Financial Times

Planning your second lifetime
By Nilooka Dissanayake
I must be arriving at some halfway mark in life. Everywhere I turn, I see references to it. The concept is simple. Expected average lifetimes are lengthening. We can expect to live longer than our ancestors. But, since our biological functions and productivity do not change, the only difference will be in how we spend that extra bonus time during the latter part of our lives.

Have you thought about it? I have been compelled to by coincidences. One such is a chapter titled “The Second Half of Your Life” in The Essential Drucker, a collection of 60 years of Peter Druckers writings on management. Drucker, is well suited to talk about this second lifetime with authority. He started writing at the age of 30. And at 95, he is the greatest guru of management the world has ever seen.

This is his take on the second part of your life. The world of work is changing. The knowledge economies that he predicted long ago are becoming a reality. As a result, most of us have become knowledge workers. Others are well on their way towards it. We no longer toil with our bodies and limbs. We toil with our gray matter.

We work with ideas, not materials. As appropriate industries and technologies replace the old, these in turn compel us to change along with them. Our work patterns will also change. One key observation is that the knowledge workers of today will no longer work in the same organisation throughout his or her lifetime.

That is not so alarming to us as it would have sounded to our grandfathers. What is alarming is that we may have to change our professions or vocations as well. Drucker observes that most people who manage to live productively during the second half of their lives successfully begin long before they reach the second half.

He quotes examples of young executives who begin working with charities and managing fund raising activities in their spare time. When they retire, they can go into fund raising as a full time job or start their own business. He speaks of office workers who study law after their kids go off to college and end up with their own law practices. The need of the era is flexibility; of attitudes, ideas and transferable skills. What are you today? What will you do when you are no longer having kids to support and making money at a regular job simply becomes a bore? Often, those who retire want to play golf or just relax at home with family. There is a limit to playing golf.

The family has grown up and will be busy with its own lives. Your brain will soon start to feel the need for stimulation, especially if your mind has been very active. I feel uncomfortable when people announce their retirements. I feel sorry because when I ask what their plans are, most have nothing solid to say. They have not planned the second half of their life.

My father is an exception. For fifteen-years before he retired, he started planning a project to start a business magazine in Sinhala. The day after he retired from the private sector, he started a new office and went back to work.

I probably got the same quality in my genes. I started with biology to become a veterinary surgeon. Then, abandoned all ideas of university because the universities were closed around the time I qualified to enter. I started on a course in Management Accountancy. After seven years, I turned to journalism. I also became an entrepreneur by default. I have shifted track so often, I am very comfortable with it. Right now I am also dabbling with the electronic media. I have taken up training seriously.

Even I do not know what I will be doing in 10 years. And I don’t think I am old enough to have reached my second lifetime! Now, this ability to shift track was natural to me. But most people are inflexible. One thing that used to annoy me soon after I decided to do accountancy were comments like these: “How can you do accountancy after doing bio science for A/ Levels?” And I used to retort, “Two years out of 18 years do not make me a specialist.” Most of you will have to forget the habits of a lifetime in order to be happy in the second part of your lives. How much have you planned for it? If you have not given it thought, shouldn’t you? Have you realised the truth seen by the writer of this poem?

“Time is not yet slow
enough
for me to notice her
moving feet.
Along diverse
avenues she
rushes onward;
A fleeting force
She must slow down
sometime.
Then only will I feel
her move forward at a
slumbering pace.
Then only will I know
What it is to count the
passing moments
on my finger tips.”

Often, while we may be paid well in our jobs, we may not be able to achieve our personal aspirations through it. Seniority and other administrative ceilings will be holding you back. If you do not wish to leave Sri Lanka, you may be stuck in a dead end job. How about planning other activities to achieve the satisfaction missing in your regular job? How about early retirement? How about getting into business on your own? I see this trend among many people I meet. Successful executives, men crossing the 40-age line start thinking about their own business. Why not work for myself rather than for someone else? They ask. Now that I have put this thought of a second lifetime into your head, why not plan for it from today?

If you did not have much fun during the first lifetime, plan for it during the second. Age is only a number, so have fun! Please let us know what topics you like us to touch upon in the future.

You can contact us on ft@sundaytimes.wnl.lk or on 5-552524 The writer is the Managing Editor of Athwela Vyaparika Sangarawa (Athwela Business Journal), the only Sinhala management monthly targeting the small and medium enterprises and its English version, Small Business International magazine.

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