#581 The 100 year life with Lynda Gratton (A Career Well Spent Series)

0:00Hi everybody, it's Helen from the Squiggly Careers podcast and before today's episode starts I wanted to let you know about something that Sarah and I have created for the summer. We are going to be launching a series all about a career well spent. We're going to release four episodes, one every Tuesday and it's going to be us in conversation with an expert who can give us a different perspective on what it means to have a career well spent. we'll talk about longevity we'll talk about relationships we'll talk about time we'll talk about making a difference we wanted this to be a community learning moment too so on Thursdays we're going to have a LinkedIn live where you can bring your questions you can bring your reflections and we'll discuss the episodes together as a community all the links you need are going to be in the squiggly careers newsletter so if this sounds like something you want to get involved in and we really, really hope you do.

0:53It's all free and it'll be a great learning moment. Then all you need to do is sign up for the newsletter. Just go to squigglynewsletter.com. That's squigglynewsletter.com and we will send you everything you need to know to get involved. But for now, let's get on with today's episode. I am not sure our podcast would exist without this brilliant leader. And that is Linda, Linda Grattan.

1:18What you're doing is you're just weaving your threads. You're trying to let none of the threads become so fragile and weak that they break, but at the same time, being able and confident to move into other directions. The thread of mastery is about building things that you're good at, that you love, that you can do. The golden threads, you know, the metaphor of a weave was just such a glorious way of talking about our lives. How do you feel that kind of AI and mastery work together, work for each other? Your biggest competitor is not going to be AI, it's going to be somebody who's using it better than you.

1:56Make yourself more human. Now what is it to be a human? Each of those threads are important. How do I start to make some choices? Like how do I start to make some decisions on those threads?

2:10Hi, my name's Sarah and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast. This episode is the first one in our Ask the Expert summer series, where we'll be reflecting on what does a career well spent look and feel like for you. We'll be borrowing brilliance from four different experts. And today you're going to hear my conversation with London Business School Professor Linda Grattam, where she'll be talking to us about what does it mean to live the 100 year life. Hi and welcome to the Squiggly Careers podcast. My name is Sarah and this week we are borrowing brilliance not from a topic but from one of our long-time inspirers and heroes of the podcast.

2:53I am not sure our podcast would exist without this brilliant leader and that is Linda, Linda Grattan. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today and for those of you who are watching you can see I've got my hands on an uncorrected proof of living the hundred year Life, which is Linda's new book. And I think being able to say that I get to read this book before it's even out, basically means I've made it in my squiggly career, I could now retire happy, though as Linda will tell us, it doesn't really work like that anymore. So that's what we're going to explore today. So Linda, I read The Hundred Year Life, the book you wrote with Andrew Scott, a little while ago now.

3:31And that had so many light bulb moments for me, because we just started thinking about careers not being ladders. And I read 100 Year Life and I thought maybe these insights we've got make sense. Maybe there's kind of something in there. And you've now written this new book called Living the 100 Year Life. What's prompted you to kind of come back to this 100 Year Life concept? Maybe what feels different now than when you first wrote The 100 Year Life? Well, we wrote The 100 Year Life 10 years ago. Wow. And what's happened since then? Well, the world has just transformed, hasn't it? AI, politics, climate change.

4:10And it just means that there's even more happening in your career. But at the same time, you could well live to 100. I don't know if you think you're going to live to 100, Sarah, but let's say we do. I hope I do. I hope you do. Then we're going to be working into our 70s or 80s. And so I wrote the book because people love the 100 year life, as you said, but then sometimes they said, but what do I do now? And this book was really answering the question, how do I actually do it? And of course, there's lots of books about how you stay healthy. And there's quite a number of books about how you think about your money.

4:44So I didn't really want to talk about that. I just wanted to talk about how could you build a purposeful, happy life across 100 years? That's, I think, what struck me is the difference actually between the books. I felt like the 100-year life introduced the concept and was almost like the business case for this is now our reality. Whereas when I read Living the 100-Year Life, I think I asked myself more questions. it prompted me to be more reflective to consider kind of different parts of how I live my life maybe in a more practical way I think it felt like a more the first one I think made me think I think the second book might make me act yeah absolutely and so you start the book with a metaphor a metaphor of a weaver and so I wondered if you could begin today by talking a bit about like where that came from yeah that's not maybe not what you would probably not your first thought to like writing, writing about the 100 year life, and how that might be helpful for us?

5:45Well, when I was thinking about how I would help you and others think about living a 100 year life and working up until their 70s or 80s, I wanted to find a picture that everybody could understand. Now, as it happens, I love textiles. So I have many textiles, and I'm fascinated by weaving. and I started writing the book actually by spending a year just writing stories of my own life and when I looked at those stories I just realized that there were threads that were coming through the stories and as I thought about those threads I really understood that the metaphor of a weave was just such a glorious way of talking about our lives and what was really fascinating about the threads is that the threads of some of them were about being productive you know how do you master something how do you know things how do you cooperate but there was also a whole number of threads which were around how do you nurture yourself you know how do you have friendships how do you build intimacy and there was two threads that really fascinated me that came out of my the stories of my own life and also thinking about others lives which is calm and adventure and that was really about energy.

7:01You know, how do you calm yourself? But also how do you have amazing adventures? And so I ended up with eight threads, four threads of productivity and four threads of a nurture. And what I began to realize is that they're always in tension. You know, you're always asking yourself, why aren't I spending more time doing this? But actually what I realized is you don't really resolve that tension at any point in time. What you're doing is you're just weaving your threads and that means that you're trying to let none of the threads become so fragile and weak that they break but at the same time also strengthening your threads and that's about what you do you know every day you know what actions you take how you how you spend your time who you spend your time with what you do so those those everyday actions are what weaves your life yeah my one of my reflections when I was thinking about the kind of different threads was you encouraged me to firstly notice like notice what those threads are for me at the moment and maybe which ones have happened to me and which ones have I been more intentional about you know where I've kind of made choices um and because actually it's a bit of a kind of side note I felt like you talk about one of your friends that you've had for a really long time um in in the book and I was thinking oh I wasn't I wasn't necessarily expecting to read about friendship as part of that book.

8:25But then you realise, when I was reading your reflections on that friendship, just how important that friend is to you. And it sounded like she had been very intentional in sort of making sure that you both invested in that relationship and how important that had been. Yeah. And that story just really stuck with me. Oh, I love that. It's the story of Shirley. And actually I have a podcast that actually looks at every single thread. And one of the people I interview is my friend Shirley. Well, I feel like I know her a bit, so I've got to listen to that episode now. On the thread of friendship, yeah.

8:55Oh, that's such a brilliant idea. Yeah. So let's take some of those threads because I think what people will then want to do is think, well, for each of those threads are important. Like how do I start to make some choices? Like how do I start to make some decisions on those threads? And one of those threads is around mastery. So talk to us a bit about this idea of mastery because I think people get a bit caught up or maybe confused with this, should I be a specialist or a generalist? That question comes up a lot in the context of a kind of squiggly career, just generally. Is there a right answer?

9:31And at the moment, a question I get asked a lot in the workshops that we do is, how do I figure out what I should be a master in? How do I figure out what skills are most important? Especially with the lens of AI, which we kind of can't ignore. So I'm sort of interested in this idea of how do people think about mastery for themselves? And then perhaps we'll come on to the relationship between mastery and AI. Yeah. Well, mastery actually is the first thread and it's a thread of productivity because, you know, in a long life, you have to create nurture, which means that, you know, you feel good, you feel strong, you feel capable, but you also have to build value that's value to the world that people want to buy, that helps with you with your salary.

10:17You know, this is the... Yeah, supply and demand. Exactly. So the thread of mastery is about building things that you're good at, that you love, that you can do. And that means the skills. And in the thread, I talk about the golden threads, you know, the things that you are really good at, that's part of who you are, that makes you... I mean, for example, watching you. I can see that your golden thread is really part of your character. You know, you have this wonderful personality and you've had an opportunity to use that golden thread of being enthusiastic and kind-hearted. That's the golden thread that goes partly through your mastery.

