As a baby boomer entering my mid 70s, I see 2024 not as the year to start winding down into retirement, but as an opportunity for reinvention and living life to the fullest in my third act. The old blueprint of college, career, retirement no longer applies. With medical advancements enabling longer active lifespans, it makes little sense to play golf for 20 years until total incapacitation sets in. We boomers have so much still to offer the world – wisdom, perspective, skills, time. But we need a new blueprint on how to maximize this time.
Central to this is transforming our relationship with time itself. After years on the hamster wheel of work and child-rearing, there can be a sense of disorientation when those anchoring structures disappear from life. It’s easy to panic and try to fill time doing low-value activities just so the days feel occupied. I propose instead using this newfound time abundance to focus more deliberately on activities that bring joy, meaning and health.
This starts with taking an inventory of how time is currently spent and restructuring one’s life accordingly. My own audit revealed far too much time watching lowbrow television and doom scrolling social media. These passive activities breed anxiety and make time feel like it’s slipping away without purpose. I’ve now limited TV and news consumption to one hour per evening. This created several extra hours each day to devote to more meaningful and fulfilling interests.
The key insight is that how we choose to use time shapes so much of our subjective well being. Use it wisely by regularly reviewing where time goes and reallocating toward priorities like learning, creating, moving, connecting with loved ones, or volunteering in the community.
Related to time is the boomer relationship with technology. We didn’t grow up with screens dominating our attention. Yet now digital devices exert an incredible gravitational pull on our eyes and minds. I’ve found setting boundaries around technology is critical so it empowers rather than diminishes my third act.
Beyond setting healthy technology parameters, we boomers must also leverage the power of tech to fulfill our ambitions in areas like remote work, passion projects, entrepreneurship, content creation, and online learning. The information and opportunity now available at our fingertips is staggering compared to the analog world in which we came of age.
Applying an openness to navigate this digital world paired with wisdom to do so in a balanced manner offers boomers the best of both worlds. We remember life before the dizzying pace of disruption took hold while also tapping into new advances improving health, relationships, knowledge and more that our ancestors couldn’t fathom.
This blend of old and new also applies to our attitudes on aging itself. We boomers grew up with fairly rigid scripts around career and retirement – work full throttle until 65 then stop completely for lawn bowling and bingo. But expectations are changing as more of us desire continued challenge and generativity in our 60s, 70s and even 80s while also craving greater flexibility, lifestyle freedom and purpose-driven work.
My advice is to approach this third act as a prototyper tinkering with various social roles, schedules and vocations until discovering the right fit. track what brings energy versus depletion. Say yes to innovation and shedding outdated assumptions. Say no to maximizing busyness at the expense of wellbeing.
Here the notion of flow states is instructive – those magical moments where we lose track of time because we’re so immersed in creative work or another activity that lights us up inside. As our ambitions shift from status and achievement to meaning and adventure, flow states act like a north star guiding our reinvention journey. Pay attention to when you feel deeply engaged, impassioned, absorbed in the present. Then restructure life to spend more hours doing those activities, whether it’s coding an app, writing a novel, mentoring youth or hand-crafting custom furniture. Passion and purpose supplant paychecks as the measures that matter.
This emphasis on flow, innovation and shedding assumptions brings me to the importance of mental health and cognitive fitness in our 60s, 70s and 80s. The boomer blueprint must include proactive strengthening of emotional resilience and mental acuity if we hope to thrive (and survive!) the disruptive decade ahead. This encompasses everything from adopting a regular mindfulness practice to doing intensive brain training programs to intermittent fasting to microdosing psychedelics for neurogenesis. Discuss with your health providers options that resonate and commit to daily habits boosting mental wellness. Protect your most precious asset – your mind.
Fortifying emotional and mental fitness also means releasing regret, resentment and other baggage accumulated over six decades of living. As Viktor Frankl wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” We all carry pain from the past. But in our response to process and let go of that pain lies the path forward. Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Write apology letters you’ll never send. Have dialogues with your negative inner voice. Seek counseling if helpful. But don’t haul bitterness into your elder years. The past is gone, over, can’t be changed. Your future awaits, open and brimming with potential for rebirth.
And remember – the future isn’t real either! Beyond releasing the past, the boomer blueprint requires staying grounded in the only true reality – this present moment. How often do we vacate the now, lured away by regrets, memories, hypotheticals and fantasies? To drop into the flow states most meaningful in life requires full presence without judgment. As Ram Dass famously said, “Be here now.” Not then. Not when. Now. Align actions with values in this instant. Breathe, observe, tap into senses, relinquish expectations. Train the muscle of sustained attention with activities like yoga, drawing, dancing, pottery-making, hiking, conversation without screens.
The more we practice such embodied presence, the less we fixate on what might happen tomorrow or next year. This fretting feeds anxiety and exacerbates conditions like insomnia, addiction, depression and cognitive decline. Instead of bracing for the worst case scenario in the future so we can prevent or solve it now, adopt an openness to what emerges organically in cooperation with universal intelligence. Let go of trying to control life’s flow. Destressing about hypothetical futures allows more resources to act skillfully when actual futures become the now.
Some posit this present-moment awareness gets amplified by certain compounds and molecules. As clinical trials advance exploring benefits of psychedelic substances like psilocybin and MDMA for conditions ranging from PTSD to eating disorders, we boomers would be foolish not to have an open discussion with medical teams about potential therapeutic applications to enhance our aging journey. The compound 5-MeO-DMT, derived from the Sonoran desert toad, occasioned my most profound and life-changing mystical experience, obliterating fears about aging and death while nurturing appreciation for the sacredness of each moment.
Beyond psychedelics, cannabinoids like CBD and THC also hold exciting potential for healthy aging if ingesting consciously. Their anti-inflammatory properties may delay disease and deterioration in the brain and body. Small doses before bed tend to improve sleep quality without residual grogginess. And the plant’s medicinal compounds can accentuate sensorial pleasures ranging from food to massage to music. My point is not that we boomers should recklessly smoke weed and trip balls every day. Rather, informed and intentional experimentation with these healing plants and fungi could prove integral to positive aging. Just be sure to source ethically and start slowly under a doctor’s supervision.
Wrapping up this boomer blueprint manifesto, I want to acknowledge that part of me resists offering such decisive advice about how peers should navigate late life’s open waters. Who am I to judge or prescribe? My hope is just to share insights from my ongoing journey of aging intentionally while stoking motivation to envision this chapter not as decline but as an adventure filled with possibilities.
The future remains ever uncertain. But instead of shrinking from ambiguity, the boomer blueprint calls us to expand into it, awed by life’s incredible gift of now. So in 2024 and the decade beyond, here’s to reinventing systems and structures that no longer serve our highest good. Here’s to dancing with technology as a partner instead of letting it rule as master. Here’s to interbeing with people both younger and older in quest of collective flourishing. And most importantly, here’s to waking up fully to this present moment before it slips into memory. For here lies the raw materials enabling our dreams. Onward!