How to thrive in work as we live longer

Many of us will live to 100. And most of us will need to work well into our 70s — perhaps even beyond.

Ten years ago, when Professor Andrew J Scott and I were writing The 100-Year Life, we began with a simple question: ‘What happens when this becomes normal?’

What we saw was that in the face of longer working lives, the traditional three-stage life — fulltime education, fulltime work, fulltime retirement — was beginning to break down. In its place, a more complex, multi-stage life was emerging, with more transitions, more reinvention, and more choice.

And over the past decade, I have found myself asking a related question: ‘If you know you may live to 100 and work into your 70s, how do you build a life you love — and a career that lasts?’

I see this question playing out across different stages of life.

Multi-stage life

Among people in their 30s, there is a growing awareness that working lives may stretch into their 70s — perhaps even their 80s. They are beginning to understand that this will not be a single, linear career, but a multi-stage life, with transitions, reinvention and change along the way. And that sustaining this will depend not only on skills and opportunity, but on their capacity to remain healthy and energised over time.

But it is in midlife that the reality of this becomes most visible.

In their 40s and 50s, the executives I teach are already having to pivot — adapting to new roles, new expectations, and often new identities. They are accomplished and committed but also stretched. They are managing demanding work while raising children, supporting partners, and increasingly caring for ageing parents.

Their productivity is high, but it comes at a cost. What strikes me is not their capability, but their pace. Many are working as though this is still a short race to be won, rather than a long life to be lived. They are asking: ‘How do I sustain this — not for the next year, but for the next 20 or 30?’

Weaving lives over decades

In my work, I have come to think about this sustaining as a weave, held together with a set of threads. It is a way of understanding how a working life unfolds over time. We are not managing our careers in segments, but weaving our lives across decades — with threads that strengthen, fray, and are rewoven over time.

At its core, this weave is made up of two types of threads: productivity and nurture. The productivity threads are our ability to contribute, to create value, to do work that matters. Alongside them are the nurture threads — our capacity to sustain ourselves over time, physically, emotionally and socially.

The challenge is that these threads are often pulled apart.

I see some younger people investing heavily in productivity, assuming nurture can wait. And I see those later in their working lives, with productivity peaking, beginning to realise that their capacity to sustain themselves is fraying… sleep compromised, relationships strained, energy depleted.

In a long life, these productivity and nurture threads cannot be separated. As they are discovering, productivity without nurture cannot be sustained. And without the ability to contribute, nurture alone is not enough to create a life that feels meaningful over time. It is through this interplay that health becomes central.

Health - the presence of energy

Health is not simply the absence of illness. It is the presence of energy, resilience and connection. The very qualities that allow us to continue working, learning and contributing across a long working life.

Each of the threads makes some contribution to healthy living – but two are particularly important for sustaining health: the nurture threads of friendship and calm.

Both are surprisingly difficult to sustain over time, and in the midst of demanding work and complex lives, they are often the first to be neglected.

And yet, among the people I meet, there is a small but growing group who approach this differently. They are no less ambitious. But they are more deliberate — recognising that sustaining a long working life requires not only productivity, but investment in the relationships and inner resources that support it.

Good relationships keep us healthy

Friendship is often underestimated. Yet as Robert Waldinger, who leads the Harvard Study of Adult Development, has shown, the quality of our relationships is one of the strongest predictors of both health and happiness. Good relationships keep us healthier and happier — full stop. In a long working life, this matters profoundly. Relationships provide continuity over time. People who know us across different stages, who help us navigate change, and who support us through moments of transition.

Calm is just as important. It is the capacity to pause, to recover, and to make sense of experience rather than simply react to it.

In a long working life, this too requires deliberate attention. Those who sustain their energy over time create space for reflection and recovery. They step back from constant activity, make better decisions, and maintain the clarity and resilience needed to continue.

Living longer is one of the great achievements of our time. But it asks more of us.

It asks us to imagine our future selves not as distant abstractions, but as real people whose lives we are shaping now. To hold together what has too often been separated: productivity and nurture, work and home, ambition and health, achievement and friendship.

And to recognise that a long working life does not simply happen. It is something we build — by sustaining our capacity to contribute, while also protecting and renewing the resources that make that contribution possible.

Over time, it is the strength of these threads — and the care we take of our health — that determines whether we can continue to work and live well.

Lynda Gratton is Professor of Management Practice at London Business School and a thought leader on the future of work