I’ve been covering retirement from the vantage point of FIRE, “Financial Independence / Retire Early.”  

Today, though, I want to make a direct argument for working until you can no longer work, either from disability, frailty, cognitive impairment, or death.

In this blog post , I wrote about the three people who served as models for me for growing old. What they all had in common was that they worked nearly unto death.

Of course, this idea of working until you die may sound like hell on earth, being chained to doing something you loathe to do. I understand.

But even if you don’t want to work unto death, here’s why you should read this post anyway. My contention is that, irrespective of when you want to retire or you end up retiring – two very different things – the best way to design your career is to set up your work as if you have to work forever.

This thought experiment can open up new paths of thinking about what work is, that is, what are the actual tasks you are responsible for carrying out or managing, what is the goal of work, and what control over your work do you have.

If you imagine that you have to work ‘forever’ while having control over the kind of work you do and how you do it, then you would need to think about what that work would be.

Not only would you need to think about what kind of work would be sustainable – physically and mentally – over the long haul, but also what kind of work would be pleasant, meaningful, and purposeful. The work would have to keep you sufficiently motivated, either intrinsically (because it directly maintains your interest and commitment to its doing) or extrinsically (because of the compensation it provides or what it keeps from having to do instead).

But, given your profession and the compensation it offers you, you likely will reach a reasonable (or higher than reasonable) magic wealth number that will allow you to retire way earlier than your likely time of death. In such a case, to keep working unto death, you will need to design a job that is sufficiently motivating that you will choose to forego some of the other things you could be doing instead.

Under what circumstances will you wish to work when you don’t need to for financial reasons? You will continue working if it is the most attractive and meaningful way to spend your days. Think of working instead of retiring as one of a range of options open to you. For some people, they will choose work, not because they have to work but because it is their most attractive option. And other people will choose work, when perhaps they under normal circumstances would not consider it, if they let themselves think creatively about how they could work, not as they have always done, but in a way more aligned to their deep values and interests and life goals, and in a way that is sustainable at that stage of life.

Perhaps the most concrete aspect of the controllability I built into this thought experiment is the option to work less than full-time. So, that is the first thing that most people who reach retirement age but do not wish to stop working do – they cut back their hours. One reason is that when you’re older, you slow down in terms of movement, reflexes, and cognition. By slowed cognition, I do not mean lowered cognition or impairment. I mean, the mental wheels turn more slowly. Each thought takes longer to think and then to say. Thus, the day is shorter in terms of the units of physical and mental activity it can hold since each unit takes more time. We can think of this as normal age-related bradykinesia and bradyphrenia.

Another aspect of controllability is to work in a different field or in the same field but in a different way. The way to arrive at what this other kind of work or other kind of working should be is by asking the following question of oneself: “If I consider the unearned gift of life I’ve been given, with all the bounty I have been given and achieved, what is the most meaningful way I can spend my time in an attempt – not necessarily to repay this gift because it is unrepayable – to live in praise of this gift?” To live in praise is to let the work and the devotion with which it is done speak out the glory of what has been given and of the ungraspable giver.

Language Brief

“The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it.” – William James

“Do not grow old merely by the number of years, but by deserting your ideals.” – Samuel Ullman

“We always may be what we might have been.” – Adelaide Anne Procter

“Retirement is not the end of the road. It is the beginning of the open highway.” – Unknown

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift.
The work of life is to develop it.
The meaning of life is to give your gift away.” – David Viscott