What purpose actually looks like in a second act — less dramatic than the cliché, more durable than the Instagram version. The cliché and why it fails The cultural version of “purpose” tends to be dramatic. A single calling. A great cause. An inspirational sentence that fits on a poster. The problem is that almost…
If you’re consulting, advising, running a small business, or doing serious knowledge work from home, a laptop on the kitchen table isn’t a home office. Here’s what is. A large proportion of experienced professionals in their fifties and sixties are working from home in some capacity — as consultants, advisors, fractional executives, board members, writers,…
How to move on from a long career without forcing a reinvention you don’t believe in — and how to find the shape of work that fits who you’ve become. The framing most advice gets wrong Most career transition advice for people over 50 falls into two unhelpful camps. The first is “reinvent yourself” —…
Why traditional retirement is a bad fit for most 50+ professionals — and what a more honest version looks like. Where the old model came from The standard retirement model — stop paid work at 60 or 65, then rest and leisure — was designed in a different economy, for people with different life expectancies,…
The real maths behind consulting day rates, the mistakes ex-corporate consultants make, and how to set a number you will actually hold. The wrong starting point Almost every ex-corporate consultant starts their pricing calculation by dividing their old salary by the number of working days in a year and calling that the day rate. Sometimes…
The practical details that separate a well-designed road trip from a gruelling one — routing, stops, rest days, and the pacing that actually works. The right daily distance One of the consistent findings of people who road trip well at this stage is that sensible daily driving distances are much shorter than the versions younger…
The real cognitive and emotional shifts of midlife — beyond clichés — and how to work with them rather than against them. What actually changes The cultural narrative about midlife is either melodrama (crisis) or denial (“age is just a number”). The actual experience of most people is more interesting and more prosaic than either….
Your children are adults. They are not coming back except to visit. The question is whether your home is going to reflect that — or quietly pretend it’s still 2008. For many parents, the children’s bedrooms become a kind of suspended monument after the children leave. The posters stay up. The bookshelves stay arranged as…
Estimating, scheduling, invoicing, follow-up. The operational work most trade businesses under-invest in — and the cost of not fixing it. Why operations decides margins in a trades business Most trades and services businesses do not fail because their work is poor. They fail — or operate permanently under their potential — because the operational scaffolding…
What happens when “what do you do?” stops having an easy answer — and how to rebuild an identity that doesn’t rely on a role. The question that stops answering itself For most of adult life, “what do you do” is one of the easiest questions in the world. The answer is your title and…