ABSTRACT
Manual workers who have been working for forty years—in the steel mill for instance, or in the cab of a locomotive—are physically and mentally tired long before they reach the end of their normal life expectancy, that is, well before they reach even traditional retirement age. In the United States there are a fairly substantial number of middle-aged women who have worked for twenty years, in business or in local government, have risen to a junior management position, and now, at age forty-five and with the children grown, enter law school. Managing oneself, however, is a revolution in human affairs. It requires new and unprecedented things from the individual, and especially from the knowledge worker. In the United States, mobility is accepted. But even in the United States, workers outliving organizations—and with it the need to be prepared for a different second half of one’s life—is a revolution for which practically no one is prepared.
