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Learning the Lessons

I’m trying hard to learn the lesson friends have taught me as I move through my careers in life. I know I need to avoid the traps of self-importance and of identifying my “self” with my job, as these things make a healthy and happy retirement way more difficult.

It seems such an obvious lesson. It seems these should be easy traps to avoid. Yet, I find so many people around me in life who seem eager to throw themselves gleefully into these traps.

I interviewed for a job promotion not long ago. The first interview went well – with a group of peers and internal customers. Good questions, good dialogue. Then came the panel interview with a combination of peers and superiors. There were so many questions about surrendering my “self” to the job that I began to be troubled. How willing was I to work very long hours? How willing was I to give up weekends for the job? Examples of how each of them sacrificed their personal time for the job. I went home and thought about it over the weekend, then told the company I wasn’t interested in the promotion.

It wasn’t that I objected to long hours or hard work. What I objected to was that my willingness to sacrifice self for job was such an important criteria. It was obvious that folks were measured and measured themselves by how much they gave up for the job, not by the quality or quantity of work/good they accomplished. These people were molding their identity into their career, and they were programmed to look for others who wanted to do the same thing.

Of course, if they seemed to truly enjoy their job, then I might have a bit of understanding. But they seemed miserable, and seemed hell-bent on finding others who wanted to wallow in the misery of long hours and frustrating work with them.

No thanks. Been there, done that, moved way beyond it!

Work hard.

Work well.

Work smart.

Work healthy.

And make sure it’s you doing the job, not the job doing you…

The Lessons

I’ve watched friends retire well and friends retire poorly. Those who retire well seem to thrive in the new garden of retirement, while those who retire poorly seem lost in the weeds, strangled by the lack of identity and relevance.

The lesson I’ve learned is that there appear to be (at least) two traps to avoid in a career (and maybe life in general). The first trap is the trap of self-importance. We all want to matter, but perceived importance has nothing to do with truly “mattering” – all it does is feed the ego. No matter what my job is, someone else could do it better than I do, and it would be no big deal if I stopped doing it. In fact, I should be looking for folks who can do my job better than me, and either learning from them, or getting them into my job.

Professional athletes may be the worst with regard to this first lesson. They often hang on way past the point when they should, because they can’t live with who they are when nobody seems to be worshipping them. They’ve lost their self-importance, and they don’t like the tiny little person they see when that self-importance fades.

The second trap to avoid is one of identity. I need to do the best job of using my life to discover myself as completely as I can. I need to explore my passions, and find the ones that truly feed me, energize me, and help me to become the most valuable and fulfilled me I can be. If I waste my life hiding behind a career, then the little tiny thing I’ll find when they take the career away won’t know how to bloom and grow.

Next, how well do we do at avoiding the traps?…

Doing It Well

We think we can’t wait to retire. How sweet it would be to stop the rat race, and enjoy life a bit.

Why is it, then, that so few people seem to be able to retire well? I work with someone who’s reached full retirement age, plus has a sweet, fat pension waiting for her. She’s really not very effective at her job anymore, and you can see in her eyes that technology and business culture has passed her by. Yet, she can’t bring herself to retire. In her case, she perceives herself as important in her work environment, and I suspect she fears the loss of that perception of importance she has of herself.

My dad died within a couple years of retiring, which was a common malady among men of his generation. They’d built their entire life and identity around who they were at work, and became lost when they let go of that identity. In their case, it’s not so much importance as identity I think they lose when they retire.

Either way, it’s bad. Whether you’re losing your perceived self-importance or losing your identity, retirement is something that causes problems.

Of course, there are exceptions. I have a dear friend that I hunt with and cycle with occasionally. He retired as soon as he could, and retired as well as anyone I know. He spends most of his year pursuing his passions of fishing and hunting, and still finds time for bicycle rides with me now and then. He worked hard and did a good job when he was employed, but his employment wasn’t his identity. He spent his life building his identity in his passions outside of work, so when he was able to move past work, he could fall completely into his passions.

I have another friend who was an absolute fiend when he was working. He was a hard-charging, fast-paced workaholic. I figured he’d never be able to give up working. I was wrong. He reached a point in life where he was able to “sell off” in a way that set him up financially for life, and proceeded to build an entirely new identity for himself. He threw himself into his new passions of philanthropy and being the “elder” to folks he knew, and he did it well. He became a changed man, and appeared to be a happy man.

This second man was a boss for many years. One of the most important lessons he taught me was the importance for me to work myself out of a job – to find someone who could do my job better than me so I could move along to the next job. He lived this in his life, and was able to leave his career with a smile on his face.

Some do it well, some suck at it. Next, I’ll explore the lessons of the traps to avoid in a career – the traps that make retirement dangerous…

Ah, the end of another school year approaches. And as always happens, lists of “most excellent” answers to test questions begin to circulate. Here are a few I “borrowed” from another blogger. Yes, I admit it, these posts appear when my time or inclination for actual creatively inspired and original work is low…

In this season of “commencements”, I couldn’t resist linking to this wonderful address delivered by Charles Wheelan — Adapted from “10½ Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said,” by Charles Wheelan. To be published May 7 by W.W. Norton & Co.

A few highlights:

1. Your time in fraternity basements was well spent.

2. Some of your worst days lie ahead.

3. Don’t make the world worse.

4. Marry someone smarter than you are.

9. It’s all borrowed time.

10. Don’t try to be great.