The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity

by Lynda Gratton

What will your 100-year life look like?

Does the thought of working for 60 or 70 years fill you with dread? Or can you see the potential for a more stimulating future as a result of having so much extra time?

Many of us have been raised on the traditional notion of a three-stage approach to our working lives: education, followed by work and then retirement. But this well-established pathway is already beginning to collapse life expectancy is rising, final-salary pensions are vanishing, and increasing numbers of people are juggling multiple careers. Whether you are 18, 45 or 60, you will need to do things very differently from previous generations and learn to structure your life in completely new ways.

The 100-Year Life is here to help.

Drawing on the unique pairing of their experience in psychology and economics, Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott offer a broad-ranging analysis as well as a raft of solutions, showing how to rethink your finances, your education, your career and your relationships and create a fulfilling 100-year life.

· How can you fashion a career and life path that defines you and your values and creates a shifting balance between work and leisure?

· What are the most effective ways of boosting your physical and mental health over a longer and more dynamic lifespan?

· How can you make the most of your intangible assets ? such as family and friends ? as you build a productive, longer life?

· In a multiple-stage life how can you learn to make the transitions that will be so crucial and experiment with new ways of living, working and learning?

The 100-Year Life is a wake-up call that describes what to expect and considers the choices and options that you will face. It is also fundamentally a call to action for individuals, politicians, firms and governments and offers the clearest demonstration that a 100-year life can be a wonderful and inspiring one.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Health, Self Help, Economics, Personal Development, Psychology

277 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 2, 2016

Reviews

[Mark Fallon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A child born in 1914 had a 1% probability of living to 100 years old. A child born today has a 50% chance of living to be 100. What does that mean for us as individuals, as employers and as a society?

The book focuses on the financing, employment and intangibles of how living longer will impact us. The authors explain how we'll migrate from a 3-stage life to a multi-stage life. However, their examples are middle-class, educated individuals who have the luxury of more choices. They leave out the vast majority of the population who will probably have far few choices available. While they squeeze in the impact on government policies, it's too little, too late.

The ideas brought up in this book are a good start to the conversations we need to have about the impact of living extended lives. However, it's just the start.

[Lorilin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 100-Year Life is written by psychologist Lynda Gratton and economist Andrew Scott. Together, they argue that people are living longer and that this increased longevity will impact us, our companies, and our government in several specific ways: People will continue working into their 70s and 80s. They will transition between jobs many different times during their lives, which will mean that they will also need to educate themselves continuously. People will also stay "younger" longer (i.e., they will put off committing to any one thing), and this will end up changing how we define typical life stages (e.g., at age 18, you go to college; at 25, you get married). Increased longevity will inevitably mean changes in the workplace and in the government, but change will be slow. (No surprise there...)

I hate to say this, but I have to agree with another reviewer who said that you can almost get away with just reading the introduction of this book. It is so perfectly clear, well-organized, and informative that you get everything you need to know just from reading it. The rest of the book is still interesting, sure, but it only fleshes out and offers evidence to support the main points presented in the intro.

There are two things I really like about this book. First, I love how the authors emphasize the importance of knowing your self. When I began reading this book on "how to enjoy longer life," I wasn't expecting to hear advice like: "Reflect. Think. Don't let your life just happen to you." It's a refreshing message.

Second, I so appreciate how the authors encourage people to think of longer life as a blessing, not a curse. So often we hear about people running out of money in retirement or battling horrific diseases like Alzheimer's. And those issues are no joke, I get that. But I still love how Gratton and Scott offer more positive possibilities for the future. I finished the book and felt like I could look forward to aging.

The only other thing I'll note about this book is that it is not easy reading, per se. It has an academic tone to it, so if you're expecting light and casual self-help, you're going to get annoyed. But if you know what you're getting into and you're willing to put in a little mind-muscle to learn some things, chances are that you will enjoy The 100-Year Life a whole lot.

ARC provided through Amazon Vine. See more of my book reviews at www.BugBugBooks.com.

