The 100-Year Life

A long life could be one of the great gifts that those of us alive today enjoy.

Over the last 200 years, life expectancy has expanded at a steady rate of more than two years every decade. Millions of people can look forward to a long life and this will create pressure on how they live and how society and businesses operate.

Just as technology and globalization, year by year, have transformed the way we live, so the changes needed to make the most of a 100-year life will do the same.

Making the most of the gift of a long life requires everyone to face up to the truth of working into your 70s or even 80s.

You cannot have a long and financially successful career if your skills, health, and relationships are depleted.

When life extends, most people will have no choice but to work a great deal longer. Without these longer periods of work, it is very tough to accumulate sufficient savings to fund a retirement that lasts at least half as long as the total working career.

For most of us, while money is indeed important, it is not an end in itself. We make money for what it can deliver for us. For most people, a good life would be one with a supportive family, great friends, strong skills and knowledge, and good physical and mental health. These are all intangible assets and it is not surprising they are as important as financial assets when it comes to building a productive life.

In a 100-year life, the emphasis should be on acquiring stocks of skills and knowledge that are valuable—in other words, they are in demand and useful—and rare.

The strong relationships you develop enable knowledge to flow easily between people and help bolster your productivity and innovation.

What is particularly crucial to developing productive assets are small work-based networks of colleagues that have strong, trusting relationships between each other.

In building productive assets, a good reputation can be enormously important as it enables your valuable stocks of skills and knowledge to be really utilized in a productive way.

Following best practice advice on healthy living is a cornerstone of making the most of the gift of longevity. What you eat, how much you eat, and whether you take regular and specific exercise are all important aspects of your investment in intangible assets.

Building and sustaining vitality assets is in part about managing the triggers of stress.

Explorers are investigating the world around them, discovering what is out there, how it works, what they like and what they are good at.

A new stage of economic activity is emerging that involves creating novel forms of entrepreneurship or building new patterns of partnerships and firms. It happens when a person forsakes a conventional career path or start up their own entrepreneurial activities.

The 100-Year Life is for people who understand that the past is not a predictor of the future; who want to learn about options and not just constraints; and who want to positively influence the working life they lead now and into the future. To those people who want to maximize their chances of making a long life a gift rather than a curse, we invite you to take the first steps towards creating that gift.