Category Archives: Well Being

Preview: Bert Hinkler biography to be published August

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I’m delighted to tell you that my book, Hustling Hinkler: The short tumultuous life of an Australian aviator, will be in the bookshops and online in August. The publisher, Hachette Australia, have now posted details on their website. I’ve been working on this book for several years, and it’s based on research I’ve done on three continents. I hope readers will be as satisfied with the outcome as I am.

Hustling Hinkler tells the remarkable story of Bert Hinkler, who rose from humble beginnings in the sugar town of Bundaberg in coastal Queensland, Australia, to become a world-famous long-distance pilot. On the ground, however, things weren’t always quite so smooth …

Click here for a preview of the cover and a brief synopsis of the story of Hustling Hinkler.

Meanwhile, I did another newspaper interview this week about my e-book, published in March, Extending your use-by date:Why retirement age is only a number, and have been invited to speak about it at a library event at the Gold Coast.  Extending your use-by date  is available through the publisher, www.xoum.com.au, and  Amazon.com,  iBookstore and Kobo.

Are you less ‘thought-rich’ as you grow older?

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In a recent interview, British author, Ian McEwan (Atonement, On Chesil Beach, Sweet Tooth) said that, for him, writing the perfect novel is a race against time because as we grow older we become less ‘thought-rich’. Speaking to the host of the Australian ABC television program, ‘Jennifer Byrne presents’, he referred to ‘slow neural depopulation’ in writers in their 60s. For me, this is too pessimistic a view. Neurons are the brain’s message-carrying cells, and it was once thought that we were born with a lifetime’s consignment. However, according to the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, while some cells certainly die, there is an emerging (but still controversial) view among neuroscientists that neurogenesis (the scientific word for the birth of neurons) is a lifelong process.

From my own experience, although occasionally a word I am looking for takes a moment to come to me, I don’t yet feel that I’m less ‘thought-rich’. In fact, I think my writing is getting better as I grow older. That could be an indulgent misconception, of course, but at least I’m being published. McEwan said he was at his peak as a writer at around 45, whereas I was doing something else at that age (including finishing my PhD while working full-time), so I can’t make the same comparison. Until there’s evidence to the contrary, however, or someone gives me a nudge, I’ll continue to believe I have lots of good writing left in me yet.

Managing the ageing workforce

I recently met up with a former colleague I hadn’t seen for almost 20 years, Geoff Pearman, a New Zealander currently living near Brisbane. In the past few years, Geoff and I have independently developed similar interests – in the ageing workforce. I have written about it in Extending your use-by date, as well as in my academic research, and Geoff has founded a company, Partners in Change, to help organisations manage their ageing workforces. His initiative was stimulated by a conference session he attended in Vancouver in 2007 where he heard Marc Freedman, author and founder of encore.com, discuss the continuing issue of baby boomers retiring from work. Geoff says there was no shortage of reports on ageing populations, but he realised that there were no strategies for companies to utilise older workers to meet ongoing skills shortages. It’s an issue that’s not going to go away soon, and already Geoff is working with a number of organisations.

700,000 listeners can’t be wrong (?)

According to the media monitoring service of Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia (where I work part-time), the string of radio interviews and the TV interview I did for Extending your use-by date officially reached almost 700,000 people across Australia (and across the Tasman via Radio NZ). I don’t know how those numbers are arrived at, but the university’s Director of Communications assured me they are ‘official figures’. It seems an enormous number, and a bit overwhelming to think that even a fraction of those might have heard me talk about the book.

QUESTION: For older people: do you think you are becoming less ‘thought-rich’ as you head into your later years; For those not yet old: at what age do you think you will reach your working or other peak (or have you passed it)?   To reply, please leave a comment (below).

Extending your use-by date: why retirement age is only a number by Dr Darryl Dymock, is available through the publisher, www.xoum.com.au, and  Amazon.com,  iBookstore and Kobo.

10 tips for thinking about your use-by date – Tip #1

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If you are in the workforce, you have five options as you head towards what’s generally known as ‘retirement age’: continue full-time in your current job for as long as you can or want; make a change in your current job (go part-time, work from home); try a different job or start a new business (an encore career); retire, but later go back to work in some form or become a volunteer; or simply retire.

If you want to consider not retiring – for a while, or ever, I’ve extracted ten lessons from the experience of a whole bunch of workers who have stayed in the workforce into older age. Here’s the first of those tips:

Tip #1: Prepare in advance Sometimes we become so immersed in what we’re doing, perhaps even become complacent in a job we do day in, day out, that we’re into our late 50s or early 60s before we know it, and haven’t thought about whether we want to retire or not. Isobel hadn’t done much planning for her retirement, but thought she’d retire from her full-time receptionist job when she turned 60. When that magic age came, however, she changed her mind. ‘I felt there were still things that I needed to do, that I still had quite a bit to offer in the workforce, even though I’d passed “retirement age”,’ she says. But she did think she would scale back from full-time. If it’s within your control, consider in advance what your options are if you continue to work,  and prepare for the one you prefer.  As you grow older, continually revise your plan (which may only be in your head) to suit your changing circumstances and any change in your thinking.

If you decide not to retire, or don’t know if you want to retire, what do you need to consider, apart from financial arrangements?

  • Your reasons for continuing to work – money, social contact, self-esteem, sense of purpose, other? Will these be enough to sustain you if you work into older age?
  • Your health and your physical and cognitive capabilities – how well equipped are you physically and mentally to continue working?
  • Your strengths and weaknesses as a worker – what skills, knowledge and talents have you built up that can help you work into the future?
  • The sort of work you want to do – same or different? If different, what are the options, what preparation or training do you need, what contacts do you have, what pathways will get you there; if the same, are you up-to-date, or do you need to upskill? Can you negotiate with your employer?
  • Whether you want to work full-time or part-time, and whether for an employer or for yourself. What are the options and what are the pros and cons of each? If you move into your own business or a consultancy, how will you support yourself in the transition phase?
  • Your partner’s intentions – if both have been working, and one wants to retire, and the other wants to continue working, you need to agree in advance how that will work, the implications for your relationship, and perhaps decide how long the arrangement might continue.
  • If money is not a major consideration, will volunteering meet your needs if you stop paid work, or even help you transition to different sort of work? What volunteering options are there that will make use of your knowledge, skills and talents?

Adapted from Extending your use-by date: why retirement age is only a number by Dr Darryl Dymock, available through the publisher, www.xoum.com.au, and  Amazon.com,  iBookstore and Kobo.

Question: Around what age do you think we should start thinking about when or whether to retire from paid work?

Please click on ‘Leave a comment’ (below) to reply.