Lesson number one: Follow your passion.

 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 their core values, says Golden. She co-taught a course on the innovation opportunities needed for longevity and healthy aging at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and, among other gigs that “bring me joy,” has collaborated with Pivotal Ventures, a Melinda French Gates company, on a project to streamline resources for caregivers for older adults, since, as she passionately notes, “over 61 percent of the 53 million unpaid caregivers in the U.S. are women.”