And we do spend so much of our lives at work, so it seems natural that this sort of backward-looking regrets about the past, a lot of that does center not on our relationships or sort of our social life our in the real world, but you know, in the office. And that can feel very oppressive.ĪLISON BEARD: Yeah. There’s so much that has to be done just to keep your family or your business running.
And I think some of it has to do with a sense of sort of backward-looking regret or missing out or things you haven’t done, or mistakes and misfortunes - parts of your past that you now have to come to terms with that constrain what options you have and what your life can be like.Īnd some of it is more focused on what you’re doing in the present, and often midlife - at work and in one’s personal life - is a time of feeling like it’s project after project. I think talking about the midlife crisis, or the midlife malaise is a little bit misleading. KIERAN SETIYA: I think it’s a cluster of different things. So I think these two do run in parallel and probably have some of the same kinds of causes and explanations and maybe treatments.ĪLISON BEARD: What are some of those specific things that start to get in our heads when we hit middle age? So it bottoms out, I think, in the work satisfaction studies, it bottoms out a little earlier around 40, exactly the right time for you. But some of their earlier studies were specifically on work satisfaction. It starts high in youth, it bottoms out in your 40s, and then it picks up again in older age. And it suggests that, in general, life satisfaction has this gentle “U” shape. So the most recent reliable research on people’s life satisfaction by age comes from economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald. KIERAN SETIYA: I think they’re linked, and they run in parallel. Kieran, thanks so much for coming on the show.ĪLISON BEARD: So what evidence do we have that lots of people suffer, not just from a midlife crisis, but a mid-career crisis? Are they two different things, or linked? That’s why I wanted him to be my first guest. But it’s a surgery.ĪLISON BEARD: Now, I wouldn’t normally turn to a philosopher for help, but when I read Kieran’s book, I found it really helpful. One of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. 30s, you raise your family, you make a little money, and you think to yourself, What happened to my 20s? 40s, you grow a little pot belly.
Just listen to Billy Crystal describe it in the movie City Slickers.īILLY CRYSTAL: When you’re a teenager, you think you can do anything, and you do. Of course, it’s common to feel this way at midlife. Had I advanced far and fast enough? Was I happy in my job? Did I want to do something different? But a few years ago, around the time I turned 40, I started to ask myself if I was really doing the right thing with my life. I spent my entire career in journalism: a year at a local newspaper in Virginia, a decade at the Financial Times, and for the past nine years, as an editor at HBR, which is a terrific place to work.
He’s a philosophy professor at MIT who wrote a book called Mid-life, and the HBR article, “Facing your Mid-Career Crisis.” I’ll admit that I tracked him down partly for personal reasons. Today I’ll be talking about mid-career crises with Kieran Setiya. We want to bring you the best ideas in management from the world’s leading thinkers, and help you connect them to your own lives, so you can run your business more effectively, and better navigate the world of work. You may have heard me on the show before, but this is my first as an official co-host, joining the amazing Curt Nickisch and producer Mary Dooe, and I’m really happy to be here. He is the author of the HBR article “Facing Your Mid-Career Crisis.”ĪLISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review.
Motivated by his own crisis, Setiya started looking for ways to cope and discovered several strategies that can help all of us shift our perspective on our careers and get out of the slump without jumping ship. The answer isn’t always to find a new job or lobby for a promotion.
Some have regrets about paths not taken or serious professional missteps others feel a sense of boredom or futility in their ongoing streams of work. Kieran Setiya, a philosophy professor at MIT, says many people experience a mid-career crisis.