11:04That's what makes you who you are. and I think each of us has something about ourselves that we bring to work that helps us to be who we are but also that means practice feedback tough times all that stuff but then people say to me as I know they say to you Sarah well hang on does it mean I have to do the same thing over and over again and actually where I'm feeling about that is you do need to master something you know and when I run a workshop I say to people what are you really good at you know what what differentiates you from others. And they talk about some people say, I'm very good at being a coach, or I'm very good at leading people, or I'm very good at writing, you know, scripts, or I'm very good at building programs, whatever it is.

11:47But you also have to realise that that's probably not going to get you through your long career. So you also have to learn how to switch. Sometimes people switch right out, of course, this is a squiggly, or more likely find adjacencies, which is to say, what is it that's near what you do that you can sort of move into? And so mastery is the thread that you really need to keep strong. And that means you need to focus on, you know, practicing things, getting better, being mentored, but at the same time, being able and confident to move into other directions. Well, one of the things I really appreciated about the book is you bring in expert opinions and insights alongside your own as you kind of go through.

12:33And there's a really nice, this was actually something that you'd written around multiple cells, and, you know, encouraging people to sort of say, you don't have to be one thing forever, and you can be more than one thing at once. Or sometimes, as you said, it might be adjacent. And you say, maybe this will or will not make the final edit of the book, but I liked this sentence, which was each new role experiment or reinvention adds another possible self. Yeah. And this idea of, you use the word adventure, you know, sort of giving yourself permission to keep exploring, which I felt that came through all of the different threads in this idea of exploring.

13:09Well, that's just, you know, it was interesting because I think if I hadn't written all the stories of my life, at least as many as I could, I would never have had adventure as a thread. But because I spent a year just writing little stories, some of which made it through to the book, but lots didn't. What I realised is that adventure is so much part of our life. Because when you think about, well, what am I going to do next? Adventures are the means by which you explore and run little experiments. So you actually see, how did it feel when I did this? And so that's why I've actually put adventure into nurture, but it's really an energetic dynamic.

13:48And it really sort of keeps you going just as calm, which is the opposite of adventure, you know, allows you to stop and to reflect. The adventure is what opens up possibilities for you, the thread of adventure. Well, one of the stories, again, that stuck with me, which is why I really liked the mix of, though I felt it was practical, there were stories and the expert insights kind of all, they all kind of came together, is you talked about some of your experiences in Japan. And I felt like that for you wasn't something that you had planned. I didn't feel like it was on, and you'll have to tell me if I've got this wrong, but I didn't feel like it was on a tick list for you of, oh, that's something I must do.

14:29I felt like it was more of an opportunity that you'd stayed open to and you just explored and it became an adventure that then almost has become a really big part of your life. Yeah, well, that's absolutely right. And one thing I realised with mastery is that when you put something out in the world, Sometimes the world ignores it and sometimes it doesn't. And you know that very well from your own life. Something sticks, some things that you think are going to be really useful just sort of disappear. And so what happened to me is we wrote The 100 Year Life. And then a student rang up and said, Linda, do you know that in Tokyo right now, all the bookshops have got The 100 Year Life as their main book?

15:09I didn't even know that. I'd never been to Japan. And then, you know, a month or two later, I got a note from the prime minister's office. the Prime Minister has enjoyed reading your book and he would like to create a council called the 100 Year Live Council. Would you like to be a member of it? And that just opened up Japan to me. And I do think you're absolutely right that we just have to throw things into the world and just see what the world likes. I'm doing this right now. You know, this year, this time with the book, I said, I'm not just going to write a book. I'm going to do a podcast where all the experts are interviewed.

15:47I'm going to write a workbook that you can use when you do the book. I'm going to do a diagnostic. I'm going to do a website. And all of those are honestly just experiments. I mean, I don't know if anybody is going to want to have a workbook. I don't know if anyone's going to listen to the podcast. I've got a corporate, a 10-week corporate learning journey. I don't know if anyone wants to do that. But unless I try, how will I ever learn? And we will put links to all of those things that Linda just mentioned, because I think if there is anyone who's going to do a workbook, it will be our listeners.

16:22And I know that you've got some brilliant guests on that podcast that you mentioned because you were mentioning a few. So I'll be listening and I'm sure other people will be too. The question of AI, you do address directly in the book, which I think people will find really helpful. because I think this has raised additional thoughts, but also in lots of cases, fears for people about their career, about staying relevant, staying resilient when so much is changing. It's definitely a theme that we're hearing more kind of strongly and acutely perhaps than we have in the past couple of years. And so how do you feel that kind of AI and mastery work together, work for each other?

