The Retirement Illusion

July 7, 2018 by Francisco Castillo

For the longest time I had this notion where the concept of retirement was analogous to being in prison. The employer you selected to “build” your career was going to determine how many more years you had left before you were able to breathe fresh air once more.

It is heartbreaking to see how many people succumb to that reality and decide to start the count down, as they resign all other possibilities to get there. Not even with the slightest intention of negotiating the terms of their sentence. 

How many of our colleagues, better yet, how many of our close friends are in that situation. Are they truly happy with that setup? Could this also happen to us?

Otto Eduard Leopold was the first statesman to formally propose the concept of retirement/retirement pension in the 1880s as part of a welfare package.

From a societal standpoint, governments may create safety nets for their citizens. For this topic, it is better to have a retirement pension protocol than to leave every citizen to create his or her own version. But this shouldn’t result in a scenario where employees sacrifice their energy and intellect during their best professional years in jobs that are not that meaningful to them.

Many things have changed since then. Increasing life expectancy, access to information, automation of work so that computers and machines can do the heavy lifting for us, exponential advances in medicine, preventive analytics that increase the quality of life, and the list goes on.

In 1884 the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics identified a handful of occupations only. By May 2017, there were more than 1,400 occupations identified. And the list gets bigger every year. 

The current scenario of the typical 9-5 work week is being transformed. It is viewed as normal to change jobs every 3-5 years. Your academic generic “title” becomes less relevant as you keep moving from one opportunity to the other. The ever-shifting demands of today’s world keep creating new industries, occupations, and jobs. And so, by putting conscious focus in your search, it is a matter of time before you match your skills and your passions, with the demand for them. And this can be done before you finish your “sentence” and get out into retirement.

So why wait. We have no excuse. If you really love doing something in this world of technological advances and ever evolving sources of information, there is no dream job that you can’t bring to reality. And if you don’t see it out there, you can very well create your own. There hasn’t been a better time in the history of human existence than “now” to start enjoying your work and stop the count down towards the illusion of retirement age.