The author/lawyer/consultant Ida O. Abbott has built a multifaceted life and career around important yet not-always-understood areas such as retirement, aging, and mentoring.
I first discovered Ida’s work in her April 13, 2020 Deborah Kalb Book Q&A, when she discussed her book Retirement by Design: A Guided Workbook for Creating a Happy and Purposeful Future. In the interview with Deborah, Ida remarks that “I much prefer the Spanish term for retirement, “jubilación,” which suggests joy, liberation, freedom to do what you want. When you look forward to doing something you enjoy, want to try or are excited about, you tend to have a more positive view of retirement.”
Ida has also created a Retirement by Design e-course, which includes exercises around the following areas, drawn from the concept of Design Thinking: Empathy, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. For instance, within Empathy, she advises “Get inside the shoes of your future self. What will be important to that version of you?” And in Ideate: “Draw, scribble, brainstorm, and throw around as many different retirement scenarios as you can come up with.”
I’m grateful to Ida for answering my questions about her life and career. With the new year just beginning, her work may hold significant relevance for people considering major decisions about how (and when) to embark on their next chapters.
For the non-specialist reader, how would you characterize your work and research around aging and the evolution of the concept of retirement?
I came into this field as a natural outgrowth of my talent and career development work, as many of my clients, colleagues and friends started to approach or enter their 60s and asked me for guidance about “what’s next.” These were successful professionals and leaders in their fields. They were ready for a change but not ready to stop being active and engaged with the world, and they had no suitable role models or useful information. As I looked deeper into the field of aging and retirement, I saw this as a huge and growing need. The conventional concept of retirement – artificial to begin with – was obsolete for many people. But what should replace it? The answer would probably be different for everyone, depending on their background and circumstances. So I developed an approach, using design thinking, that would help people figure out and create the happy, fulfilling futures they wanted.
How has your background as a lawyer informed your writing and your consulting work, especially regarding aging and retirement?
It helps me understand my lawyer clients better and makes working with people who are not lawyers much easier! I have been a lawyer and worked with lawyers for almost 50 years. By inclination and/or training, lawyers are highly resistant to change. Many consider law a calling, love what they do and want to continue until they can’t. But others keep at it because they don’t see any alternatives or because they think of retirement as the end of everything meaningful. Being a lawyer is a source of purpose, identity, wealth, prestige, community, and importance. It’s hard to let go of all that when you’re unsure of what’s ahead. I make it easier for them.
My experience and understanding of law firms is especially valuable in my work helping firms design effective succession and retirement processes. It’s an area that has been largely ignored but is growing in importance because firms want to maintain their stability, and retain key client relationships, when partners retire.
Has your work and research around mentoring changed since writing Retirement by Design?
Mentoring in the sense of an older, wiser person guiding and fostering a younger one, is ancient. My work on retirement reinforces the value of mentoring, but my concept of mentoring varies a bit from the ancient one. As people age, their desire for legacy, service, and sharing what they’ve learned over their lifetimes directly meets the yearning of younger people for guidance, support, personal attention, and inspiration. But the best mentoring is mutual, i.e., we teach and learn from each other, regardless of age. Older people may have more to impart but younger ones have fresh ideas, new perspectives, and challenges different from those we faced. Young people keep us involved, alert, and connected – as much a benefit to us as our knowledge is to them.