I thought you retired?

There are options between crazy-busy, high pressure work and retirement. How do you find the best one for you? Navigating the route between full-on and jubilación.

Since I left my CEO role in January 2020, former colleagues often ask me how my retirement is going. My inner voice gasps: blimey, they must think I'm really old / rich / broken.

Deep breath. Smile. Raise an eyebrow. How to respond? It would be shorter and easier to say, "fine thanks, just back from another trip," but that word retirement really grates. It smacks of end-of-life and retreat. Unsurprising perhaps when the origin of the word is from the French military term to 'draw back' or 'to withdraw to a place of safety or seclusion'. Maybe I wouldn't be so touchy if I were Spanish: their word is 'jubilación'.

We don't yet have a good word in English for this lifestyle mash-up, but it feels like we need one: as the pressure to acquire more money and status diminishes over time, many people in their 50's and 60's aspire to down-shift from high-pressure, 60+hr weeks, but not to 'retire'.

I'm also not retired. I'm comfortably self-employed working about 50% of my old full-time hours, and the rest I spend volunteering, travelling and learning. At the moment I coach, I work with forestry businesses, I moderate events and I'm vice-chair of a charity (changeworks.org.uk). We don't yet have a good word for this lifestyle mash-up in English, but it feels like we need one: as some of the pressure for money and status reduces as we get older, many people in their 50's and 60's aspire to down-shift from high-pressure, 60+hr weeks. To do something less all-consuming but NOT retirement. I love the balance and excitement of my new working life, it suits me, and I am very happy with how it's working out, but it's not been straightforward and it still feels quite risky. Given the number of people asking how I've gone about it I thought I'd use this first blog of the new website to describe what the last few years have been like and the lessons I've learned along the way.

So how do I describe what I do? I've spent most of my professional life in forestry or agriculture. However I could just as well describe it as working in industry regulation, project management, government policy and senior management. Or as a civil servant, senior executive and non-executive. Few modern jobs have a short, accurate labels that are universally understood, so we often choose the shortest phrase with the highest cachet or most meaning to our audience. For me I would pick between professional forester, senior civil servant or CEO depending on who was asking. Over the last couple of years, 'portfolio' has emerged as the generally understood term for being self-employed with lots of different roles like me. I still feel like a bit of a tosser saying it, but it's getting easier! (If you want to see a very funny Aussie take-down of the minefield of job titles, check out the lads at wankernomics.com).

Lesson #1 came while out hill-walking with my husband: I had more options than I realised.

So how did I take the decision to plunge into the unknown world of self-employment after 30 years in the public sector? I've had many interesting, rewarding and challenging jobs with (mostly) lovely people, but my career has never really followed a plan. I would usually start to get itchy feet after about 4 years in a role, and would then spend a year or so seeking out new opportunities for excitement and impact. I was happy to see where life took me. But then my hair turned whiter, my children grew up, and in May 2019 I realised that I was at a major crossroads in my life: I was 53, my youngest daughter was about to start her final year at school and I had just led my agency through a big reorganisation. The transition had gone pretty smoothly, and the new organisation was running well, so I was starting to ask myself 'what next?'. I was chatting with my husband about this on a hillwalk when Lesson #1 hit me: I had more options than I realised. I thought my choices were to stay where I was, move roles within the wider civil serevice or apply for another job in forestry or the public sector. He reminded me with a quizzical look that he has been self-employed and worked in the private, public and academic sectors. Why was I limiting my choices so much?

With my mind blown suitably wide open, I went from feeling trapped to feeling pretty disoriented, not knowing even where to start answering my own question. Time for a coach! I had worked with Isla for a number of years, and we had a great relationship, so I booked a few sessions over 8 weeks to sort out what I needed and what I wanted from my worklife. This was surprisingly much harder than it sounds, and I will dig a bit deeper into why that is and how you can tackle it in a future blog. One result of this coaching was lesson #2: I could trade-off some financial returns for travel, time for friends and family, and personal growth - and I really wanted to.

...this deep reflective work was having a huge positive impact on my energy and risk appetite even though I was still working full-time++. It was fun.

We worked out exactly what our family finances could bear, and I thought more and more about how I could shape a life where I would make an impact, have fun, travel and grow. I developed a detailed mental picture of what I really wanted and why it was important to me. During this time l learned lesson #3: this deep reflective work had a huge positive impact on my energy and risk appetite even though I was still working full-time++. It was fun.

