Baby Boomers — What is next? A Career Pivot?

I have been talking about all of the problems that face Baby Boomers over the last month. Here is what I think.

Baby Boomers embraced retirement like a religion. It was all the doctrines and fables wrapped up in a 401K: The ant and the grasshopper; sacrifice and paradise; work hard all your life, save your money in an IRA and receive your reward at the end. If you hate your job, retirement becomes that much sweeter. Keep your eyes on the day when, like the beautiful, silver haired couple in the retirement brochure, you’ll be able to quit work and spend your days at the beach.

Of course, there was a chance we’d get hit by a meteor first. Or the economy could tank and take all our retirement savings with it. But those possibilities seemed remote.

For a lot of us, retirement became golden handcuffs, keeping us tied to careers where we had to drag ourselves to work every day and, once there, create diversions to distract us from the fact that we were there.

We knew people who changed careers, deciding 20 years was too long to wait to enjoy life. But those were the line jumpers. The rest of us stayed put. We didn’t want to start over again and we weren’t sure what career to choose if we did. So we hung in there. We thought we were playing it safe.

Then the economy did tank. Our great reward, our retirement, vanished almost overnight taking with it our entire vision of the future and flushing all our years of service to the 401K god. It looks like our entire generation got duped.

But here’s the plot twist. It turns out retirement might have been a bad idea for us to begin with.

The idea of retirement for the masses was born in 1950s when white males lived to barely over 65. In 2003, life expectancy was 75 and climbing. White women live to 80. And the upward trend holds for all races. What would we all do, sitting on the beach for ten to twenty years? Sudoku? Baby Boomers are healthier and more youthful than our parents were at this age. We have skills and talents honed by experience. We could do amazing things with the next several decades. Fun things. Bold things. Once we get over the shock of having the future shift on us, we could redefine the Golden Years as the years we follow our passion and make our biggest contribution.

Is it time for a Career Pivot?

I am going to be writing about this concept between now and the start of 2012. Will 2012 be the year to make Your Career Pivot? My next post will be about one of my Career Pivots. It is one that I remember every Thanksgiving because it started out with being thankful I was alive.

Do not forget about the availability of the Cure for Career Insanity webinar series launching May 22nd, 2012

——————————————————–

Please share this blog with your friends and colleagues using the social sharing buttons below.  You can subscribe to this blog and my monthly newsletter by filling out the form at the top of this page.  Please visit my Career Pivot FaceBook page daily for interesting articles.

Marc Miller Career Design Specialist