What I Want From Work at 52 Is Different Than What I Wanted at 32

For most of my adult life, I thought the goal was to keep moving up.

More responsibility.

More money.

A better title.

A bigger opportunity.

The next thing.

I don't think I ever questioned that very much. That's just what you did. You built a career by accumulating things—experience, responsibility, accomplishments, income.

At 52, I'm looking at work very differently.

I'm not less ambitious.

I'm just becoming much more particular about what I'm willing to trade for that ambition.

I used to think more responsibility was always better

There was a time when being needed at work felt good.

Being the person who could figure things out.

The person people came to.

The person who could take something messy and make it work.

I still like that.

I'm good at it.

But I've also learned there's a very short distance between being valuable and becoming responsible for everything.

And these days, I'm much more interested in the difference.

I don't need to be indispensable.

Actually, I'd rather not be.

I want to do good work, solve interesting problems, be paid fairly, and then have enough of myself left for the rest of my life.

That last part didn't used to be nearly as important to me.

Now it might be the most important part.

Money matters more to me now—and less

This sounds contradictory, but it isn't.

Financial security matters enormously to me.

Maybe more than it ever has.

At 52, retirement isn't some abstract event happening to an old woman decades from now.

The old woman is getting suspiciously close to being me.

I think about savings.

I think about retirement.

I think about what it costs to live.

I think about having enough money that an unexpected expense doesn't rearrange my entire month.

So yes, money matters.

But the things I want money for have changed.

I'm less interested in what it can buy and more interested in what it can give me.

Options.

Breathing room.

The ability to say no.

The ability to leave something that isn't working.

The ability to help someone I love.

The ability to make decisions without fear making all of them for me.

That kind of money interests me very much.

I don't want my job to be my whole identity

Maybe this is another thing age changes.

For years, one of the first questions people asked when they met you was:

What do you do?

And somehow the answer was supposed to explain quite a lot about who you were.

I'm less convinced of that now.

Work matters to me.

I want to be useful.

I want to use my brain.

I want to solve problems.

I want to build things.

I want to earn good money.

But I also want to be a person who gardens.

Who gets stronger.

Who has time for people she loves.

Who reads.

Who travels.

Who has projects that may never make a dime.

Who can spend an afternoon doing absolutely nothing productive without feeling like she's committed some sort of moral failure.

My job can be an important part of my life without becoming the organizing principle of it.

Flexibility has become incredibly valuable

There are things I didn't fully appreciate when I was younger because I assumed I would always have control over my time.

Then life teaches you otherwise.

Parents age.

People need you.

Bodies need maintenance.

Appointments multiply.

Unexpected things happen on Wednesday mornings.

Suddenly flexibility isn't a perk.

It's part of compensation.

So when I think about a job now, salary isn't the only number I'm calculating.

I'm calculating commute.

Hours.

Stress.

Energy.

Autonomy.

How much of my brain will still belong to me at 6 p.m.

What will this job make possible?

And what will it make harder?

Those things have value too.

I still want to build something

This is the part that surprised me.

For all my talk about wanting peace and flexibility and a simpler life, I haven't lost the desire to create.

If anything, it's stronger.

I still get excited about ideas.

I still love figuring out how something could work.

I still want to make things that are useful.

I still wonder what's possible.

Maybe ambition doesn't disappear as we get older.

Maybe it just gets more selective.

I'm no longer interested in succeeding at something simply because success is available.

I want the success to be worth having.

So what do I want from work now?

Enough money to build security.

Interesting problems.

People I respect.

A reasonable amount of autonomy.

Work I'm good at.

Room to keep learning.

Enough flexibility for real life.

And enough energy left at the end of the day to still be myself.

That doesn't sound like a lack of ambition to me.

It sounds like I've finally started calculating the entire cost of a job instead of just looking at the salary.

At 32, I wanted work that could take me somewhere.

At 52, I still do.

I'm just much more interested in where it's taking me.