Age, Purpose and the Case for a Portfolio Career
“Putting your feet up is all very well, but it’s very boring, isn’t it?” David Attenborough was 90 when he offered this explanation for continuing to work.
And retirement itself is a relatively recent social institution, emerging as an expected stage of life in industrialised societies at the beginning of the twentieth century, alongside national old-age social insurance programmes.
The first of these was introduced by Germany’s Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, in 1889. The pension became payable at 70, at a time when average life expectancy at birth was around 40. Today, UK life expectancy is around 80.
Moreover, there are fewer people to support the system. In 1960, there were around 7 adults aged 20-64 supporting a person over 64. By 2050, there will be fewer than 2.
As lives lengthen, the question is not simply whether people should work for longer, but how work can change so that they can keep contributing in ways that are sustainable.
Rethinking what retirement removes
Work can provide more than income. It offers time structure, regular social contact, shared goals and a sense that an individual’s contribution matters. Retirement can remove all of these at once.
The WHO reports that loneliness and social isolation are associated with poorer mental and physical health. Further, an eight-year study by Patrick Hill and Sarah Weston found that retired participants experienced a steeper decline in their sense of purpose than those who remained in work.
Recent research also suggests that extending working life can have beneficial or neutral effects on health, particularly when people reduce their hours or move into part-time work.
What changes with age
Ageing does not produce a simple, uniform decline in capability.
Fluid intelligence, which supports rapid processing and unfamiliar problem-solving, may decline with age. Crystallised intelligence – knowledge and understanding accumulated through experience – tends to continue improving into later life.
This allows experienced people to draw upon a deeper store of knowledge, recognise patterns and place new situations in a wider context. In a 2022 DWP survey, 80% of employers with workers over 50 identified their experience as a benefit.
Age can bring emotional advantages, too. Research across 132 countries has identified a U-shaped relationship between age and wellbeing. Happiness and life satisfaction tend to decline towards midlife and then rise again. The perspective and emotional regulation developed over time can be valuable in roles involving leadership, relationships and difficult decisions.
Nor should adaptability be treated as the preserve of the young. People now in their fifties and sixties have already adapted to digitisation, economic shocks, changing industries and repeated transformations in working life.
Ageism still wastes talent
Yet recruitment becomes markedly harder with age. A Generation and OECD survey of 1,510 employers found that only 13% would definitely hire someone aged between 55 and 65 for an entry-level or intermediate role.
Older applicants may be rejected as ‘overqualified’, assumed to lack technological ability or judged unlikely to remain long enough to justify investment.
The cost is shared. Individuals lose income and opportunities, organisations lose experience, while an ageing economy leaves a growing part of its talent underused.
Creating a career that can last
Lucy Standing, Martin Hyde and Maggi Evans make this case in Age Against the Machine: the established rules of working life have not kept pace with demographic change.
A portfolio career provides an alternative. It can combine consultancy, short-term projects, mentoring or part-time work, allowing work to change as a person’s priorities and circumstances evolve. This flexibility can help people remain in work for longer. The OECD identified flexible forms of employment as important to extending working lives.
For people over 50, this means becoming active owners of their careers. They can take stock of the knowledge and relationships built over decades, identify the problems they are equipped to solve and make their value visible beyond their current job title. It also means continuing to develop skills and professional relationships before a role ends, rather than waiting for an employer or recruiter to determine what comes next.
Tim Ferriss has argued that retirement as a goal is flawed when it assumes that people must dislike their working lives. A better goal is work that can evolve: work that continues to provide purpose and connection without demanding the same pace, structure or commitment at every age.
Retirement should remain a genuine choice. But it should no longer be treated as the only imaginable destination.