So I took on an additional non-exec role at Changeworks (to give me growth and impact), and planned my transition. I would finish work at Christmas, take a 3 week solo holiday to visit an old friend in Australia and explore a bit, then start to build my portfolio on my return. That all went swimmingly, untill Covid19 threw humanity a curve-ball and suddenly everyone was thinking about their futures and priorities.

I gave myself 6 months to set-up and start earning. I was still a bit disoriented about my options - but funnily enough so was everyone else in 2020. As I spoke with friends, read books, engaged in new online fora and started coaching throughout that first year, lesson #4 emerged: we each carry different beliefs about what 'work' is, and this can seriously inhibit how we navigate the liminal world between full-on work and full-on retirement. Many people my age (solidly Gen X), who have spent most of their lives working for organisations of one kind or another carry beliefs that work = employment. So where does that leave voluntary work, entrepreneurship or creativity? Once my employment ended I noticed that I was still choosing to do activities that would have been part of my job had I been employed: researching, networking, writing, thinking, and I still thought of them as work.

So maybe work = productivity? In that case understanding what you are producing and its value is vital. During the deep and sometimes difficult conversations I have with coaching clients this question emerges again and again - what do you mean by reward? by success? by value? This has been lesson #5: value means different things to different people at different times in their life. For me, this has been - and continues to be - the hardest part of curating my life. It was so much easier when 'value' could be defined simply as a salary or a grade in an organisation. Interestingly, I have noticed that having completed education or entered 'the world of work' during the chaos of the pandemic, Gen Z's are constructing their own, very different narrative about work value(s) which I'll get a guest blogger to write about in future. For me, in that first year, I identified that the greatest value for me would come from exploring (people, places, ideas), getting stronger (financially and physically), and succeeding (in having a tangible impact). And most importantly to enjoy myself. I even sketched it out as a kind of totem to remind me - inevitably tree-based.

The final part of choosing what to do was to face my dragons. An invaluable coaching question was my touchstone here - what might knock you off course? Part of that process - as in any good business - was to review my approach to risk. Applying corporate risk principles to my own portfolio surfaced lesson #6: risk aware isn't the same as risk averse. I have often described myself as a bit cautious or risk averse - especially as I am married to a mountaineer / ocean sailor, and I often play the role of 'chicken' in our relationship. However, in several very different pieces of work with individuals and organisations, I've seen what a self-limiting piece of internal chatter that can be - just as describing myself as risk-hungry or bold could lead to hubris. Again, I dug deep with a coach to really understand what my risk appetite was - and to articulate what my emotions were telling me when I found myself confronted by a threat. I can identify what makes me anxious, what makes me excited, and I can spot when the underlying cause of procrastination or diversionary activity is a sense of threat. For myself and my clients, I have found that understanding your own risk appetite and tolerance, and having the language to discuss it is incredibly empowering. Simple to say, harder to do.

And so, that's how it started, now how's it going? I honestly could not have predicted how my 'bespoke' portfolio would end up in 2024. Looking back I'm chuffed to see that it has delivered all the value I was seeking and then some - even though the work I'm doing is nothing like my original expectations. To answer the question with a bit of rigour I bring some of my corporate experience to my new 'not-retired' life, and think of my three sources of value as performance indicators - how they have moved and where I want them to be in future. However, I've noticed that my habitual 4 year itchiness is upon me, so the last lesson to share with you, which applies whether you are managing an organisation, managing a portfolio or managing your life is lesson #7: it's never 'sorted'.

So, having reviewed how things are going, and how much I've enjoyed the different parts of my life, I've decided to shift the dials to lean in deeper to coaching and make it a larger part of my portfolio for the next few years. Having done the deep work, that decision has felt natural and exciting - to coin my own catch-phrase, I have embraced that future like I would a well-loved friend.

Choosing what to do with the years ahead after decades of experience running businesses and organisations is a privilege and a challenge. You know that taking consequential decisions in the face of uncertainty is tough, whether you're planning a project, planting a forest, setting organisational strategy or deciding your next step in life. Deeply understanding what value means to you, what your options really are, what your exposure is, and what your personal approach to risk is, helps you take those decisions with greater confidence and wisdom. Investing time and energy into this thinking pays huge dividends. Having a coach at your side to support you, push you, hold up a mirror and share the journey makes all the difference. I know, I've been there. If you'd like to explore how I could help you to tackle this opportunity, please get in touch and book a free online consultation.