[Scott Wozniak · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a big idea, but the treatment was a little thin. The personal finances dominated their discussion and the cultural/personal/strategic implications were mentioned, but not fully explored. And it was written like a textbook (dry, clinical, outlined information), not like the best books of today (with stories, implications, and everyday language).

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

In long lives with greater change and more choices to be made, options become more important. When a person makes a choice to do something, this implicitly means they chose not to do something else. Taking decisions means closing down options. In the financial world options are valuable and priced. The value of an option depends upon how long the option is valid for and how much risk there is in the world. The same goes for the decisions that are taken about life.

I was delighted to see that ‘The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity’ began with statistics showing ever increasing-life expectancies from a paper, ‘Broken Limits to Life Expectancy’ co-authored by Jim Oeppen who was my post-graduate supervisor in 1990, in my dissertation on cohort effects in Belgian longevity statistics, and even then was researching this topic.

I was also pleased to see the acknowledgement of the important of home equity release schemes for older homeowners in helping people live a better later life, albeit with the proviso that this isn’t a solution for the younger generation yet to set foot on the property ladder.

I was rather less impressed, as an actuary to read:

As we described earlier, there are two ways of estimating life expectancy: period estimates and cohort estimates. We strongly recommend that governments and the actuarial industry reconsider their use of period estimates of life expectancy as their core assumption.

as actuaries have been using explicit cohort estimates for many years now (and implicit ones before that), at least since a seminal paper by Richard Willets (https://www.actuaries.org.uk/system/f...)

The 100-Year Life should be praised for focusing on the positive side and the opportunities of demographic issues of increased longevity, rather than the negatives, and in particularly how individuals and societies can embrace these opportunities, albeit not without challenges:

A 100-year life needs more saving rather than spending, more recreation time converted into re-creation, and more capacity and willingness to engage in challenging conversations with partners about roles and commitments. It involves making tough decisions now for potential gains in the future.

The focus - the opening quote to my review - on maximising options in life is very much in keeping with my worldview, as someone who worked much of my career in the financial options market. But the book then went on to challenge my views, as someone who is almost but not quite a Boomer (I’m firmly Generation X), on the Millennial generation, arguing that much of what ‘OK Boomers’ look down upon is actually them putting this principle into practice:

Right now a new stage of life is emerging for those aged 18–30. Just as longevity and greater schooling helped promote the concept of a teenager, so something is happening to the age group beyond adolescence. This group are already beginning to respond to the promise of a longer life and are keeping their options open and exploring new alternatives. As they do so, they are turning away from the commitments that past generations had made at this age and instead are pursuing other lifestyles and choices. The creation of these new stages of life is a real gift. These new stages create an opportunity to experiment, to build the life you want.
...
It took a while for society to coin a phrase to describe the increasingly standardized behaviour that was developing during adolescence over the twentieth century. Eventually the phrase ‘teenager’ became established. We think society will need to search for a similar phrase to cover those aged 18–30. We describe them (with apologies to Jonathan Swift) as ‘Yahoos’ – Young Adults Holding OptiOnS.

For a book looking far into the future, and issued in a revised copy in May 2020, its views on the importance of city living, and its relative scepticism about home working, were rather unprescient, although that’s a little unfair.

A more valid criticism, albeit one the authors acknowledge, is much of their personal prescription - essentially to become a personal entrepreneur with a strong network, a string of different skills, and a portfolio of work opportunities - felt very squarely aimed at a small minority of the population:

One of the audiences for whom this book was written are those who benefit from high levels of education and income and possess some market power in the workplace with their employer and an array of choices and options. Not everyone will be so fortunate, and making the most of a 100-year life will be a challenge for everyone

but with little suggestions for the ‘not everyone’ other than to suggest that Government’s need to sort that problem. The demographic issue of shrinking populations from people deferring or not having children (the ultimate option closing decision!) were mentioned but didn’t feel thought through.

Overall, this was a thought provoking books although with so many of its ilk, an executive summary (indeed the introduction is available in the Amazon preview) or TED-type talk would likely convey much of the valuable information and it felt a little padded out and folksy at times with its three characters of Jack, Jill and Jane (born in 1945, 1971 and 1988). I would also have preferred more on the macro financial / demographic aspects and less of the self-help, but that’s me wanting a different book.

2.5 stars

[Bryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book's basic argument is that not enough is being done to adapt to increasing longevity. After a quite interesting chapter on how drastically longevity has changed (the 1900 US expectancy was under 50!), the book sketches out in some detail archetypes from the baby boomer, gen X, and millennial generations, imagining how their lives might play out. As is probably obvious, the younger generations face increasingly insurmountable difficulties if they try to stick to the typical education/single career/retirement (three-stage life) that worked very well for the baby boomers, who could pick any career, stick to it, invest in virtually anything, and come out with a house, savings, and an irritating sense that they had somehow been rewarded for their wisdom and moral virtue.

The section on "juvenescence," whereby youthful features, behaviours, and even looks are persisting longer and longer in adults, was somewhat illuminating. This phenomenon is nothing new—it was also observed (in comparison with fin-de-siècle Vienna) by Stefan Zweig in his 1942 memoir, but here it gets a more scientific treatment. The description of how relationships will change, and how labour and earnings may alternate between men and women was also interesting and probably true.

The problem with the book is that it feels like it is written either to guide public policy or to explain to the older generations why the younger generations are behaving differently and making different choices than they did, without giving much practical advice to the younger generations about what to do, besides platitudinous advice to remain flexible, try to gain new skills, and be prepared for career changes—all of which, as the book observes, the younger generation are already doing. Obviously there's huge uncertainty in the future about what will happen in the coming decades, so it would be unfair to expect the book to provide particularly concrete guidance, but I think that much of what's written here is probably already obvious to millennials. It might have some explanatory power for the older generations bewildered by the youth's postponement of traditional milestones, however, as it argues that far from being irresponsible idlers, millennials are quite conservative planners, which I think is right.

The book is also quite repetitive—as I was actually told by the person who recommended it to me, probably just reading a summary would have been enough, but I had hoped that it would provide some inspiration or hope in a time of my own personal uncertainty about life choices. The idea is interesting, and the book does try to remain hopeful, but for me it remained more a description of the lack of societal adaptation to changing conditions than a guide for how to navigate the new uncertainties.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I used a single word to describe this book it would be: encouraging. It should be required reading for every college graduate, career nomad, or professional in transition. Instead of focusing on a bleak financial outlook or the potential degradation of health, this book is a crash course in planning and preparing for a long, fulfilling life full of both tangible and intangible assets.

As someone who found the idea of a long life more of a curse than a gift, this book changed my perspective. Now I am looking forward to all the options and opportunities of my future selves! It is an especially encouraging book for people who've always felt the need to explore options, pioneer and experiment with new ideas, or take time to perform real self-discovery.

There is some repetition in this book, but I'm not opposed to skimming. It didn't lessen the quality for me. I highly recommend this book to any age group, but especially those 18-30, or anyone willing to look inward and outward and make real changes to prepare for the future.

[Yuko Murakami Hayashi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is interesting and inspiring for thinking about where our society is going and what we can do for this big change.

Longevity was just a blessing in our old society, but now, many of you live up to a hundred. This change will not affect only on the concept of longevity but also on your current ideas and thoughts about work, money, education, and relationship. If you will die in your 100s, you can naturally have more time in your life and you need more money to live, more work and health to use your times well and different attitudes for the longer and more changeable relationship with family and friends. However, the changes in the government and big companies are really slow and you have to handle this change until they catch up.

For me, the most suggestive idea is that I would experience several jobs. As you may know, it is not usual to change the job in Japan so many are supposed to continue the one job. I also had the similar assumption that I would work in the same company till my 60s but I also doubted I could do because recent news shows the different possibility. This book clearly gives an answer. I probably cannot continue the current job so I should design my career by organizing several stages to earn money and spend a meaningful time for my 100-year life. I'll keep thinking about my current skills, my desirable future skills, and my professional reputations to celebrate my longevity.

