I wish that booksellers wouldn’t tempt their readers to a three for the price of two offer especially while waiting for another delayed train on Waterloo Station. We all love a bargain – thank you Foyles – your stock are always carefully and enticingly packaged and set out. If I had my way I would ask you to run the trains!

This book struck me for a number of reasons. The concept of  Liminality was used and discussed as was a careful attention to the notion of Third Age and its creative possibilities. I saw that it was grounded in the narratives of peoples lives with an extensive use of stories. It looked well organised.  I have had a number of recent conversations where I have listened to people around my age thinking about what might be next for them. Finally a couple of close friends are retiring and bold enough to ask me about my plans as I loiter around the tender age of 63.

Hall and Stokes describe themselves as entrepreneurs and leaders. They offer a fusion of theory, philosophy and psychology in a carefully curated book with eight sections. I read it in one sitting and a mark of its impact are the number of markers in the book which I shall go back to for a second sitting in due course.

This captures the ambition

‘Changes occur all the time. They can be identifiable and dramatic, or they can emerge imperceptibly, creeping up on you until one day you realise your foundations are less solid than you imagined. At this point in your life you need to find a new path.’

There is a realism about the difficulties we find in negotiating the geography of transition. Work is never easy or predictable and these chapters chart its complexity and challenge. Work is for many people the bedrock of our identity. This book invited us to think about and plan for embracing the time of our lives when we might want to or are forced to end the relentless full on demands of full time work.  

Changing Gear looks at why work is such an important part of a person’s identity, and how challenging it can be when it’s time to change gear, can be both transformative and life giving. There is psychological insight, practical advice and exercises all designed to enable the reader to make the right kinds of decisions. 

This book is also about the third age and how we might anticipate these generative years for good. It engages with these task, in part,  by showing the reader a range of scenarios where individuals have changed gear. Some of the dilemmas are self inflicted and others part of the very unpredictable world of work and organisational life. 

Reading a book is one thing – what you do with what you read is inevitably quite another. There are parts of this wisdom that I shall be putting to use on my own journey and for those who I work with in supervision. Practical, realistic, grounded and liberative are the adjectives that I most associate with this stimulating read. Thank you Jan and Jon.