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How We Work "Humans may soon live to be 100, which likely means more years on the job. That could be a good thing, if we take the opportunity to redesign work." A recent study from the Stanford Center on Longevity opened with a bit of promising news: “In the United States, demographers predict that as many as half of today’s 5-year-olds can expect to live to the age of 100.” But that was followed, several pages down, by a haunting prediction: “Over the course of 100-year lives, we can expect to work 60 years or more.” "In the U.S., the average retirement age is 62, according to Gallup polling. For most people, 40 or so years of work is more than enough, so the idea of an additional 20 is disconcerting. But if a 60-year career sounds like a nightmare, perhaps that’s because we’re imagining 60 years of work as it is for many people today: inflexible, all-consuming, poorly matched to the rhythms of life. For the sake of the 5-year-olds and the rest of us, as humans live longer and longer, we should redesign work." - Joe Pinsker |