We’ll written by Arthur Brooks but ultimately just not that interesting. Maybe for readers looking for direction ion later life but this was not relevant to me.

I was intrigued by the title being in this age category and dealing with the usual issues that come with it. I like self help books and this one gave some solid advice. Highly recommended

An essential read…. This is a happiness strategy for what Brooks sees as our inevitable professional decline, and a way to convert that decline from being a source of regret into an opportunity for growth and transcendence. My advice is not to start reading this unless you have time to go to the end! It is compulsive.

I was drawn to this book by a profile of the author and his philosophy in the Sunday Times and when I basically read it was a book aimed at successful and currently career-focused “strivers” (his term) who are entering the second half of life (the article and book both also mention over 50).

As someone about to turn 55 and who is also in the last few weeks of six months’ notice before a major job change I thought this might be of interest – and this was reinforced for me when I saw (which I had not realised until I started the book) that the author draws on religious ideas – in particular Catholicism and Buddhism.

The author is a writer for the Atlantic Magazine – and the book is I think based on his much of his writing here and his “How to Build a Happy Life” podcast.

Some of the key ideas in the book:

Striver Curse: People who strive to be excellent at what they do often wind up finding their inevitable decline terrifying, their successes increasingly unsatisfying, and their relationships lacking.

Professional Decline is inevitable and coming (much) sooner than you think: the author includes various statistics of when many knowledge workers/scientists/artistic professions reach their peak. As a one time mathematician (where it has been said for year that your peak research age is before 30) I was perhaps more familiar with this than most – but its certainly interesting to see the evidence he amasses for professions (e.g. malpractice suites for doctors). A second and in the author’s eyes related set of statistics relates to half-life : the age at which half of your productivity is done – and which he finds is 20 years after career commencement. For me this was not such a shocking statistic as I guess most people assume they will do a career for around 40 years it felt like simply linear interpolation, but the author also tries to explain it better with a graph of peak productivity and its decline from a similar point (he I think gets a little confused over the difference between what is effectively a mode and a mean). In either case though the key is that from say 40-45 you are in decline in most professions and he give many examples of how this then causes the dissatisfaction most strivers are cursed with.

The Second Curve: this is I would say the key idea and for me the best takeaway of the book (and I think the author may agree). Based in a 1971 book by Cattell he talks about the two types of intelligence and their different curves: Fluid intelligence !”raw smarts”) – which is the type that declines very early, sometimes even in the 30s; Crystallised intelligence (“the ability to use a stock of knowledge learnt in the past”) which tends to grow even into the 60s (and possibly not even then). His strong advice is to actively jump from one curve to the other. He posits that this implies for his readers a move to instruction later in life – his main focus seems to be on actually moving firms/careers into some form of teaching or coaching but for me it seemed to support an idea of moving into a more senior professional role where you can mentor and direct a team of younger professionals – relying on them for the latest techniques (in my case for example big data and machine learning; SQL and Python) while you attempt to bring years of battle scars and domain knowledge (in my case – navigation of cycles and deep insurance expertise).

I must admit that for me (and symbolically appropriately at around page 40) the book itself declined in real insightful ideas after this point, although equally appropriately that was perhaps because it then moved into the area of more learned and experienced wisdom and advice.

Not all of this interested me – but some ideas that did:

A discussion of success addiction and the associated addiction of workaholism – he cleverly describes this as self-objectification (objectifying yourself by what you do, how you look, what you earn etc.) and perfectionism

The idea of chipping away at your life to get to what is really worthwhile – he again cleverly describes this as a reverse bucket list where you each year reduce your desires to what will make you truly happy and tick off another striving you have realised does not. He talks about the dangers of defining satisfaction as getting what you want, and defining success as having more than others.
The importance of pondering your death – as a Christian this perhaps comes very naturally, but I was struck by the scene described in “About Schmidt” about a retired insurance Chief Actuary revisiting his old workplace to find he has quickly been dismissed as of no longer needed – particularly striking as an insurance Chief Actuary about to transition roles!

The seven big predictors of being happy: Don’t smoke, Avoid Alcohol, Healthy Body Weight, Stay physically active (walk every day), Develop an adaptive coping style. Practice continuing education, Seek stable long-term relationships (the most important and the author argues ideally involves a stable long term partners plus a group of genuinely close friends (and both should be cultivated and invested in and that true friendships are unlikely to be found by a leader at work)

The author sums the book up via seven words:

Use things
Love people
Worship the divine

Overall I found this an interesting book with plenty to ponder, if perhaps rather ironically struggling to find much deep or purposeful in the second half of the book

I don't usually read self-help book but the title of this one attracted me. I found it interesting, challenging, and full of food for thought.
There's a lot going on when you live the second half of your life and I liked the approach.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine