Conditioned by years or decades of goal-driven performance and regular performance measurement and feedback, many boomers remain obsessed with achieving results. What have I accomplished? What are my next objectives? This concentration on achievement is established early in people’s working careers and is slow to diminish. For others, it is actually not the outcomes that give greatest satisfaction. It is, rather, the pursuit of goals that matters. It is the progress made and the satisfaction that builds on the journey that is meaningful. Perhaps that is why so many people work so diligently in political campaigns when in fact half or more are unsuccessful in electing their candidates.

What makes work meaningful? Research studies by employers indicate that certain characteristics of work greatly influence employee commitment and engagement. In the following list are the top factors that make an organization a great place to work. Which of these are important to you?

Many people enjoy their career and their chosen professional or technical specialization and seek to stay on as long as they can. Others are eager to try something new. As discussed earlier in this book, employers are slowly becoming more flexible, providing part-time roles, consulting contracts, or phased retirement options for boomers. Therefore, the first place to look for meaningful work is in your career employer organization.

However, many boomers find they need to look elsewhere for meaningful work alternatives. For example, Rick left his career engineering job when his employer restructured. After considering alternatives, he became an engineering auditor, working for an independent audit firm and inspecting the quality of engineering projects. This gave him the flexibility of working part-time and traveling, leaving room for his cabinetry hobby.

Pursuits may include starting an entrepreneurial business, whether a bed-and-breakfast, a café, a consulting practice, toy making, or real estate investment and remodeling. Whether you enjoy raising horses, growing grapes for wine, or conducting retreats for women, the goal is to find your passion and undertake something personally meaningful to you. This may involve becoming licensed as a professional in a new field, such as becoming a realtor, a financial advisor, or a management coach. Or it may involve shifting the focus of a profession, such as transitioning from being a dancer or actor to becoming a teacher, coach, and choreographer.

For example, Gordon founded and headed a market research firm. When he sold the firm and retired, despite plenty of time and money, he decided he didn’t want to stay at home. For the fun of it, he bought and renovated a second home on a Caribbean resort island. Realizing the market potential, he decided to buy, fix up, and sell additional homes. The result: a new business, requiring new skills, and offering new challenges.

Work becomes leisure by virtue of involvement.
—Marshall McLuhan

Because professional careers demand so much of a person’s time, leisure activities are alluring alternatives. But preferences for recreation or leisure are widely variable. For many, their work is so enjoyable, who needs leisure? Yet with stressful, demanding professional careers, it is inevitable that eventually you will aspire to a slower pace and time to relax and do things just for the fun of it.

In their research on work and leisure, Ramey and Francis asked people to rank their enjoyment of various activities. The highest ranked (in descending order) were sex, playing sports, fishing, art and music, bars and lounges, playing with kids, hugs and kisses, sleep, church, attend movies, reading, walking, meals out, and visiting with others. In contrast, the lowest-rated activities were going to a car repair shop, to the doctor, or to the dentist. Laundry, cleaning house, and yard work were rated only slightly more enjoyable. Few, if any, people seem to look forward to these tasks.

Many individuals combine family and recreational activities with paid work. Artists, musicians, writers, and others engaged in creative endeavors make a living doing things that others consider leisure. And there are many simple examples every day, close to home. For example, Marta was the sports mom for four children, going to their soccer and other meets through their school years. Although the kids have grown up and moved on, she plays in an adult soccer league and has a full-time job as the director/coordinator of her community’s soccer programs.

A common image of a retiree in America is the ardent golf player. The more you play golf, it is widely assumed, the better you get and the more you enjoy it. Although this may not always be true, golf courses today are encouraging its regular players to play more frequently because fewer young people are taking up the sport. Curiously, however, research shows that anyone can learn the game and, with effort and professional guidance, become proficient. Beginners (at any age) who have never played before can learn the correct fundamentals instead of continually trying to correct bad habits.