17:03what's been your kind of your view of people's you know they're living the 100 year life which AI is part of and probably has been part of for a while but it feels different for people now than perhaps it has done over the past few years well it's interesting because I actually had AI as a thread and I call it amplification it's my fourth productivity thread and of course it's the newest thread it's the if you think what's the oldest thread it's probably calm I mean people have always needed common what's the newest thread it's probably amplification and here's where i am on that because it changes all the time so it's you know one has to just change one's views constantly i would say two really important things about ai and i'm being a human right now the first is you have to experiment and use it and see how it works for you because right now and we're speaking in you know in the in the summer and already people are saying it makes you six times more productive.

18:03So there is going to be a real change between people who use AI and people who don't. So your biggest competitor is not going to be AI. It's going to be somebody who's using it better than you. So that's the first thing I'd say. I'd definitely experiment. So that makes you more sort of augmented. But I'd also say, make yourself more human. Now, what is it to be a human? Well, it means that you've got ideas. It means that you can be annoying at times. It means that sometimes you're great and sometimes you're terrible. It means that sometimes you laugh and sometimes you cry. It means that you go on adventures.

18:37It means that you have a history. It means that you tell stories and you just have to lean into that. I wrote the book with the stories before I'd really, because I started writing the book three years ago, before I'd really understood about AI. And honestly, Sarah, I cannot tell you how happy I am that my stories are in the book because I wrote those stories. These are my memories. These are not made up with AI. These are my memories of my mum, of my adventures, of my kids, of my marriages, all of that. These are my, of working at BA. These are my stories. And you have got to tell your own story because that's what a human is.

19:21An AI has no history. It has no parents. It has no brothers and sisters. And I think that's reassuring for people to hear because we all have our own stories to tell and our own experiences. And that is what makes us us. That's what makes us interesting. But equally, I felt like the view of AI within the book was still a positive one. It was like, well, let's use this in a way that's useful, but without taking away kind of what makes you you. Well, there is a really dystopian view of AI. And the reason I did talk about that in the book, but the reason I haven't really lent into it as is as a psychologist.

20:03And, you know, you know this as well as I, a positive message helps people change and a negative message just makes people fearful. And I want always want my books to feel positive to people. and the same when I'm teaching a class at London Business School, for my students to come out and say, okay, I feel good about this. I feel I can do something about this. I feel as if I've got agency. I don't want people to think, oh my God, we're all doomed because that's just not going to be helpful. Agency actually was one of my questions because you give this really lovely example of how you want people to have agency so that when things outside of their control maybe happen to and that happens across our 100 year life, that will happen.

20:50There's loads of things that we can't control. You almost use this, you describe like having a cupboard, a store cupboard, like ready to go, like things that you've invested in so that when things are hard or things are tough, you've almost got things that you can kind of take out of that cupboard. How, if somebody's listening now and they feel like they've got low agency, which again, I think happens to all of us, we have these harder moments where maybe you are stuck in a job that you can't leave because you need the salary and it's really hard to get another job at the moment so you feel like you've got really low agency or your manager's a nightmare and you know I've got low agency because this manager has loads of control over my day and my work and I'm finding it really difficult how would you kind of suggest or reflect on what people can do when they're in those low agency yeah tough moments to then feel like they've got they can kind of take back a bit of control?

21:46Well, one of the reasons I built the idea of the threads is that those are your cupboard full of resources, you know. And the reason I built the diagnostic is that for this person, they could do the diagnostic. And from that, there's two questions they can ask. One is, what am I strong at right now? And then the question is, how could I do more of that? How could I use this more in my life? How could this become part of what I'm now doing? And the other is, which of my threads are fragile and weak? And actually to ask yourself, what actions could I take now or experiments could I make now that would make a difference?

22:30So for example, for me, mastery is my strongest thread. Friendship is one of my weakest. I've always put a huge proportion of my life into being productive. So I have to, you know, when I talk to my friend Shirley, who's great at friendship, that's why we've known each other for 60 years. I asked her, well, how do you do it? And she said, well, you know, I reach out to people, I send them notes, I know all of this, I remember things, I talk to, I introduce them to each other. And these are all small actions that everyone can take. So for each of the threads, at the end of each thread chapter, I say, you know, these are the things you could do right now.

