What I've Learned From Men in Their Thirties

Hello friends, and welcome to Notes from the Road! Glad you're along for the ride. Each week, you'll get news, advice, tools, and inspiration to design your “years beyond careers,” whether you're traveling around the world or blazing a trail in your own backyard. In this issue:

• What I’ve Learned from Men In Their Thirties

• Bite-Sized Book Review: What Retirees Want

• Weekly Roundup

• Video Tour of This Newsletter

Let’s get started!

“You know, you just watched that whole thing a couple of weeks ago.”

My husband says it gently, slightly worried that I have no recall of recent events.

“I know.” I say. “I’m going back over it to make sure I get everything.”

The “it” in question is a two-hour YouTube video podcast with Ali Abdaal (age: 29.5) and Nicolas Cole (age: 33). They’re talking about the business—and the craft—of writing. My other teacher? Kieran Drew, (age: 31), from whom I just purchased a writing course. There are more.

What in heavens name does this have to do with midlife and retirement?

Well, I’ve learned a lot from these young men about writing, online content, technology, video, and a host of other new skills.

But I’ve also learned a lot by dipping a toe into their world at midlife.

I’ve learned that:

• It’s supremely important to have a sense of purpose. I’ve read it, I’ve said it, and now I know it at at a cellular level. Purpose burns bright in each of these people. Access to their skill and enthusiasm—and the opportunity to apply it myself—has reconnected me with a sense of purpose I haven’t known for many years. It’s easy to see now how that’s necessary for sustaining happiness beyond work.

• There’s a distinct and very satisfying pleasure in the simple pursuit of a craft. There’s joy in mastering something that requires your undivided time and attention. This joy often gets lost as you advance in your career, where your ability to get better at many things (e.g., leadership, management, coaching) is largely context- and people-dependent. Midlife and retirement give us an opportunity to reconnect with that.

• Seeing the larger picture, playing the long game, is an asset. We’re great at this in midlife. We know that nothing awful lasts forever and nothing great does either. This too, shall pass. Seeing these fellows in the hustle years reminds me how how foreign that way of thinking once was to me. And how much we learn as we move through and beyond that part of life.

I love listening to these smart, ambitious young people figure out how to make their way in the world. And when they tell each other to wait, and be patient, and enjoy the journey, I think, yes. Yes. If I had a podcast, I’d love to think that this is one thing that I could teach them.

And return the favor.

Bite-Sized Book Review

I’d like to start sharing some books with you. But since this is a weekly (ideally) newsletter, and I still have a day job, I’m launching the Bite-Sized Book Review, where I share a few nuggets each week from a book that I’m reading on retirement.

This week: What Retirees Want: A Holistic View of Life’s Third Age by Ken Dychtwald and Robert Morison.

Chapter 1 divides retirees into four groups according to how they see retirement:

1. Ageless Explorers (~20%): See retirement of a time of opportunity, adventure, exploration, reinvention. Often work in retirement for activity, and don’t really intend to wind down.

2. Comfortably Contents (~20%): Like Ageless Explorers but more traditional view of retirement as a reward for a life of conscientious work. Less likely to work in retirement; mainly to stay active and earn extra money.

3. Live for Todays (~20%): Have the biggest list of things to do, idealistic and experimental. Want to keep reinventing themselves. Not planners.

4. Worried Strugglers (~35%): Least ready and able to enjoy retirement. Fewer financial resources, hopes. More worried, less active, less healthy and happy.

Where do you belong? What are you most excited about for your retirement? Where do you need to start to prepare? More to come next week!

Be an Ageless Explorer and Subscribe Today!

The Weekly Roundup

Worth your time to watch, read, and listen.

📰 10 Key Signs You Should End Your Retirement. Why do people “unretire?” Here’s a list. (3.5 min. read) 

🎧 Menopause and Your Brain, from the Metabolism and Menopause Podcast. As it says in the podcast notes: “You are not alone—and NO, you are NOT crazy!” (30 min listen)

📰 Retirement is Time to Downsize, and Not Just Stuff. It sometimes goes with downsizing your ambition. (4 min. read)

🎞️ Bonus just for fun: Ever have the urge to chuck it all, move to Central Portugal, and buy an old farm? Well if so, please meet Ken and Gina from the UK, who did this four years ago and have documented everything along the way on their channel OK Portugal.

🌟💡🌟Anything that you’d like us to share in the Weekly Roundup? Any burning topics you’d like us to write about? Let us know.

Just imagine how much fun it would be to read this every 1-2 weeks!