‘My remaining 13 million minutes’: productivity, ambition and being realistic in older age

When my mother died and my own "mortality alarm" went off, I found myself thinking deeply about ageing and the best approach to engage with it. My mum was nearly 100 when she died and my dad is alive and well in his 90s. With a bit of luck and if I stay fit and look after my health, I have a good chance of surviving into my 90s too. But is long life, as increasing numbers of us are experiencing, a blessing or a curse? I'd happily accept just 25 more years which would take me to 85. But I don't just want a long life, I want to be productive to society. In fact, I'm committing to using my remaining 13 million minutes to age as productively as possible.

But in 2023 and following the disruption of the pandemic, what does productivity mean? Is retirement, in the traditional sense of taking a step back, still an aspiration? As a self-described Juvenile Geriatric - someone who's begun their ageing journey but isn't officially "old" (in Australia an 'older adult' is 65+) - I was brought up in the culture of a three-stage life: learn, earn and retire. But for many of us, that model feels like an outdated version. So what does the new model look like?

Occasionally I ponder whether I left my career too early. I had four employers over 35 years. I resigned in my 50s because I felt burned out and was no longer challenged. Then several shiny offers were dangled in front of me. This gave me the confidence to find stimulating work until the time I could access superannuation. Of course, the pandemic derailed that for a while, but it felt normal because the upheaval was global.

I can't use the word "retire", because retiring was never my intention.

A few years before quitting, I watched a show about the human body that featured the ironman Lew Hollander. I looked him up recently. He's about to turn 93. "There's a time in everyone's life when you resign yourself," Lew says. "I haven't resigned myself yet. 'When are you old?' is really the question. And, when you stop dreaming of what you can do, then you're old. I haven't stopped dreaming yet."

I wrote down those words, deeply connecting with the idea that I would not be retiring and that I had much more to give. Just as Lew says, I hadn't resigned myself yet. But what I wanted was something no ongoing employment could give me. I wanted freedom. I wanted to reinvent myself. I didn't want to stumble blindly through old age with a sense that it was all over and that i had nothing left to give or learn.

Dr Vas Yiengprugsawan is an associate investigator with the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Population Ageing Research (Cepar). In Asia, she says, particularly in Buddhist societies, people are taught to accept life's impermanence and the cycle of birth, ageing, disease, death. Ageing in Asia she says is seen as a continuance. She opens her lectures to postgraduate students by asking "what do you want to be when you grow old?" The most common responses are that they want to age well, not be a burden to loved ones and be financially secure. Asian students often mention the importance of family caregiving.