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting take on the blessings and challenges of longevity; living longer with less morbidity; this requires a rethink of how one plays the game of life: youth, education, partnering, children, employment, family, health, death; from a 2-stage life up until 1900 (youth-old age) to a post WWII (Boomers) 3-stage life youth-midlife-old age, to a 5 (or multiple stage) lifetime with more transition phases (from 1 to 2 to 3 or more); the authors do a great job in fleshing out and thinking through the subject. However, the possibility of a 100 year life is unevenly distributed; only for the healthy and wealthy; this point deserves and should've gotten more space than the single short chapter at the end of the book.

[Richard Marney · Rating 4 out of 5]

An inspiration, but we must recognize the need to take steps to keep body, mind and soul in shape! Healthy diet, daily exercise, weight under control, active intellectually and when possible professionally, stress-free approach to the day, surrounded by family and friends!!!

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this as an audiobook. I doubt I could have finished it if I had to read it. Very repetitive and frankly boring. The chap with the British accent who narrated it didn't add much to the material- it was boring listening to him to. Perhaps I was just not interested in the subject. Let's leave it at that.

[Olga · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book takes a bit long to explain its thesis....I think the first 100 pages are just a bit too rudimentary and don't require a lot of convincing. However, after pg 150 or so the book picks up and talks about some pretty important topics (financial and personal implications of a long life). Great food for thought.

[Mariusz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having finished the Polish edition of the book, I was in two minds.

On the one hand, it is a book that, in the age of populist promises of setting the clocks back by decades for large chunks of countries’ populations, should be read by absolutely everyone. The impact of forthcoming 100-year life on so many elements of our lives is described extensively and is truly eye-opening. Longer lives meaning the economic necessity of working till later age, this in turn leading to conclusions about inability to work 60, or so, years, non-stop. All this will result in the need for people to discard the traditional 3-stage life model (education, work, retirement) in favour of a multi-stage model, in which work and re-creation (as opposed to recreation) phases will occur at different stages of life, not necessarily in any particular order, and new skills will need to be acquired throughout lives in order not to make one’s knowledge out of date in the fast-developing world. These changes will in turn require employers and governments to adopt totally new approaches. Needless to say, in order for the humanity to face these challenges in good time, the changes should be started earlier, rather than later. It is for this reason why the book should be read by young and old, by employers and governments.

On the other hand, whether it is to do with the Polish translation, or some other reason, the book is far too long. Just about everything is repeated 3, or more, times, with the themes re-appearing again, and again. Particularly in view of the fact that the book should be best read by all, it would definitely increase the chances of this happening, if it were far shorter, perhaps 100 to 150 pages. In its current shape, the average man in the street will be discouraged by its volume, whereas the potential decision maker, representing an employer, or a government, will not find the time to read it in its entirety, opting for a more condensed book instead.

[Javier HG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pienso que si un libro te hace pensar, ya tiene mérito, y este libro te hace pensar mucho. A día de hoy la esperanza de vida en España es de 83 años. Y eso para una generación que pasó una dura posguerra y no tuvo el acceso médico que tenemos hoy en día, ni información sobre lo que era bueno y lo que no para el cuerpo. Lo que dice "The 100-year life" es que es más que probable que lleguemos a vivir hasta los 100 años dentro de 60 años con relativa facilidad (los datos y las tendencias apuntan a esto).Y esto va a suponer un importante cambio en la forma de vivir.

