There's the 'ol common thing that getting old sucks.
Having just turned 35, I think I'm in an especially unique position to preach about this.
What I mean is simple:
I'm right in the prime age. Old enough to lecture the young'ins. Young enough to still have some of the "I'm not old" mentality yet.
Anyways.
I was thinking about this recently and came to this conclusion — it's not so much that you become old, less athletic, and everything else that aging entails. It's that you just don't recover as well.
I'm as fast, explosive, in as good as shape as I've ever been.
But it used to be, when I was racing as a serious cyclist, that I was riding 250 miles a week and then…well, recovering for a lot of hours. Saturday was a long, 60-70 mile hard ride, and by noon, I'd be home on the couch with a big plate of pasta or an entire pizza. I'd turn on some NASCAR or football and I'd…nap. For hours sometimes.
I'd go to bed whenever I want.
Sleep as late as I want.
Now my Saturdays, I get up early and hit the gym or do a 5-7 mile run, and it's immediately with Little Miss Mau at her soccer practice, and then…well, with a four year old around, there is no napping and relaxing on the couch for hours on end.
Maybe she wakes up at night which disturbs that sleep.
The point being:
It's not that I'm "old" — it's that life changed to make it harder to recover. Not that everything got instantly more physically difficult to the point I'm crippled.
And I think this is the part of getting older people miss.
Your body didn't necessarily fall apart.
Your margin did.
At 24, I could beat the shit out of myself on a bike Saturday morning and dedicate the rest of Saturday to becoming one with the couch.
At 35, I can still beat the shit out of myself.
I just have soccer practice in 45 minutes.
Many people, as they get older, scream that…well, they're older. Things are harder. They can't do it anymore. And the same thing applies to the jobs and careers. They believe they've lost the ambition and energy for their career, when the reality is they haven't lost an ounce of the actual ABILITY.
What they lost was their margin.
Their own "5 hour nap on the couch with NASCAR" on.
Now, their Saturdays are also full of housework and chores and soccer practice and taxes and paperwork and everything else that "adult" life entails. I'd argue you should try to cut as much as possible and keep things simple, but that's another topic for another day.
Perhaps your job that you had at 25 just doesn't fit your life at 35.
Working until 7 when you can sleep until 9 tomorrow is one thing.
Working until 7 when somebody might crawl into your bed at 2:13 AM because they had a nightmare is something else entirely.
That's why I don't think wanting more autonomy as you get older necessarily means you've gotten lazy. Maybe you still want to work hard. You just don't want, or literally can't have, the job consuming the parts of your life you now need for everything else.
Maybe you don't need less ambition.
Maybe you need a job that gives you some margin back.
And that's one of the things I'm realizing on these Unfair Careers calls.
People aren't always looking for a "better job."
Sometimes they're looking for their life back.
That might mean more money. It might mean working remotely and getting two hours of commuting back every day. It might mean getting away from a boss who needs to know what you're doing every 15 minutes. It might mean having enough control over your schedule that you can actually see your kids, your spouse, go to the gym, sleep, or just sit on the couch once in a while.
Sometimes it's about looking at the life you have now and finding work that actually fits inside it.
Not the life you had 15 years ago.
The one you have today.
That's part of what we're doing at Unfair Careers.
Figuring out what you actually want your next job to give you — money, autonomy, flexibility, growth, whatever it is — and then building the search around getting it.
If your current career is taking more from your life than you're willing to keep giving it, hit the link below: