I always enjoy the writings of Tim Urban and love his blog Wait But Why I recently saw a tweet of his where he visualized the life of a typical American. It looks like this:
I thought it might be fun to do the same thing for me. So, I dusted off a spreadsheet and came up with this (google doc here):
It was fun to see how my various stops around the country and different jobs look in relation to time, but there was one big surprise. I was shocked to see how much room there is at the bottom. Look at all this yellow!
I’ve been working for decades now. Many of the conversations I have are around retirement and when to hang it up. But, if I’m going to work to 65 or 70, there is SO much time left.
Try this thought experiment: Imagine all you’ve learned and accomplished in your career up till now. That is 10-20 years. Think about how naive and dumb you were at the start and think about how much you’ve learned from then till now. Now imagine that you can do all of that over again. You could go get a PhD in a totally different area, get a job after it and work at that job for 5 years and then do that again in another different area.
For me, this surprise caused a pretty big shift, a reframe. It forced me to think of my new career as a coach and advisor as the beginning of a new journey rather that the end of my past accomplishments and new beginnings are fun and energizing. So, here we go…
