Adventure is a serious career move
In the longer working life, detours that once seemed frivolous and high-risk become essential for renewal
In 30 seconds
Adventure does more than break the routine. It disrupts the deeper patterns of thinking and acting that have built up over time and forces us to see ourselves from the outside-in.
Experiences that take us beyond what’s familiar can make the possibilities of different “future selves” more tangible and in this way they reshape our future.
Times when adventure changed us become markers in the stories of our lives, helping us make sense of them and revealing what mattered to us.
Leaders rarely think about adventure in the context of their working lives. It can sound frivolous, too personal, or risky in the corporate context. But when people talk to me about their careers, they often highlight the adventures they’ve had along the way.
When I look back over my own five decades of work, what stands out is not simply the steady progression of roles and achievements but the disproportionate impact of recurring moments of adventure that took me far beyond my usual experience.
At the time, these adventures felt uncertain and they seemed to sit outside any clear narrative of progression. They did not register as forward movement. If anything, they felt almost indulgent: hitchhiking as a graduate student to Israel to research child-rearing practices in a kibbutz; traveling through Peru and Bolivia in my 30s; later, in my 50s, exploring countries across Africa; and now, in my 70s, journeying to India to better understand its religions.
Looking back, I can see these experiences were not diversions. Rather, they shaped my working life. And this is not unique to me. In conversations with others about their own long working lives, a consistent pattern emerges. People describe moments of adventure that took them beyond what was familiar. Some spent time in a different country. Others made smaller, disorientating shifts: moving into unfamiliar roles or entering settings where they were no longer the expert.
Taking these kinds of leaps becomes more important as longevity reshapes our lives. Longer lives bring both opportunity and risk. They offer more time — to learn, to contribute, to explore. But they also demand more than a single way of working, thinking, or being. As working lives stretch, we risk becoming locked into versions of ourselves that no longer fit the future we are moving into. The challenge is not just endurance; it is reinvention. And that does not happen by chance.
“As working lives stretch, we risk becoming locked into versions of ourselves that no longer fit the future we are moving into.”
Imagine that your own working life extends into your 70s. How will you make that sustainable? Many people focus on staying productive, or on cultivating calm and wellbeing. But the structures that support productivity and calm — clear roles, established identities, well-worn habits — can, over time, make change harder.
What matters is not just what we do now but who we can become. New experiences expand the range of identities we can inhabit, and that expanded sense of self endures. I have identified three ways in which adventure profoundly supports a long working life:
- Adventure disrupts our patterns
Stepping away entirely — by spending time in a different country or working in contexts where your expertise doesn’t help — changes up everything. The systems are different, the cues unfamiliar, and the markers of success less clear. Choices and actions that once felt automatic become visible again. People who put themselves in these situations describe paying closer attention — observing more closely, questioning more readily, and adapting more deliberately. What is disrupted is not just routine but the deeper patterns of thinking and acting that have been built over years. Something important happens: you begin to see your own habits, assumptions, and default responses from the outside. - Adventure expands our identity
If continuity anchors identity, then adventure unsettles it. Research on identity points to the idea of “possible selves” — the different ways we might imagine ourselves in the future. Most remain abstract, but experiences that take us beyond the familiar can make these possibilities more tangible. This happens through action. Consider a senior executive who a year out to work in a small, unfamiliar venture in a different country, where her experience carries little authority. There, she sees another version of herself — someone learning, adapting, and uncertain. Or consider a technical specialist who begins teaching and comes to see himself as an educator — an identity that reshapes his future. - Adventure creates markers
Our experiences do not sit in isolation. They become part of how we make sense of our lives. Certain moments become anchors in the story we tell about ourselves. Adventures often mark transitions, and we cannot fully return to our former self. As Heraclitus observed, we move through time as if it’s a river: If we step out of the water, it is a river with different waters and a different flow when we return to it later. Years later, recalling such moments, we use them to understand what we are capable of and what matters to us. They connect earlier and later versions of our self, allowing change to feel less like disruption and more like something we have already lived through.
What is striking is how unevenly across our lives these adventures are distributed. We recognise — and often encourage — adventure early on, as part of education or early career exploration. But as our careers progress, adventure become harder to justify, harder to accommodate, and easier to defer. We encourage adventure at 20. We discourage it at 40 and 50.
This pattern reflects the structure of the traditional three-stage life: education, continuous full-time work, retirement. Within this model, exploration mostly happens at the beginning and the end. The middle is defined by continuity, progression, and increasing specialisation.
Organisations built around this model optimise for efficiency, reward consistency, and rely on predictable performance. When roles are defined and expectations explicit, periods of discontinuity feel costly — for both individuals and employers. Paradoxically, the very experiences that most expand perspective and capability are those most likely to disappear just as we need them more.
“In organisations, the very experiences that most expand perspective and capability are those most likely to disappear just as we need them more.”
People’s working lives now regularly extend into their 60s and 70s, often out of choice. As that happens, that three-stage structure is under strain: It becomes harder to sustain a model based on decades of continuous, unbroken work. Emerging in its place is a multistage life with more transitions, more variety, and more choice. In this model, exploration and adventure can occur at multiple points: between roles, across careers, or within them.
We can see this shift occurring. Sabbaticals, portfolio careers and midlife transitions are all becoming more visible. What matters is not the specific form of this shift but the principle: that long careers require moments of discontinuity, not just continuity.
In academia there is a degree of flexibility. Many people work within structures that offer far less room for breaks or risk-taking. Making time for new experiences is not simply a matter of individual choice. For organisations, then, the challenge is to legitimise exploration at every stage – creating space for movement rather than penalising those who step away.
“The challenge is to legitimise exploration at every stage – creating space for movement rather than penalising those who step away.”
For individuals, the challenge is different but equally real. As careers progress, time becomes more constrained, responsibilities accumulate, and stepping away feels harder to justify. Adventure is postponed — until there is more time, more certainty, or fewer obligations. But in a working life, that moment rarely arrives.
Making space for adventure requires a shift in our thinking. We have become accustomed to valuing mastery and productivity, and adventure is often treated as something optional and peripheral. But in longer lives, that assumption no longer holds. Adventure keeps a life — and a career — alive. It is what allows a career to remain open, adaptive, and capable of renewal over decades.
So carve out time for extended travel. Volunteer in unfamiliar contexts. Ask to try a new task at work. Undertake a physically or creatively demanding challenge. Try out a different self. Some of these adventures are dramatic. Others are deeply personal. In long working lives, the question is not only how long we can continue but also how often we can step beyond what we know.
What would your 80-year-old self ask of you? Yes — exercise, eat sensibly, sleep well. But also: Give me adventures. Give me moments I can remember, stories I can tell, conversations I can have with my grandchildren. The risk is that not that you might take too many detours. It’s that you might take too few.
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