I’ve always been fascinated by the strange things we decide are valuable.
Take antiques. The older they are, the more we seem to admire them. An eighteenth-century dining table is a treasure. A vintage bottle of Bordeaux can sell for thousands. A Stradivarius violin is almost beyond value. Even old cars become classics. Apparently, if something survives long enough, we start calling it “timeless” instead of “old.”
Then there are people.
An experienced surgeon? Wonderful. In fact, if I’m lying on an operating table waiting for heart surgery, I sincerely hope the surgeon has done it a few thousand times before. Imagine the conversation.
“Good morning, Mags. Your surgeon has successfully performed this operation over four thousand times.”
“Oh dear,” I whisper. “Isn’t she a bit…experienced?”
“Would you prefer the chap who’s only done it twice?”
“Oh yes, absolutely. I do like people who bring a fresh perspective to open-heart surgery.”
We laugh because it’s absurd. Experience is exactly what we want when the stakes are high.
The same applies to airline pilots. If the captain announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is my first solo flight. I only qualified yesterday, but I’m full of enthusiasm,” I imagine the cabin would become surprisingly religious.
Yet, somewhere between the operating theatre and the boardroom, something extraordinary happens. Experience, which we admire almost everywhere else, suddenly becomes a liability. We stop calling people experienced and start calling them “overqualified”, “too expensive” or “not quite the right fit.” Apparently wisdom has an expiry date.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised that perhaps we’ve all bought into a series of lies about ageing. At first, I thought there was only one. Then I realised there were four.
Lie Number One: Longer Lives Automatically Mean Better Lives
We have become obsessed with living longer.
Every week another headline tells us the secret. Coffee is good for us. No, coffee is bad. Red wine will help us live forever. Actually, it won’t. Walk ten thousand steps. No, seven thousand is enough because someone has done another study. Frankly, by the time science finishes arguing with itself, half of us will have died of confusion.
We’re measuring everything now. Heart rate. Blood pressure. Body fat. Sleep quality. Stress levels. Biological age. My watch has become so opinionated that every morning it gives me a report on how badly I slept, even when I wake up feeling perfectly refreshed. Apparently, my own opinion is no longer required.
Don’t misunderstand me. Living longer is a remarkable achievement. Better healthcare, nutrition and medical science have transformed our lives. We should celebrate that.
What puzzles me is that we’ve become incredibly good at extending lifespan while giving remarkably little thought to extending purpose.
It’s a bit like proudly announcing you’ve booked an extra three weeks’ holiday and then realising you’ve forgotten to decide where you’re going.
Longer is not the same as better.
If it were, every wealthy nation would also be the happiest. We know that’s simply not true. Loneliness, depression and suicide don’t politely disappear just because GDP goes up or life expectancy increases. We’ve learned how to add years to life. We haven’t yet learned how to consistently add life to those years.
Lie Number Two: Retirement Is the Reward
For decades we’ve sold retirement as the finish line. Work hard. Save diligently. Retire. Live happily ever after. It has all the ingredients of a fairy tale, except real life has an irritating habit of refusing to follow the script. Some people absolutely flourish in retirement. They travel, volunteer, learn new skills and finally have time for all those things they postponed while earning a living. Others discover something they never expected.
One client arrived with a retirement plan that would have impressed NASA. It contained investment forecasts, pension calculations, travel schedules and, for reasons I never fully understood, projected tomato production. Every conceivable financial risk had been considered. Six months later he rang me.
“The tomatoes are thriving,” he said.
“I’m not.”
He didn’t miss the meetings. He didn’t miss the endless emails. He certainly didn’t miss office politics. He missed being needed. That struck me. Nobody had warned him that purpose doesn’t arrive on your doorstep the day after retirement carrying a bottle of champagne and introducing itself. Retirement isn’t just about leaving work. It’s about leaving an identity. And identities are much harder to replace than salaries.
Lie Number Three: Experience Naturally Becomes More Valuable
This one sounds obvious. Surely experience becomes more valuable over time? Well…only if somebody continues to value it. Otherwise it quietly gathers dust.
Companies spend years investing in talented people. They encourage them to develop expertise, lead teams, solve problems and mentor younger colleagues. Then, just when all of that accumulated knowledge reaches its peak, many organisations begin wondering how quickly they can replace it with someone cheaper. It’s extraordinary when you stop to think about it. Imagine buying a magnificent Steinway grand piano and using it as a plant stand. Technically, you can. But you’d have to question your judgement. That’s exactly what we do with human experience.
We don’t lack knowledge. We often lack imagination about what to do with it.
Lie Number Four: People Become Less Relevant Because They Become Older
This is the lie that changed everything for me. Over the years I’ve coached people who were made redundant, people approaching retirement, senior leaders wondering what comes next and professionals trying to rebuild their confidence. Not one of them has ever looked at me and said,
“Mags, the problem is my age.”
Instead they say things like,
“I don’t know where I fit anymore.”
“I’ve lost confidence.”
“I feel invisible.”
“Nobody seems interested in what I know.”
“I don’t know who I am now.”
Notice something? None of those statements is actually about age. They’re about relevance. That was my lightbulb moment. For years I thought I worked in coaching. Then I thought I worked in retirement. Then I thought I was fighting ageism. Now I think those are simply different expressions of the same underlying issue. The real battle isn’t against ageing. The real battle is against irrelevance. Or perhaps, even more accurately, against the belief that we’ve become irrelevant.
Once people believe that, they stop volunteering. They stop applying. They stop learning. They stop mentoring. They stop putting themselves forward. Not because they have nothing left to contribute, but because they’ve quietly concluded that nobody wants what they know. That isn’t just sad. It’s one of the greatest wastes of human potential I can think of. We’re living longer than any generation before us. Many people will spend twenty-five or thirty years beyond full-time employment. Thirty years isn’t a footnote. It’s another chapter of life. Yet we’ve somehow designed society as though contribution has a retirement age. That doesn’t make sense. Not economically. Not psychologically. And certainly not personally.
Which brings me to why I created Forum Next. People often assume it’s about retirement. It isn’t. Others think it’s about longevity. Not really. Longevity is simply the backdrop. Forum Next exists because I believe nobody should become less relevant simply because they become older. Everything else follows from that.
Helping organisations stop sidelining experienced talent. Helping leaders remain relevant in a world transformed by AI. Helping people prepare for retirement psychologically as well as financially. Helping individuals rediscover purpose, identity and contribution, whether that’s through work, mentoring, volunteering, entrepreneurship or something entirely unexpected.
The question that interests me most isn’t, “How long are we going to live?” Medical science has made extraordinary progress answering that one. The question I think we’ve neglected is far more interesting.
How do we continue to matter?
Perhaps the goal was never to stay young. The real challenge is to remain curious, useful, engaged and relevant for as long as we have the privilege of being here. I have a feeling that’s one of the biggest conversations of the next decade.
And I also have a feeling we’ve only just begun
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