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You are here: Home / Employee Engagement / Work in Reverse

Work in Reverse

June 6, 2011 by David Zinger 3 Comments

Employee Engagement: What was the best career advice you ever received?

The best advice I received was to work in reverse:

Don, a retired gentleman who lived in the same apartment as me in Winnipeg 35 years ago told me that retirement was wasted on someone his age because of health issues and being fixed in his ways. At the time he was about 85 years old. He told me that a guy my age, 21, should retire.

I took his words to heart and retired from 21 to 33, went through semi retirement from 33 to 55 as I worked and parented 3 wonderful children, and now I am working more than full time on employee engagement until I am 75. After 75, I may return to my counselling psychology training and freely volunteer my counselling services.

By the way, retirement does not mean you don’t work, it just means that you work differently on things more of your own choosing. Many people I know who are retired work very hard and make significant contributions to their community. As I wrote this short piece I realized that this is a much bigger time scale version of eat the dessert first.

David Zinger is an employee engagement expert who is fully engaged in work and is not dreaming of retirement because he has already experienced it.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement

Comments

  1. David Bowles says

    June 6, 2011 at 1:57 pm

    Very good David, glad you followed the advice, it makes you more useful now!! As a fellow “retiree” also working flat out as an author, speaker and consultant, its the only way to go if one can set it up.

    “When you do what you love to do, you will never “work” another day in your life”.

    best to you

    David

  2. Bryan Hinton says

    June 9, 2011 at 12:50 pm

    That is easy to say, but harder to do – how do you retire with no money?

  3. David Zinger says

    June 10, 2011 at 4:44 pm

    Bryan:
    Just because I was retired did not mean that I did not work to get some money. Retirement is an attitude and approach to our lives as much as a state of what and how we are doing. I did not have a pension but I would put money into retirement savings for a year or two and then take it out for a period of non working. The jobs I had were not permanent and were not part of a designed career path. They would be much like the jobs many retired people take to give them something to do or to supplement their income. I hope to write more about this during the summer.
    David

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David Zinger

Email: david@davidzinger.com
Phone 204 254 2130

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