I recently saw a TED Talk where the speaker was encouraging his audience to keep working as, he claimed, retirement would kill you! His suggestion seemed, at first sight, diametrically opposed to the EML philosophy of transition, as soon as possible, to your post-employment ‘ second career’. On reflection however, I concluded that we were ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ with only minor differences.

He encouraged his audience to not ‘stop working’ whereas EML encourages clients to stop working for someone else and move to working on something you enjoy. Recently I wrote about one of my early clients who was forced to leave his career by an industry slowdown but is now so busy that I joked he and his wife would need to live to 120 – just to enjoy all the interests they had developed.

To me the secret of a successful life is to have enjoyed every moment – and that is where I differ from the TED speaker. He was encouraging his audience to keep working – just to avoid not working whereas we also encourage clients to keep busy, by doing the things that are important to them