number of hours worked gradually over time in anticipation of the employee’s leaving the organization at some point. Others are instituting a variety of “flex retirement” options—offering employees ways of staying with the organization, but with reduced commitments of time or responsibility. These may include more flexible work styles, including virtual work options; flexible hours that provide more control over time; or reduced hours, perhaps based on some of the newer models such as job sharing. We’ll look at specific options, and ways to negotiate for them, in greater detail in the next part of the book.

If you’re not looking to cut back, but rather to rev up, you need to begin to investigate those options, too—and let people know what you’re thinking. Many corporations today have essentially erased people over fifty from their development pipeline and succession-plan thinking. The assumption is that individuals in this age cohort are already fully “done,” or developed—or have one foot out the door and will not stay with the corporation long enough to return any significant development investment. Of course, given life expectancies, the latter is an absurd premise—a fifty-year old individual today could have thirty or more years in which to return value to the company—a much longer stretch than any firm should reasonably expect to receive from any twenty-two-year-old hired today. If you are interested in taking on more challenges, there is no reason for your company not to develop you for that opportunity—assuming you’ve continued to hone your own sharp edge. And, although most firms may not recognize it yet today, over the next five years or so, as the talent gap widens, the tragedy of losing individuals seeking to get on a carillon curve will without doubt become more apparent even to the most traditional executives.

As you plan for the next stage of your life, think about the shape of the curve you think (at least at this point) you’d like to follow by considering the trade-offs of time, money, and commitment that you are willing to make. Create your own Career Curve—and hold future opportunities up against it to test for fit. As you plot your own Career Curve, you should consider:

• Time: Amount of time you’d like to devote to work and the role you’d like it to play in the mosaic of your life’s other activities • Rhythm: The structure and variety of your ideal work arrangements, including the degree of spontaneity, predictability, and focus

• Economic reality: The role that compensation from work needs to play in your personal finances going forward

• Challenge: The extent to which you do (or don’t) want to take on difficult or challenging roles at this point, including the level of commitment you would be willing to make to learn new skills and capabilities

• Responsibility: The degree to which you are willing to take on roles that directly affect others, including assuming the interdependence of managerial tasks.

Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation is available through local booksellers and online at hbspress.org.

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Press. Excerpted from Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation. Copyright © 2007 Tamara J. Erickson; All Rights Reserved.

Claire Yezbak Fadden is the Associate Editor of LifeAfter50.com.