Los autores (profesores en la London School of Economics) argumentan que con una esperanza de vida de 100 años ya no se va a poder hablar de "tercera edad". El esquema de educación-trabajo-jubilación ya no será válido por varios motivos: 1) con la velocidad a la que avanza la economía, lo que aprendemos en la universidad se queda obsoleto, por lo que tenemos que seguir formándonos. 2) Esa enorme esperanza de vida supone que NI DE COÑA nos vamos a jubilar a los 65 o 70 años, y será más que probable que lo hagamos a los 80 años, por lo que haciendo cálculos tendremos que trabajar casi 60 años. ¿Será posible desarrollar esa carrera profesional realizando una sola profesión, o en pocas empresas? Con muy poca probabilidad teniendo en cuenta el ritmo de los acontecimientos. 3) Semejante esperanza de vida supone un reto financiero, ya que será necesario tener ahorros no solo para jubilarse, sino también para afrontar etapas de regeneración o transición en las que nos reciclemos o renovemos.

Una larga vida puede ser una bendición o una maldición, y si no estás preparad@ puede ser lo segundo en lugar de lo primero (es una locura el bajo nivel de ahorro de la gente), por lo que recomiendo a todo el que pueda que le eche un vistazo.

[Amelia]

I was hoping for more from this. I skimmed it at work yesterday and did not want to read more deeply. It's clearly oriented to the most privileged people on the planet, and the corporations that they work for. There is only passing mention of women (or even men) who take significant time away from paid work to raise children or care for elderly relatives, or other reasons, and its models are all based on fairly consistent high income earners. Also it's mostly about money, even though it says it isn't. Finally, some of the statistics it starts out from are suspect. Early on it says that if you're born in 2007 you have a 50% chance of living to age 104, which seemed pretty extreme when I looked at it, so I checked the interwebz. According to this https://www.businessinsider.com/socia... newborns in 2014 had a 4.8% (M) 9.7% (F) chance of living to 100, which seems much more realistic. Maybe that 50% living to 104 statistic is true for the wealthiest 1%, but even that seems like it's pushing things.

[Dr. Tobias Christian Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life choices...everything is about life choices for retirement, job choices and so on. Everything helps you in the future to get older, life longer and enjoy life more.

[Wes F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting & enlightening book on how the average length of life--especially in western, developed countries--has been lengthening 2-3 years per decade (since the early 1900s). My children have a very good good of living till they're 100 yrs old. But, with longer living comes some issues that need attention--which this books does a good job of addressing: how will companies/organizations & governments adjust to help accommodate these changes, how will people financially pay for longer "retirements," and what effects will this have on the traditional 3-stage life cycle (childhood & education, work, and retirement & recreation). Also, with people living longer, how will they occupy their time and make life meaningful. I thought the insight that retirement & recreation in what we now consider older age will need to change to be more a time of re-creation was excellent. How will older people continue to grow & learn and make meaningful contributions to life/society & family? Very good question--since, a miserable life lived longer with no meaning or joy would be a travesty. Read this on my Kindle; borrowed from the library.

[chris tervit · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a brilliant gift to receive from my actuarial brother. Timely too as I’m about to embark on some ‘GP Coaching’ sessions.
Seldom have I read a physical non-fiction book of this size (~400 pages) in less than a week- this reflects how accessible it is & how engaging I found their ideas.
By ripping up the 3-stage life (education-work-retirement) rule book & introducing a longer multi-stage life with transitions (to re-learn & re-skill) to switch to different career options, they’ve made me feel excited about working longer! That’s some feat! Liked some new words like age-agnosticism & juvenescence.
“The longer your life, the more your identity reflects what you craft rather than a reactive response to where you began”.
I think I’ll read their sequel book soon too.
Thanks Phil.

[Elly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, I think this is worth reading, and the wider the audience that comes across the book, the better, hence the 4 star rating. The financial planning bits won’t be insightful to the highly financially literate, but the topic the authors tackle goes far beyond finances, so if you find yourself frustrated by the first 45 pages (as some reviewers here have), just stick with it.

I liked the book because it raises worthwhile questions, and it gives a framework and language for what I’ve been experiencing, observing, and intuitively thinking about the last few years. I imagine the same is true of many of my peers.

