Yes, this is something you need to think about. And sooner rather than later.
‘Why?’ you may ask. If you are currently in a successful career, and have worked hard to get there, sometimes the last thing you want to think about is what you need to do next.
But I would urge you to change your perspective on this, because if you are in your late 30s or even your late 50s, the conversation of reinvention needs to come up.
The world we live in today is vastly different to the one I grew up in. I’m now 44 and when I left university for my first job in journalism, I sent out 70 application letters. Out of this I got three interviews, and could have just as easily ended up at Equestrian Weekly as Investor Weekly.
Today, many of the jobs our kids will do were not around when we were applying for our first roles. So what does this mean for you?
It means that the job you are doing right now may not have relevance in 20 years’ time, or that you may not even want to do it anymore.
I have learned that as you get older, two things happen.
Firstly, you become a master at what you do. Everything is done faster, your past experiences help you to make quicker decisions, with (hopefully) fewer errors and better outcomes, and this makes you far more valuable.
Secondly, your ability to hustle as you did in your 20s and even 30s starts to diminish. A business coach I once worked with told me that hustling in your 50s was like running with stockings tied around your ankles: hard work.
I have found my 40s to be a very interesting time to assess what I like about my work, what I don’t, and how I want my life to look in the future. I have moved to the Blue Mountains, after 24 years in Sydney, and it has been a fantastic opportunity for me to assess what I love, what work I want to do and where my focus needs to be.
I would encourage everyone to start thinking about what’s next for you.
Here are three questions that you can ask yourself today to start the process:
1. What do I really like about what I do? How much of my daily job is made up of this?
2. What don’t I like? Is it viable that those tasks could be outsourced, or done via someone else?
3. What have you given up to do what you are currently doing? Has it been worth it?
With these questions in mind, and knowing that Australia is going to experience our largest transfer of wealth ever in the next twenty years, via baby boomers handing over inheritances, it’s really important to put time to a long-term reinvention plan, alongside our everyday life. It’s exciting to think about, and will make it far more likely to succeed if you start to develop a direction to head toward.
There is power in planning.
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