It’s Time to Retire the “Learn, Earn, Retire” Model
Why the Three-Stage Life No Longer Fits
“When work for most people meant manual labor there was no need to worry about the second half of your life. You simply kept doing what you had always done and if you were lucky enough to survive 40 years of hard work in the mill or on the railroad, you were quite happy spending the rest of your life doing nothing. Today, however, most work is knowledge work, and knowledge workers are not finished after 40 years on the job, they are merely bored.”
Peter Drucker, as cited in Wisdom @ Work by Chip Conley
What crossed your mind as you read that?
For me, the last line resonated because it describes something I keep hearing from people navigating retirement transition. They are not finished. They are not ready, nor do they want to do nothing.
Two years into retirement, one beloved client told me she was feeling “stressed and bored.” Bored because she felt unfulfilled, like she still had so much to give and nowhere meaningful to give it beyond her family, who were often busy with their own lives. She also wanted to do something that generated a little income so she could feel comfortable indulging in a nice vacation or helping her children if they needed it.
Over time, I realized she was far from being alone in feeling this way!
🧭 The model we inherited
In his book Wisdom @ Work, Chip Conley describes what most of us inherited the traditional three-stage life: Learn, Earn, Retire.
Think of the person who graduates from university, becomes a teacher, earns her pension and retires. One stage at a time. In order. No overlap.
Maybe this made sense when work was physical, and bodies wore out. It makes far less sense now.
🌱 What the model gets wrong
Not only does this model feel outdated, but I think it puts people in boxes. It tells you who you are based on what stage you’re in. When the Earn stage ends, so can someone’s sense of contribution. So does the feeling of mattering.
However, learning doesn’t stop at 25, does it? I went back to school in my mid-30s to complete my MBA. Even more inspiring is a couple I know from Alberta who are now in their early 70s. They have audited several university courses right alongside their grandchildren. For them, it was a chance to learn, to stretch their thinking, and to connect with the people they love most in a new way.
And then there is Denise Taylor, who is a chartered psychologist specializing in later life, whose work I genuinely admire. She completed her doctorate at age 64. This was a scholarly pursuit that deepened the experience she had been building for decades. That is learning at its fullest, and it happened at the stage the old model would call “rest” or “retire.”
Earning doesn’t stop at 65 either. A colleague of mine, also in her 70s, discovered her love of writing through a few LinkedIn articles each week. She realized she had more to share and started writing a book… a process that has come with tremendous learning and earning potential.
The reality is that learning and earning bleed into each other, and the people who thrive seem to understand this intuitively.
💡 A more fluid model
Instead of three sequential stages, what if we saw life as a set of fluid dimensions where, learning, earning, contributing, creating, connecting are available at every age, just in different proportions?
Chip Conley puts it beautifully in Wisdom @ Work: “Maybe we’re at the dawning of an age-agnostic era in which your identity is defined more by how you are pursuing your life at this moment than by your chronological age.”
How you want to pursue your life at this moment is the design opportunity in front of all of us.
Many people have a vision of how they want their life to look but don’t know how to get there. It feels too daunting. The steps aren’t clear. It’s a bit like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon with the future you want on the other side and no bridge to cross.
This is what led me to write Designing Your Second Act, forthcoming from Routledge in November 2026. The tools and frameworks in the book are rooted in lean thinking and strategic planning, adapted for individuals rather than organizations. They apply to any major life transition. I focus on retirement because it is one of the most significant transitions we all go through, but the bridge they offer is available at any stage of life.
✍️ A question to sit with
If you removed the label of your current life stage (i.e., student, professional, retiree) and simply described how you are pursuing your life right now, what would you say?
Tammy Martins is a retirement transition coach, speaker, and author of Designing Your Second Act, forthcoming from Routledge in November 2026. She helps professionals and executives design a purposeful and fulfilling life after work.
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