[Emz Gamo' · Rating 3 out of 5]

ก่อเกิดคำถามตามชื่อหนังสือ อายุร้อยปี
เราจะเป็นอย่างไร? เราจะทำอะไร? เราจะอยู่อย่างไร?
หากเรามีอายุถึงหนึ่งร้อยปี.
เนื้อหาในหนังสืออาจจะแน่นไปสักหน่อย แต่เราก็สามารถคิดและจินตนาการตามได้ และ หากเราตระหนักถึงอายุที่ยืนยาวขึ้นตามแนวโน้มนี้จริง เราจะทำอย่างไรผ?

[Greg Janicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chalk up the 3 largely to expectations. Thought it would be more philosophical than practical. This book alternated between duh and insightful and back. Good moments in the role of intangible assets vs. tangible.

[Thayne Forbes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Compelling idea but poorly executed with short abrupt mini chapters that don’t engage well

[Elis-Amalia · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a 20-year-old it might be a bit boring as you get the point from the first three chapters, but you can find interesting ideas through the book. It mostly speaks about pension and how to save money, so I don't find it quite attractive for someone in their twenties.

[Amana · Rating 3 out of 5]

in a nutshell we’re gonna be working till we drop dead 😊

[Ramnath Iyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Refreshing multi-dimensional perspective

Ray Kurzweil, one of the most followed “futurists” of our age, has predicted that humans will eventually live long enough to be close to immortal as life expectancies extend to an order of magnitude higher than current. He has propounded the “three-bridge” process, whereby following medical best practice extends life long enough to be able to take advantage of the advances in biotechnology, eventually elongating it enough to benefit from AI, robots and nanotech-enabled easy repair and replacement of human organs and body parts.

The likelihood of such dramatic change is debatable; what is however not really debatable is the fact that a more sustained although less dramatic process of extension of human lifespans has already been taking place, with average life expectancies rising by 2-3 years each decade for most of the Western World. A child born today already has a greater than 50% probability of living until 100 - which is a cause for celebration! But with that also come worries – such as how will one sustain oneself over such a long life. Put another way, at what age would a 20 year today be able to retire from work comfortably? (comfortably defined here as having enough savings to earn about half the final pay when working, if he/she saved of 10% of their income through their careers)

The answer to the question above is - into their 80s! Questions related to the financing of medical and living costs in old age are often those that come up first when asked to envision such a future. But while “The 100-Year Life” has enough examples of how such things can be estimated (as many know from conversations with bankers and insurance salesman looking to sell savings products), the authors, who are professors at London Business School, bring a refreshing multi-dimensional perspective to this.

Using the lives of three individuals, aged 18, 45 and 65 as a jumping off point, M/S Gratton and Scott’s “The 100-Year Life” turns into an examination of what this means not just for us individually, and our children but it also examines the cultural and political implications for society as a whole.

Some of the fundamental changes are: The multi stage life, with three discrete stages of education, work and retirement, will disappear. As working into their late 70s or 80s becomes more likely for more and more people, working non-stop from 21-75 years of age will be almost physically and mentally impossible. Therefore, interspersed periods of work and break will become the norm.
The fictional 18-year old example in the book, Jane, spends some of her career as a freelancer, then decides to travel during her career and then returns to learning to upskill. Of course the modern corporate life, and HR departments world over, are more or less geared to the three stage life. They will have to change or lose relevance. People will prefer to work in organizations that afford more realistic flexibility.

The second change will be in the way these breaks are used. Shortish vacations, as breaks, between continuous work through adult years is the template for the typical three stage life, but the multi stage life will require time to be set aside for reskilling and updating of ones skills. The authors posit that re-creation time will become as important as recreation time, and the type of recreation people seek will therefore change to accommodate these new needs.

Thirdly, attitudes to age will have to change, as stage becomes more important than age i.e age of a person stops being an indicator of his/her life stage. The negative attitude towards older people in workplaces and educational institutions is likely to naturally break down on its own. The current thinking of age and life stages is fairly set : if you go to university, you are likely 19-21 years old, etc. This will no longer be true and education systems will need to adapt to a much wider age-range of students. And the kind of skills required to carry out changing work will also change – the authors reckon that non-routine jobs requiring creativity, cognitive complexity and analytics are likely to do best in an era of AI driven change.