For many individuals, interpersonal relationships at work are vital. Having close friends or colleagues in the workplace helps build a sense of purpose and establish strong organizational ties. Relationships are also vital because they affirm mutual respect and equality. Affirmation from others enhances self-identity and self-worth because others who work with you are aware of your talents and acknowledge your contributions.

When you leave an organization where you worked for a long time, you lose your day-to-day contacts. Sustaining your networks after leaving is usually difficult. Similarly, staying in an organization when many of your friends and peers leave is difficult. Making new friends and establishing new networks take extra time and energy, and may not be something in which you want to invest all over again.

We want to have a community and friends with whom to grow older. This is a primary reason that we tend to settle in a particular location and focus on making friends after having moved around so many times in our careers. It is also a driver for joining clubs, going to community activities, and becoming involved in nonprofit organizations. Even homeowner associations in condominium communities provide a way to meet others and make friends.

After decades of working, commuting, and traveling long hours, many managerial and professional persons are eager to spend more time with family and friends. They feel it is a time to reconnect and to enjoy the company of others. Long-time friendships that you have sustained over the years become more important; you will also think about friends who have drifted away. High school or college reunions remind us of the ties that have been lost over the years, and we often try to get in touch with close friends of long ago. Sometimes these relationships are renewed without missing a beat, it seems. Other times, they seem worlds apart.

As a management consultant, traveling six days a week for years and years, Don missed being part of the day-to-day lives of his children. Taking early retirement, he put family first, and made special efforts to get to all the high school, church, and community events that were so important to the family. It was a relief to get off the road and live a normal life while the family was still together.

Jim was a chemical engineer, but he found joy in his family with five children, and ultimately grandchildren. He always had an interest in the family genealogy and, when he retired, he devoted much of his time digging deeper into genealogy, circulating information among relatives, and generally keeping in touch with close and distant relations. He organized several family reunions, attracting family from across the nation, with tours of local cemeteries and ancestral home sites.

Some people simply want to spent enjoyable time with others—and travel is one sure way to make this possible. Russ and his wife love to travel and are the first to sign up for cruises or travel tours somewhere in the world. Often they lined up their friends, family, and former travel companions to join them, but they also built a social network of regular travelers with whom they plan trips.

Boomers who live alone may have a greater desire for relationships with family and friends. For most boomers, the preferred path is to evolve and grow with a spouse as a life-long companion. The intimacy, trust, and understanding of how we adapt and change are especially important in these close relationships. However, this is not always the pattern for some adults. For example, Claudia and her husband married just three years ago, when she was 57. After two divorces she felt she needed a partner for the next phase of her life. “I believe I needed a different husband for each stage of my life. I feel like there was a reason for each person.” One way or another, we hope to find the social relationships we want.

Reflecting the social values boomers displayed in their youth, many are now giving priority to nonprofit causes. They want to give back to society. When you reach the age of 50 or 60, you may reflect on your life and consider what has been accomplished and what you want to accomplish in your next phase. This may bring you to pursue activities that round out your career—including giving back to the community.

A survey by MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures found that boomers age 50–59 are seriously thinking about work that helps others. Fully half say they are interested in taking jobs now or in the future to help improve the quality of life in their communities. Particular interest was expressed for work in the following areas:

Of those who expected to work in retirement, more than three-quarters were interested in doing so in ways that helped people in need. They said that they want a job that gives them a sense of purpose and that keeps them involved with other people. While many indicated that they look forward to volunteer work, 52% said that earning additional income is important to them.

Boomer professionals and managers have skills and experience that can add great value. Nonprofits typically are unaccustomed to having high-powered help and are often reluctant to embrace their involvement and consequently hold volunteers at bay. Further, boomer professionals are not merely interested in being extra hands, shelving books, or being docents. They want responsible roles and opportunities to implement changes that will achieve substantive results. Many boomers want a clearly defined role or job to do, similar to what they had in their previous career roles. Further, many are looking for nonprofit jobs that pay a salary, however modest it may be, because they feel that being paid is a demonstration of their value.

