Over the last few years, my business has been helping a lot of people who are coming up to ‘retirement’ – I use the word retirement cautiously because the last thing they actually want to do is retire.
This is a summary of the stages that most people seem to go through when leaving a full-time career and planning for their second act, unretirement, or ‘encore career.
One woman told me, “It’s the terror of 365 days – how do you fill them? I want to learn golf, go walking, and keep fit, but what do you do for the rest of the time?”
Of the dozens of people I have helped, nearly all of them had a vague idea of building a portfolio of paid non-executive director positions somewhere in their minds.
They are initially enthusiastic about finding a non-executive director role, but as weeks and months pass without success, they realize how difficult it is. And they have no backup plan.