In addition to these, the book also highlights the importance of intangible assets – family, relationships, friendships, and professional networks, and how investment in these intangible assets will be crucial to success in navigating this long life. The current model typically sees the network remain the same within the age cohort for long periods – more and diverse networks will be required in future. Such thoughts and musings on how personal relationships and relationships between people across generations will develop in this new age make this book well-rounded.

The 100-Year Life is a book that made me think and contemplate - and occasionally disconcerted me as well.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most ideas in business related books is derived and already implicit in philosophical, psychological, social science broadly or science books more generally. As is the case here. Skimmed with increasing pace after chapter 3.

[Chee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book taught me what longevity is like, that I’m willing and ready to live to be 100 years old and, if so, what I’d like to spend the rest of my life. Now I’m thinking.

[Cheryl Lim · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise of this book sparked my interest, though its analytical approach undoubtedly ruined it for me. I hardly skim through nonfiction, especially those of such fascinating and relevant topics, but this was an exception.

[Sotiris Yannopoulos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Your child may live to 105!

Just finished this book and really recommend it. Not just to reflect about ourselves, but even more for our children. The children born after 2000, have a quite significant probability to live up to 105, 107 years. As such, the current typical model of a 3 stages life; education, career, retirement, fails completely, and in its place a multi stage, age-agnostic model is emerging. A mix of traditional working patterns, entrepreneurship, further education, concurrent part-time roles and so on. Crucially this f needs to be maintained into their 80s in order to accumulate the necessary financial resources. Hence, equipping our children with the mindset and ability to un-learn, re-learn and re-skill themselves becomes a priority.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4* because this is such a vital topic for every person, though probably no more than 3* of reading enjoyment - very standard writing style and felt the opposite of the escapism that a book can sometimes offer. i am convinced most people really will lead substantially longer lives than they expect, that this effect will keep increasing and that it won't be limited to what are currently the richer countries. we are generally very unprepared for this - in planning, work, education, relationships, personal and social finance. there is as much opportunity as threat.
this book is a competent starter text, but there is far to go in many directions, in reading, thinking and (gulp) actions. if perhaps interested but unsure about reading, see www.100yearlife.com

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

The basic premise of Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott's The 100-Year Life is that as life expectancies increase, making living for at least a century the norm rather than the exception, we need to radically redesign our lives as individuals, not to mention how organisations, government and indeed societies, operate. Longevity can be a tremendous gift; the authors note that "the gift of a longer life is ultimately the gift of time. In this long sweep of time, there is a chance to craft a purposeful and meaningful life." They quote the violinist Stephen Nachmanovitch:

"If we operate with a belief in long sweeps of time, we build cathedrals; if we operate from fiscal quarter to fiscal quarter, we build ugly shopping malls."

Today, most of us typically live a three stage life - education, work, then retirement. Gratton and Scott note: "In shorter lives with relatively stable labour markets, the knowledge and skills a person mastered in their 20s could possibly last their career without any major reinvestment. If you now work into your 70s and 80s in a rapidly changing job market, then maintaining productivity is no longer about brushing up on knowledge - it is about setting time aside to make fundamental reinvestments in re-learning and re-skilling."

They argue that we need to instead think of life becoming multi-staged, where transitions become the norm. Instead of thinking of extended lifespans requiring an extension of the stage of continuous employment (which might boost finances but deplete us in many other aspects that matter like health and vitality, relationships etc) for instance, we should start imagining a life with 2 to 3 different careers, some more intense and others allowing a better balance between work and family commitments, or perhaps social contributions. And while in a shorter life we might see leisure primarily as a form of relaxation, over a longer life, leisure time is also a space for investment and "re-creation".

