Research on cognitive maintenance consistently shows that engagement matters. But not just any engagement. What seems to protect cognitive performance over time is encountering unfamiliar territory: so, problems you haven't solved before, contexts you don't control, conversations that challenge rather than confirm. During a long career, particularly in professional services, unfamiliarity is built in. New clients bring new problems, market shifts force adaptation, regulatory changes require learning. You might work in the same field for decades, but the field itself keeps moving. And so, although your expertise deepens, the work stays challenging.

A study published in Nature this week found that the brain’s capacity for sustained attention is undiminished across contexts, but that environment and habit are the determining variables. So what changes isn’t ability; instead, it’s the conditions under which that ability operates. The distinction matters for anyone leaving a long institutional career.

I have been thinking more about the partner who became indignant when I suggested he might experience uncertainty in retirement. It isn’t what he had planned for his next stage that stays with me - time with his children, travel, charity work - but rather the weight he placed on it. My strong feeling was that he needed the plan to be enough. And perhaps that's the issue.

I've been reading Didier Eribon's book about old age, loss and identity. One passage stopped me, not because it's about death - though it is - but because it captures something I see regularly in career transitions. Eribon writes: "We are not quite the same person depending on whom we are with: a relative, a close friend, a colleague from work." Our identity, he argues, is plural and composite - constituted through relationships and the roles we play with different people. When those relationships end, we lose not just the person but the role itself. And with it, part of who we are. Applied to professional life, this explains something I've noticed but struggled to name. When people leave long careers - particularly senior roles in firms or organisations - they don't just lose a job title. They lose the version of themselves that existed in relation to colleagues, clients, the organisation itself.

I ran a workshop recently on preparing for retirement from equity partnership. One of the participants, a partner close to retirement from the partnership, became indignant when I suggested he might experience uncertainty in the transition. As he explained, he had a plan. He knew exactly what he was going to do. His certainty was absolute. I found his certainty puzzling. Not because his plans weren't sensible. They were. But because having a plan for what you'll do is different from knowing how you'll experience the transition.

When people step back from full-time work, they often struggle with whether they're using their time "usefully." I hear it regularly. Sometimes from clients, sometimes from friends who've made the transition. The guilt isn't about being idle (though that may come into it). Rather, it's about not being useful enough. But useful to whom?

I read Enuma Okora's column in the FT this week (behind the FT Paywall). One paragraph stopped me:

"I have a friend who, whenever I ask how he's doing, takes a moment before answering. Often he'll then express two seemingly conflicting feelings. 'A part of me is feeling grounded and engaged but another part of me is also feeling anxious because I'm concerned about [xyz].' I've grown to admire his willingness to sit with multiple realities, and even to begin practising it myself."

That willingness to hold contradictions, to say "both things are true" without rushing to resolve them, is rare. We aren’t always comfortable with it. We would much prefer coherence.