23:08So I don't think there's a generic answer to the question. If you've got low agency, what should you do? Because I think all of us are so different. But I think, you know, the threads give you a really good insight into it. If I look, we're already using the diagnostic and I've been running it in workshops. The thread that's the weakest right now for most people is calm. It's really fragile. They're not spending any time reflecting. And so the most generic answer I would give is try to bring calm into your life. And each of us have different ways of finding calm. I mean, for me, it's walking, not listening to podcasts, sorry, just walking on my own or with a friend, whatever it may be going to the gym, it might be sitting, you know, having coffee somewhere.

23:59But whatever calms you, you probably need to do more of that. Because when we're calm, we become more reflective. And what I've learned from running workshops using the threads is that when we give people permission to be reflective, it helps enormously. So if there was one piece of advice I would give, it would be make time for reflection. Yeah, it's interesting. It reminds me of some work that Megan Wrights has done on this idea of spaciousness. What she found interesting is that when she asked people about this idea of spaciousness, they automatically defaulted to sort of not having it. They found it easier to describe the fact that they were like, well, I sort of don't know what that is because I don't have the calm.

24:45And it wasn't about just being in loads of meetings. It was that people felt like they were always doing that then for productivity meant doing doing doing no reflection no thinking no spaciousness to kind of consider why am I finding this hard or what am I what am I really good at and am I really investing in those things so um is there interesting connection with with kind of some of that work as well yeah and just just giving yourself yourself time to reflect it's just it's the thing that's missing most in most people's working lives because as you say, it's not seen as something you do. It's seen as something you don't do.

25:23I guess what I'm saying is you need to make it something that you do. Yeah. And maybe considering like, how do you make it unmissable? How do you add it in? I think so often we see people see it as a luxury or they need someone like you or someone like us to prompt them to, you're almost like it's unavoidable because you're spending time with you. So then you've given them that space to do it. But I guess we don't always want people to rely on those moments. You want to sort of make it more of a habit for yourself. And what was really fascinating about the workshops that I've been running up to now using the book is that there is a decade, and I'm calling it the pivotal 40s, when this reflection becomes very important.

26:09because, you know, if you think back to working until you're 50, then the 40s isn't that difficult because it's only 10 years, everyone can manage that. But if you're 40 and you're then saying, actually, I might be working until my 70s, which is really what I'm suggesting most people should be thinking, even 80s, then actually that's a pivotal decade. It's not the end of something. And that's when we notice that people have the least reflection. But when you actually give processes that help them to reflect, is when they make the most difference to them. You know, it really, we've got wonderful, you know, people saying it made such a difference being able to reflect on something.

26:50We use the threads as a way of helping them, but it really helps them to think, what do I want to do next? What are my threads like? What are the choices I've got now in my work? How can I think about my life? Because the pattern of life, of course, has fundamentally changed from three stages to multi-stages to portfolios. So each of those sort of models of the fabric of your life, you could have all of those, but you do have a lot more optionality in terms of how you live your life. And for those of you who are then going to read the book, some of those are described with some really good diagrams that again, that you showed, you know, the different ways that your life, the shape of your life might change and how those things kind of come together.

27:37Yeah. As you've gone through thinking about those threads, and it sort of started with your own reflections and your own stories, and then it's very much zoomed out to something that's useful for all of us, which we're very grateful for. Has it made you do anything differently or reflect on any of your threads in a kind of new a new way? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it really started off with the thread of friendship, because when I looked at my stories, I realised how important my friends had been to me. And then I also realised that I wasn't spending enough time thinking about that. So I definitely did something about that.

28:10It helped me think a lot about calm, you know, and how I need to build more calm into it. But it also reaffirmed where I was on adventure. I've always put time aside every year to have adventures, and I've just increased that. So there's even more adventures. But it also just reminded me that, you know, as you said, with a hundred year life, who would have known that Japan would happen? And so what I did, what I'm doing with this book is just giving it to the world, all of the resources around it. And then let's just see what happens. And I just think that's a wonderful opportunity, really. When I started the book, I was feeling a bit down.