Discussions on longevity have typically focussed on financial adequacy for retirement. But Gratton and Scott point out that this discussion is woefully incomplete. In addition to financial resources, Gratton and Scott discuss the other resources we need to carefully nurture and sustain over the course of a 100 year life, intangibles such as (i) health and vitality; (ii) skills and knowledge; (iii) supportive family; and (iv) strong friendships. Scott and Gratton group these intangible assets into three distinct categories:

(a) Productive assets: These are the assets that help an individual become productive and successful at work and should therefore boost their income. Skills and knowledge are one major component of this but there are others (e.g. professional social capital). In particular, we should focus on skills and knowledge that are rare and therefore valuable, as opposed to skills that can be easily picked up or replicated.

(b) Vitality assets: These capture mental and physical health and well-being. Included here are friendship, positive family relationships and partnerships, as well as personal fitness and health

(c) Transformational assets: These refer to individuals' self knowledge, their capacity to reach out into diverse networks and their openness to new experiences. This group of assets has been relatively under-utilised within a traditional three stage life but will become crucial in a multi stage life.

Unlike tangible assets like wealth and property, intangibles are neither substitutable more reversible. As such, much care must be taken when choices are made about investing in intangible assets and whether certain moves might result in a sudden loss in value. Gratton and Scott's classification of the different kinds of intangible assets and their illustrations of how different life choices we make can deplete, grow or sustain the level of these assets provides a broader lens on what it means to live well and to prepare for a good retirement.
The authors note: "At the time of writing, most people have more discretionary time than at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, if people feel time-poor, what they are thinking about is not discretionary time but spare time. In other words, people may be making choices to fill their discretionary time that results in little spare time."

Whereas the traditional three stage life "required only the lightest planning touch and little in the way of reflection, since it had certainty and predictability baked into it", the 100 year life presents much more variety and options and one must be more intentional and thoughtful in exercising one's choices. It needs "more saving rather than spending, more recreation time converted into re-creation, and more capacity and willingness to engage in challenging conversations with partners about roles and commitments. It involves making tough decisions now for potential gains in the future."

While much of the 100-Year Life focusses on the reframing that individuals need to make when thinking about their life choices for a multi-stage rather than a 3 stage life, the authors stress that governments need to make radical shifts as well, since "government policy builds much of the broad context for living."…Just as individuals will be redesigning life, so too will governments need to reconfigure the legal system, the tax and benefit systems, and a host of employment legislation, along with the institutions that deal with education and marriage. For people to reconfigure their lives successfully, governments will need to reconfigure their rules and institutions." Supporting greater flexibility of working practices across all ages, for instance; having a greater focus on lifetime allowances and lifetime credits (vs the current focus on age-related schedules in the years immediately before retirement); encouraging savings and greater financial literacy; changing regulatory frameworks to steer financial institutions to offer financial products that support a multi-stage, rather than a 3-stage life.

Gratton and Scott observe that "too much of current policy is aimed at the final stage of life and viewed through the prism of a three-stage life. The consequences of a 100-year life are for everyone, not just the old, and involve far more than adjusting the level of pensions or flexing the date at which retirement starts. Creating a regulatory and legislative framework that gives people choices over how they create the multiple stages of their life will be the priority for governments." They flag the possibility that the gift longevity can bestow might become the preserve of those with the income and education to construct the changes and transitions required. Governments therefore must now begin to "construct a package of measures to support those less fortunate in achieving the transitions and flexibility that a long life requires."

One interesting observation the authors make is that "one of the impacts of industrialisation has been the segregation of the ages. The segregation of life became normal as the state adopted rules that used chronological age to require children's school attendance while excluding them from the workplace, and to entitle older persons to pensions. As the ages became institutionally segregated, they also became spatially segregated. People of different ages no longer occupied the same space and so didn't engage in face-to-face interactions…Neighbourhoods - often unintentionally, although sometimes intentionally - segregate ages. The ages are also segmented as a result of many routine activities being structured around age (e.g. youth orchestras, senior citizen activities, senior tour groups) and distinct cultures often grow up around each age group. These age-segregated institutions restrict the opportunity for people to form stable cross-age relationships. Places where people of different ages can interact, become familiar with each other and share personal knowledge are hard to come by."

A thought provoking read.