Midlife crisis or future-proofing your career?

It’s Monday morning. You already have an inbox full of unread emails and three meeting requests that appear to have no reason at all for your attendance. Plus, your job security is currently a bit of an unknown.

With our life expectancy, and subsequently our working careers extending, how do we stay engaged with our work and future-proof our careers well into our seventies?

Fortunately, being a student or changing careers in your 40’s is becoming less of a mid-life crisis, and more of an accepted necessity.

To support this, the Office of National Statistics in the U.K suggests that one in five 35-49 year-olds are over-qualified because they are starting all over again in an entirely new profession – which means they are now at the bottom of the ladder.

In Australia, we’re also seeing this deviation in career paths. A shift that is seeing lawyers suddenly become teachers, or the other way around, despite the need for further education and training.

Taking a sabbatical is another emerging trend with the over 40’s. More and more companies are offering unpaid leave, so if you need to get your groove back, take some time off to find it.

Taking a step back from your job doesn’t mean you’ll have to go back as an intern. In fact, taking a sabbatical or mid-career break can be enormously beneficial, allowing you to broaden your skills and hone your career direction.

The global trends certainly suggest there’s enough time for us to have multiple successful careers and remain engaged with our careers up until our retirement. We just have to look at the bigger career picture and break any preconditioned thinking of what a ‘normal’ career path should look like.