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  Lesson number one: Follow your passion.  The main reason Feiler and many of the boomers and Gen Xers he interviewed for The Search are happier in work than ever before is that “the people who are most fulfilled don’t climb; they dig,” he says. “They do a treasure hunt in their own life by asking themselves, What is the story you have been trying to tell? What is the problem you’ve been trying to solve? What is the source of happiness you had to push aside?” Another path for professionals of a certain age is a so-called portfolio career, in which you work fractionally in several different lanes, says Susan Wilner Golden, author of Stage (Not Age). Diversified careers don’t just help people who have ducked in and out of the workforce to care for children or ailing parents wield the different skills they’ve acquired; they minimize risk if one component disappears (or gets taken over by AI).  They also provide older adults greater freedom to choose projects that chime with ...

    Work like millennials and Gen Zers “Kids today just don’t know the value of hard work!” is something you’ve probably heard older adults mutter about younger adults. Maybe you’ve muttered it yourself! But that “get off my lawn” attitude, as Bruce Feiler, author of The Search, calls it, fails to appreciate one of the great gifts millennials and Gen Zers have given their elders.  When they embarked on their careers, many people now in their 40s, 50s, and 60s initially “got on what I call the ‘should train.’ I should be doing that. I’m expected to follow this path. I had to sell my soul to a company. I had to do what my parents wanted me to do,” says Feiler, 58. But Gen Zers and millennials have led the charge to push employers to provide more fluid schedules and prioritize positive contributions to their industry or community, and they’ve normalized changing jobs frequently to find work that aligns better with their values.  These cohorts, Feiler says, have actually...