiere issue of Worthwhile magazine

You could substitute "mountain biker" or "snowboarder" for kayaker and this would apply to me more directly. You could substitute your favourite leisure activity to make it personal, and I'm sure we all know people who are HARDCORE into the things we enjoy, perhaps even inspiring the same kind of jealousy he talks about. I've always included these types of pursuits as part of self-actualization, but are they really? Maybe if you're training to achieve professional status? I've occasionally blamed parenthood for forcing me out of my hardcore leisure focus, but I wonder if I would have tired of it eventually if we hadn't had kids.

It seems now that mountain biking is less an identity thing for me now, and more about how it contributes to the rest of my life: health benefits, appreciation of the environment and my community, and the social aspects. I'm a happier person and I accomplish more in the rest of my life when I ride twice a week, but I don't think I'd be happier and more productive if I rode five times a week.

What about you?