The boomers’ biggest impact will be on eliminating the term “retirement” and inventing a new stage of life, one with significant community leadership at the core. That would be good for everyone.
—Rosabeth Kanter

Nonprofits need to adapt their approach to include and make effective use of the talents of boomer volunteers. At a point in their lives, many boomer managers and professionals with diverse work experiences and impressive resumes are interested in serving as directors on nonprofit corporation boards. This service carries inherent prestige and taps the highest-level of professional and managerial competencies. Additionally, many nonprofit organizations need to improve their management, marketing, and financial performance. To improve organizational effectiveness, Boards of nonprofits are increasingly selecting former executives from the corporate world to fill CEO roles. Nonprofits realize the need to operate with a business model and to become more proficient with increased income flows, tighter expense management, and strategic planning of programs and services for targeted markets. Nonprofits are increasingly facing competition for resources, and success is increasingly dependent on continued innovation and growth.

Sometimes people make major career shifts into nonprofit roles. Examples include the following:

Boomers who are engaged in teaching, health care, charity, politics, or religious work often view their purpose as a calling. For them, meaningful work is defined by moral or spiritual purpose. They may have a deep sense of dedication and commitment (blending one’s will with a surrender to a higher will), a sense of discipline (devoting time, energy, and resources), and a resulting invigoration that drives extraordinary levels of activity and performance. Taking on such work requires that you truly believe that what you are doing is good and meets a genuine need in the community. Whether the work is enjoyable to you or not, you will find the joy and satisfaction in knowing that you made a difference. It requires giving of yourself; the focus is on the beneficiary, not on you.

A higher calling, or vocation (from the Latin vocare, “to call”), may be driven by spirituality—the quest for larger meaning, a greater outcome, and importance. People often do their best work when they forget themselves and are not driven from within, but when they are in the grip of some high ideal. Regardless of any particular religion, many people find it natural to believe in a “guiding hand” and to feel that there is a higher purpose for them to fulfill. This faith is backed up by a steadily deepening experience of the spiritual life. Higher calling aside, you may experience a profound sense of satisfaction in this type of activity, maybe for the first time in your life.

Boomers are returning to colleges and universities and engaging in self-directed learning. Education may be necessary for a boomer to shift into a different field of work. For many others, it is not a means to a goal, but an end in itself. They want to learn and grow. Contrary to stereotypes, older persons are often the most avid readers and students, embracing new ideas and staying abreast of current literature, current events, science, and other fields of interest.

Everyone seems to have a story to tell about how they chose what to do when the time came to do something new or different. It seems that every publication on retirement or life planning has personal accounts of such changes that were meaningful. For example, in her book, Thinking About Tomorrow, Susan Crandell profiles 40 persons who made major changes in their lives.

Many reflect an unfulfilled aspiration, a passion, or zeal that could be addressed after leaving full-time employment, having children grow up, or simply after self-discovery. For example, Sandy, the flight attendant mentioned earlier in this book, turned to a new career in nursing because of her passion for serving others, and because this would be a secure source of work in her future. It took eight years of part-time study for her to earn her nursing degree while also working for the airline. No matter what happens to Sandy in the workplace or later in life, no one can take her credentials away from her.

Stella visited her mother in a retirement facility faithfully each month. One day, when joining several of the residents for lunch. Stella was startled when one of the women at the table said, “My fingers are arthritic, so I can’t write letters to my family. But maybe I could press keys on the computer. I have no idea how to use the crazy machine, but can you help me?” From that point on, Stella returned to the facility every two weeks to help residents learn how to perform basic computer functions so they could compose letters. For Stella, a boomer with limited computer proficiency herself, her contribution not only brought personal meaning to her life and the lives of others, but it also prompted her to take additional courses to enhance her own technology skills.

Boomers are rethinking and revitalizing their lives. In the past, retirees may have been looking for a rest. Today’s boomer retirees welcome a rest, but then are ready to tackle new challenges. More older Americans are working, volunteering, and going back to school than ever before. Boomers are moving in many different directions. This new activism has confused the very concept of retirement. Are you retired? “Yes and no.”
—Walt Duka and Trish Nicholson