Career Change at 40, 50+ (2)

3. You may want to slow down (or to increase) your career intensity.

There may be some aspects that cause you dissatisfaction from your career and it is natural. If you want to make a successful mid-life career change, it is important for you to sort out what the primary reason for a change is.

How difficult it may be?
Simply put, it is quite difficult for a person to adjust to any kind of change at the age of forty or fifty. To think of an example, it is quite difficult for a person to learn any new skill, like driving or painting after a particular age. In the same way, it is difficult for a person to have a career change at the age of 40 or at 50. Every profession and job has a set number of skills and abilities that should be known by the person on a regular basis. Learning these skills at the age of forty or fifty is quite difficult and not possible for everyone.

Of course, one cannot hide from the truth that not everyone is in a profession that they may be really interested in. A budding musician must be an accountant somewhere, or a future technocrat is a sales manager in some company – there are several reasons because of these changes of careers.

The learning curve
You have worked your whole life for some reason and now you wish to work for something else. And it is quite difficult, because learning anything at the age of forty or fifty is quite difficult. Therefore, make sure that you are really interested in the profession. Your interest and genuine enthusiasm to change your profession will make it easier to handle the learning curve of the abilities and skills that you should have for the different job.

Financial Viability
Certainly, there will be several reasons that you did not pursue the profession that you wanted to at a time. There may even be some financial reasons, like the fact that the profession would not be financially viable at the time. For example, game designing today is one of the most lucrative professions, but just twenty years ago the resources needed to make a computer game were quite humongous. it is the evolution of the Internet and computer technology that has made it possible for the profession of gaming to be so lucrative.

In the same way, the enhancements of other aspects may make the something that was not viable twenty years ago to be viable today. Only after proper research should you think about the financial viability of your mid life job change.

Similarity – Matching skills and abilities
Every job and profession has their own set of skills and abilities. However, there may be two professions that may have some skills and abilities similar to each other. For example, a manufacturer will always be a manufacturer, and he or she can manufacture almost anything, give or take a few differences in the nature of the production.

Click here to read part 3 of this article