4 Ways to Avoid Your Professional Decline

Arthur Brooks was fifty years old, running a major Washington think tank, at the height of his career. And he felt nothing. No drive, no fire, no sense of forward motion. He did not know what was wrong with him. Then, on a late flight from Los Angeles to Washington, he overheard a conversation between an elderly man and his wife. The man told his wife he might as well be dead, because everything good that had happened to him was in the past. When the plane landed, Brooks turned around to see who this sad old man was. It was one of the most famous and admired Americans alive — a genuine hero who had changed the course of the country decades earlier. And he was miserable. Brooks had a selfish thought: I don't want to be that when I'm old. That moment launched a research project into a question almost nobody asks: how do you avoid misery when your professional abilities decline?

The two happiness curves after fifty