A CheckPoint or the Finish Line?
Aug 15, 2020
Originally shared in A Daily Dose Of Leadership on August 14, 2020.
Have you heard stories of people dying soon after they retire? In many cases, that seems to serve as motivation for considering early retirement and enjoying the time we have left. But according to a study I read recently on WebMD, folks who retire at 55 are 89% more likely to die in the ten years following their retirement than their counterparts who retire at 65… Well that stinks!
What about the statistics regarding how many people stop learning once they’ve completed the formal education? Now I’m certainly not one who just loves to read, but these numbers are absolutely shocking! According to a 2003 study by The Jenkins Group, “one-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.” That study goes on to show that “42% of college graduates never read another book after college.” While I’m not suggesting that learning can only happen through reading, that simply reading any book at all equates to learning, or that any learning actually happens in most universities…
What I am making a case for here is the overwhelmingly finite approach so many people take to various phases of their lives!
Leaving school should never be viewed as the time to stop learning! If anything, it should be used as a time to start learning about the things that are likely to matter the most moving forward… I can’t directly point to many things that I learned in school that I use on a daily basis but I can honestly say that it provided me with a foundation that I could use to learn the things that I would need to know as I progressed through my career.
On that same note, why do we see so many pictures of folks in rocking chairs on their front porch to signify retirement? My dad “retired” from his career more than 15 years ago and is every bit as active today, and possibly more active, than he was in the 10 years or so leading up to that point. That said, he’s just as healthy too! And I won’t even attempt to explain the travel schedule and workload that I’ve seen John Maxwell carry even now at 73 years old. (COVID may have slowed his travel but it certainly didn’t change his approach to work!)
OK Wes, what’s the point?
I believe we’d all do well to approach every aspect of our lives with the same approach Simon Sinek suggests we take for treating our business as an Infinite Game rather than something with a finite end point… And that really ties back to what I’ve heard John Maxwell teach for years regarding a focus on ongoing growth rather than just working to achieve a specific goal.
If our goal for education is completing high school or college, there shouldn’t be any surprise that so many people never read another book. If we view retirement as an end to our productive lives, I can certainly see why those with so much value left within them could lose their reason for living after retiring early!
As we wrap up this week, I’ll leave you with a challenge to consider… What can you change about how you currently view your own potential for growth and productivity that will help you look for ways to turn that into your own Infinite Game?
