The Critical Identity Gap

To put it very mildly, things are a-Changin’ (yes, a Bob Dylan reference): What one does, who one is, who y’all work for, who you communicate with daily (a machine or real people), how one deals with the onslaught of change (yes, very much AI-driven). It’s like way top of mind. And, because of all of this… how to reinvent YOU?

I am not going to write about AI. But I think many of us need to think through reinvention before it needs to happen.

Here is a bit from my new book, being written as you read this. It’s called Decide Before You Can’t.

This fits into my chapter about retirement decisions – see below.  Given the rapid pace of change, I think that retirement… better, personal reinvention, will happen to many of us…. Faster.

The New Identity Gap

A few months after I closed my Oregon ad agency, someone asked what I did. I said, “I’m a marketing consultant.” It was true. Yet it didn’t seem enough. My company and title were gone. And so was the person I had worked hard to become.

For most of our working lives, “What do you do?” is really a stand-in for the question “Who are you?” Retirement takes it away.

The question is what replaces it. The replacement matters.

There’s a name for what happens when the title goes: “Relevance Deprivation Syndrome.” The phrase was coined for former politicians who couldn’t adjust to being out of power, but it applies to anyone whose daily life was built around being needed. The phone that used to ring all day no longer rings, and nobody asks for your opinions anymore. You walk into rooms where you used to be known for your work, and now you’re not. That’s the syndrome.

The clearest data on identity loss after retirement comes from athletes. Research on retired athletes shows that their “I am” can collapse surprisingly fast after competition ends. The ones who struggle most are competitors from individual sports such as golfers, runners, and tennis players, many of whom lack a team identity to fall back on. Plumbers and accountants are individual-sport athletes, too.

Don’t wait too long to find out who you become. Start while your old identity is still intact. You’ll probably reinvent yourself more than once over a 20-plus-year retirement, and the first incarnation is good training for the next. You don’t have to solve this alone: practice how you will present the renewed you to your spouse, a friend, or even the mirror.

Try a different question: “Who do you want to be?” Stop answering with a title. Answer with what you actually like doing.

It doesn’t mean you have to invent SpaceX. “I mentor design students.” “I rebuild motorcycles.” “I do street photography.” “I grow things.” Verbs, not titles.

One of the best reinventors I know is a retired Boston surgeon who is systematically researching how to grow the world’s best tomato. He calls himself a “tomatologist.”