Tips on Getting Out of the Midlife Career Rut

HR consultant John Izzo writes in the Globe and Mail (Toronto) that midlife men need to separate their identity from their work. If they do, good things can happen.

He says:

Yet, middle-aged men today face a many career dilemmas and transitions that they never anticipated: the biological challenge of running out of energy at a time when the workplace is demanding more than ever; of spouses who may be revving up at work while they are thinking of revving down; and an age bias from employers.

Many midlife men were raised to see work as a primary form of identity. Who they are as men often begins with the question: "What do you do?" Their identities came first and foremost from being the breadwinners and from having a place in the world of work. When that place is threatened or changed, so is their self-identity. If we are what we do, who are we if that changes?

His advice to men questioning their career at midlife (see this link for full version):

• Expand your notion of who you are. Are you a "lawyer" or "sales rep?" Or something more?
• Bored? Consider a career change. But be flexible -- you may do better as a contractor than as an employee.
• Never act like a dinosaur and Don't just count the days until you retire. What can you give back? This ties into a 1999 Fortune article titled "Finished at Forty," which hypothesized that the old deal -- where you worked hard and were relatively underpaid in your twenties and thirties, but could ease up and essentially be overpaid in your fifties and sixties -- is dead. If you're not part of the solution, guess what you'll be perceived as?
• Examine your work and your life. Ask yourself if you're really enjoying how you spend your days. Ten years from now, will you regret it? What can you do to fix this?

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Izzo also wrote Value Shift: The New Work Ethic (click to see it at Amazon).