Re-wiring Retirement - Why Retirement May No Longer Be Necessary
For many of us in our fifties and sixties, retirement no longer feels like the finish line it once was.
The Old Model: Rest After the Grind
There was a time when you worked hard—physically hard—and counted down to the day you could finally stop. The body wore out long before the spirit did. In the mid-20th century, the average British man retired at 65 and women at 60, having hopefully a couple of decades of rest ahead of them. Life was shorter, work was tougher, and the reward for years of manual labour was a peaceful, if brief, twilight.
But that was then. Today’s longer lives and easier working conditions are rewriting the rulebook.
The Shift from Muscle to Mind
Modern work is no longer about lifting, hammering, or hauling. It’s about thinking, communicating, creating, and connecting. The Financial Times recently noted how the shift towards intellectual and service-based work has changed our relationship with ageing: experience and judgement often add value rather than diminish it.
A designer, analyst, consultant or teacher in their sixties may be as effective as ever—perhaps even better. The workplace now runs on insight, not endurance.
Soft Retirement and the Purpose Dividend
With technology and remote work, the boundary between “career” and “retirement” has become porous. The Times calls this the era of “soft retirement”—when people downshift rather than stop. A few days’ consultancy, mentoring younger colleagues, or starting a small business from home keeps the mind engaged and the bank balance healthy.
The New Scientist reminds us that ongoing mental challenge “reduces cognitive decline and sustains wellbeing.” Humans, it turns out, aren’t designed to sit idle for decades.
In fact, Arthur C Brooks a Professor at Harvard University, a pre-eminent thinker about the relationship between work and happiness, explores in his excellent book From Strength to Strength, how our brains change over time and why, the impacts this has on how we think, making the case that even with knowledge workers the way we work in our 20’s applying the speed of critical thinking using fluid intelligence is replaced as we get older with a more reflective experiential based thinking using crystallised intelligence. He argues that when workers reach their 50’s there is a shift that many notice in how they perform because of these changes that can result in a reduction in happiness. Recognising the changes and working with them arguably goes a long way towards being happier.
The Economics of Staying In
There’s also a bigger picture. As the Financial Times has warned, the old pension model—many workers funding a smaller number of retirees—is creaking. Encouraging longer, more flexible working lives is not only personally rewarding but socially necessary.
Newsweek summed it up neatly: “Work is becoming less an obligation than an option—one we might choose to keep exercising for as long as we remain curious.
Redefining the Finish Line
Of course, not everyone has the privilege of choice. Those in physically demanding roles still need, and deserve, the right to rest. But for millions in knowledge-based or hybrid work, the concept of a set “retirement age” feels outdated, especially post-Covid where home working became normal.
Perhaps the new question isn’t when to retire, but how to redesign life and work, so that work remains part of it—on our terms, at our pace, doing what still sparks interest. I am getting more and more curious about this as I research and read more about it. Arthur C Brooks book From strength to strength resonates with me, if you’re curious it’s worth the investment to read.
In short: the future may belong not to the retired, but to the rewired—people trading old career labels for new freedom, flexibility, and purpose.
I would like to write an article featuring people that have made the decision to change their career or working approach in their 50’s and 60’s. If you have done it and would be happy to share your experience, please drop me an e-mail.
