About Dr. Venki Padmanabhan
From the coalfields of Dhanbad to the assembly plant floor in Detroit Venki has had a good 40 years of experience trying to connect what people need with what capital wants. If you count the number of books read, re-read and unread on his shelves (at home and donated across many companies) you will know his curiosity to grasp the human condition and how, if at all, its experience can be improved. Moved by music (as his mother tied his right hand to the stalk of his sitar in third grade to ensure complete riyaaz) and a desire to understand how technology denigrates or elevates humans, he is now settling in to a period of reading, writing, publishing, teaching and leading while he waits for his children to hurry up and create grandchildren!
Jubilacion
Pursue your “Only”
The Spanish word for retirement is Jubilacion. Interesting word that connotes one setting a new course or opportunity to live the passion you have been thinking about. And retirement? Sounds more like the beginning of the end. I chose to pen this essay to help give form to my own understanding and approach to this aspect of life, and perhaps in some small measure positively influence the thinking and outcomes of life for one of you. At a minimum I hope you walk away with some good references to read. I write today, as I resigned from my position in manufacturing last week after giving this careful thought and wanted to share while the act was fresh in my mind, and the exhilaration of doing it is still coursing through my veins.
“Only.” I learned the most interesting use of this word from Rama Bijapurkar, who wrote a great book on marketing trying to understand the mind of an Indian customer, and she called her book, “We are like that Only.” I would like to appropriate that word for another purpose here, in using it to describe retirement as our time for “Only.” As in, I will Only do what I like. My “Only” now is defined by my personal interests, reading, writing, publishing, teaching, leading, exercising, eating well and spending time exclusively with those I love. It surely does not connote withdrawal or resignation. Rather, it connotes sharp focus and a dedication to personal causes.
I also want to draw attention to the baggage around retirement that we tend to inherit growing up in India. Limited economic opportunities press many to approach retirement as a time of diminished financial strength, having spent most of what we have between spending money for our children’s education and weddings – and the remaining on securing the health of our parents, and in some cases, our own. We enter with diminished economics and health, and hope that time after 60 is gentle, and that we enjoy some degree of care from our children. I know, many would protest that not to be the case for them. I speak mainly from what I saw my own grandparents, parents and relatives go through in the context of my middle class life in Bihar, Tamil Nadu & Karnataka. Quite often, we do what we see our parents do. And then, there is this deep folklore about the 4 stages of life and that glorified word, “Vanaprastha Ashram”- life of renouncement living in the woods. And I write simply to cause you to pause, reflect on what biases towards this stage of life you carry with you and carefully caste them away.
Having lived in India, Germany and the US, I find some similarities and some differences on how people see retirement in the West. As children are raised to be independent early in life, expenses related to education and marriage are a lot less. Then, there is this thing called Social Security, where based on what you and your employer matched gets put in a trust from which you draw a government “pension” from 62 onwards. So one would argue that retirement should be a lot easier in the west. To the contrary, people tend to spend what they have rather prodigiously, working very hard and long hours sometimes at the expense of their loved ones or health, and tend to enter this time with depleted emotional, physical and financial resources, hoping to incur low medical expenses and allow what they have saved along with social security to tide them over their remaining years.
My argument is to look at your life as a 100 year whole. As early as is possible, on the foundation of strong relationships, finances and core competency, this is the time to embark on your life of “only.” It appears to have fructified for me at 60. With practice, and some luck, who knows, it can happen earlier for you in your 50s or even 40s! As an example, take a look at the call that Gurcharan Das (Author of “The Difficulty of being Good,” a delightfully insightful book on moral dilemmas of life drawn from the Mahabharata) made at the age of 50 walking away from a brilliant career culminating as CEO of Proctor & Gamble India to a life of study and instruction.
Medical science is making astounding progress. Both in the understanding of peak performance aging (Steven Kotler’s books, “The Art of the Impossible” and “Gnar Country” serve as excellent references on pushing your body and mind to reap the rewards of a life already lived well) and extending human life (Venki Ramakrishnan’s recent book, “Why We Die: And How We Live: The New Science of Aging and Longevity” is a suitable primer). Like it or not many of us will likely live to a 100. My thinking on this was singularly affected by “A 100 Year Life” by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott that I must have read in my early 50s. This has been deeply reinforced by the work I have read from the Stanford Center on Longevity and their delightful report called, “The New Map of life.” As I have assimilated some of this thinking here is my take on it all.
