Are you on a rising or falling career curve? If you’re over 50, the answer may be sobering.
The traditional career curve climbs over time with growing responsibility and financial reward. The ultimate success comes when you arrive at some ill-defined “top” of the curve. CEO. Publisher. Tenured professor. General. Mayor. Award-winner. Top dog.
My stall on the success curve
I never put much stock in the career version of this success curve. While I suppose I did enjoy some success at work, I never rose to the “top.” I was not editor-in-chief of a newsstand magazine. My novel has not been a New York Times bestseller. I don’t have a Substack newsletter that brings in six figures annually. And all of that is a-okay.
Over the years, personality assessments—affirmed by real-life—have shown ambition to be at the bottom of my values and strengths. While I’ve not been averse to working long hours occasionally when a project demanded it, I have always prioritized family and friends—and even my own well-being. I was not willing to “climb the ladder,” become a workaholic, or engage in ruthless politics. So I guess you could say the fact that I never reached “top” status is no surprise. What is a surprise, though, is that there’s another curve where I’m quite well positioned. A different kind of success curve.
I’m reading Arthur Brooks’ new book, From Strength to Strength, which includes a lengthy discussion on our cultural obsession with success and how addictive it can become. Brooks posits, though, that later in life it is important to shift from a work-success curve towards a life-satisfaction curve focused on relationships and other intangible values.
In fact, if you’re hooked on work success you’re eventually going to be sorely disappointed. Brooks says you will likely decline in your career earlier than you think. And if you are lucky and live long enough, your work-life will end, whether or not voluntarily. You’ll no longer have access to your achievement fix.
Assessing your location
Where are you on the success curve? If you’re late in your career… Do you feel passed over for promotions? Feel disrespected or outsmarted by quick-thinking but unseasoned twenty-something colleagues? Worry that if you are laid off, it will be very difficult to become re-employed? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be in a demoralizing place on the success curve.
But wait: Where you are on an upward curve? Are you closer to some family, friends and colleagues than ever before? Do you feel you have a greater understanding of how the world works than you did twenty years ago? Have you mentored your children, nieces and nephews, or young colleagues? Have you let go of the need to accumulate possessions as a symbol of your success? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be on an upward life-satisfaction curve.
Hop to a better curve
Lengthening life expectancy means your time after retirement may also be lengthening. I figure I may have 20-30 years of healthspan remaining. That’s a long time! So I’m glad to have a new curve by which to measure success.
I may not go out with an obituary in the New York Times as a celebrity writer might, but I will go out satisfied. And in my mind, that means I will have reached the “top.”