How Good Is Your Second Half

I‘m right smack in the middle of half-time, as I‘m turning fifty. Buford slyly got me to engage with his work at the very moment when it will do me the most good. I do not have the answers, but Buford has given me—and all those who read his book—the right question: Why capitulate to irrelevance after we have spent decades accumulating empirical wisdom?

In the first half of the twentieth century, people largely viewed work as a necessary evil, a way to provide security and comfort. Then, in the 1960s, people began to demand more from their careers—they wanted meaning and a sense of purpose. And now Bob Buford comes along with the next challenge: to think beyond the narrow bounds of a satisfying and successful career to a meaningful and useful entire life. He asserts that the old model of arduous career followed by relaxing retirement should be jettisoned, replaced by the idea that the second half can—and should—be more creative, more impactful, more meaningful, more adventurous, filled with more learning and contribution than the first half. A successful first fifty years should be viewed as nothing more than a good start to your life.

Most who read Buford‘s work have already attained success, and find it wanting. And when we reach half- time, when we know we have fewer days ahead than behind—when our mentors and teachers and moms and dads begin to die, the idea of just “more success” does not really answer the question “What‘s the point?” Have you answered the question, “What‘s the ONE thing, not two things or three or four, but the ONE big thing?” Have you written your own epitaph yet? Have you articulated a strategy for multiplying your personal contribution by 100X? Have you answered “How much is enough?” Have you done “seismic feedback testing” to discover where you can best be of service? Have you organized your remaining time around two essential elements of a complete life: self-realization and community?

In puzzling on Buford‘s questions, I have come to see two distinct approaches to self-renewal, and I encourage you consider both as you read this book. The first lies in the late John Gardner‘s idea of re-potting ourselves into entirely new activities as we move from success to significance, changing our activities from career to contribution. Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (and author), once told me that he planned to learn and keep growing as much between seventy and eighty-eight as between zero and eighteen. When challenged on this, Gardner said that he knew a little bit more about learning at seventy than when he was zero. Gardner pushed many people to think about “re-potting” themselves every ten to fifteen years, by throwing themselves into new challenges that extract hidden personal strengths. Buford challenges us to see that some of our most significant and meaningful contributions should come in the second half, defying the view that creativity drops with age. By re-potting, you can once again recreate the sense of excitement and imagination experienced in your teens or twenties, again and again and again. Repotting also has that wonderful side benefit of slowing down your time. Think about how vivid your personal experience was of the first few weeks of moving to a new school, new city, new company, or new country - the very newness and novelty heightened your senses and deepened your memories - compared with how you experienced the fiftieth or one hundredth week, when life has become routine.

The second path to self-renewal lies in seeing your primary activity, the same activity you‘ve pursued for your first half, as the primary means to renewal. For some, the best choice lies on the second path, choosing to renew within a chosen genre or field, much as an artist grows within his or her craft. Beethoven did not reach half time and then give up music to renew; he stayed focused and created some of his most radical, path-breaking music. Would Beethoven been of more use giving up music to find significance?

There remains one huge difference between a sport and life: in football (or in a marathon or on a mountain climb) you know exactly when you‘ve crossed the halfway mark. In life, you might think you‘ve reached halftime, but in fact be at mile twenty-five of the twenty-six-mile marathon, or in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter, or perhaps, if fortunate, still only a third of the way up the mountain. We only get one life, and the urgency of getting on with what we‘re meant to do increases every day. The clock is ticking.

JIM COLLINS
Boulder, Colorado

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