Say you are guaranteed to live to a 100. Further, imagine that your goal is to live happily till you are 100. Left to your hedonistic devices, at some point your mind/body is likely to start failing. Lets define morbidity as that point where your mental and physical health has breached a low (your personal definition of “quality of life” ) that is no longer acceptable. I learned to understand this through “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande where he explores how medical science tries valiantly to extend life past this point of morbidity essentially committing us to a “prison” where we no longer enjoy life as it is below our minimum criteria (maybe simply the ability to eat and enjoy chocolate ice cream before going to bed at night) and do not die. The worst case scenario is a life where morbidity sets in early and mortality does not come till much later, imprisoning us through that horrible period of resignation to diminishing joy. The best case scenario is to have made all the right choices throughout life, enjoying reasonably good fortune, so that at 100 – when the first sign of morbidity presents itself, mortality sets in and gives us a great escape! Or as the Standard Center for Longevity would say, match your health span to your life span. What factors and choices then do we have to understand to push morbidity ahead to this point of a grand singularity? Through this lens, retirement recedes to nothing – just a date, like your birthdate is in the story of your life.
In very specific order your H100 is a function of: Love, Health & Wealth. By investing in each of these throughout life, there is no such thing as retirement – just a continuous enjoyment of life till the end. Let’s quickly explore these three themes.
What’s love got to do with it? Everything. We get to play the 4P lotteries in life: parents, partner, progeny and playmates. Our mental health relies rather heavily on the love we experience with them. As much as we can, we stay close to our parents, enjoying their love and caring for them, while they are still with us. Then if we are lucky to have children we derive great joy and satisfaction by investing in their growth and development and watching them thrive – even as they raise their own families and give you the exquisite joy of the company of your grandchildren. As you get older, you develop abiding friendships and cultivate them to add joy in pursuing common interests with them or just their enlivening company.
Perhaps the most critical lottery is the choice and fortune one enjoys in winning the one with a life partner. As many would attest, this one human, can lead to much joy in your 100. Select one carefully. Invest a lifetime of love and caring in this person. And in your later years (you can call it retirement if you like) this person will be your greatest provider of H100! So in this definition of retirement, you cannot think of it now when you are 60! Too late! You have to be thinking of it in your 20s! And cultivating these rich sources of love as you age, to be able to harvest it along the way to ensuring that emotional and mental morbidity has no room to take root.
Needless to say, your body has to sustain you till the end. For starters don’t drink ( yes, the latest science is shying away from even one drink a day!) or smoke (I’m staying away from the pot, so far.) Then, as Venki Ramakrishnan says: focus on three simple things: Eat moderately, Sleep well and Exercise regularly. He offers that there is a lot of emerging science that can extend life, but these three essentials may just do enough for us to extend longevity. Aging does not have to be seen as an inevitable long and slow rot with an inexorable slide into depression, loneliness and cognitive decline! Done right, as Gene Cohen states in “The Mature Mind,” with good health and effort, the brain is capable of remodeling itself over time learning to recruit regions so far underutilized. Kotler, definitely makes a case for discovering a “fast geometry” sport (skiing, rowing, swimming, just running or cycling) to recharge and renew our brains, muscles and bones as we experience “flow” and the repeated release of the good neuro-chemicals in our bloodstreams.. Again, this is work we have to start in our 20s, so retirement literally is just a passing phase where you simply alter your place and nature of work!
Ah! Wealth. Or money. The bane of our existence. If only there was a bottomless credit card that we could draw on with no need to pay it off. It is what the world is willing to pay you for the value you bring to the game. But you get to choose your game. Your Ikigai: at the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Through a lifetime of experimentation, it is possible to stumble early (or late) into yours. Then you take the money you make, and spend it wisely, abstaining from extravagance, not buying things to buttress your self esteem or impress others and save the remaining. Save early. Engage your 4 Ps to help build your wealth. Honestly, if started early – the miracle of compound interest and S&P or NSE returns renders the possibility of living off your investments and social security quite attainable to all. Armed with a decent nest egg, you can elect to focus on your”only” no longer enchained to earn a living off of tasks that no longer hold your interest or ability.
To draw this discussion then to a close, retirement may just be the time when your reap all the investments you have made through your life and arrive at your “Only.” Start now.
Pursue your Only.
Books and articles referred to:
- “We Are Like That Only: Understanding the Logic of Consumer India” by Rama Bijapurkar
- “The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma” by Gurcharan Das
- “The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer” and “Gnar Country: Growing Old, Staying Rad” by Steven Kotler
- “Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality” by Venki Ramakrishnan
- “The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity” by Andrew J Scott, Lynda Gratton
- “The New Map of Life” by Stanford Center on Longevity
- “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” by Atul Gawande
- “The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain” by Gene Cohen
