Being resourceful can be an important asset in rebooting one’s career. As a person with more experience in life and work, you should have a wider network (compared with the time when you first started your career) and knowledge base on where and how you can get help. That is a huge advantage and should be utilized to reboot your career. You are not starting from scratch anymore.

Remember to take initiative regardless of your age. One of the common stereotype for more mature people is “set in one’s own way” and reluctant to change. Like learning, taking initiative and seeking improvements in all aspects of life should be a life long journey. It is more a life style than a one-off.

Taking risk is not a thing only for young people. I am not talking about recklessness (that is closer to stupidity than taking risk).
As a more mature person, we can use our experience to take educated and calculated risk instead of shying away from taking any risk at all.
Many opportunities won’t be lost if we don’t take our chance.

Humility is also an important element for rebooting one’s career.
It should be noted that having confidence in yourself is not mutually exclusive to humility. One aspect of humility is to accept the fact that you don’t know everything on earth and other people sometimes (not always :>) may also have valid points that you can learn from.
I think often time humility may be impaired when we become more advanced in age and experience. A balance should be struck between having confidence in our experience and humility.

On the topic of rebooting one’s career, related to the first element of curiosity, I think being open-minded is also important.
When we first start with our career with a blank sheet of paper, so to speak, we tend to be more open to ideas and concepts which is natural as we don’t have enough experience to form our own yet. As we get older with more experience, we (as a stereotype of older people) tend to more “set in our own way” perhaps because we consciously or subconsciously believe we have found “the” way.
I think there is a balance between having expertise in a certain area and keeping an open mind for challenges and new ideas; otherwise, we may miss good opportunities and/or come across as dismissive.

I would like to share my opinions on how to reboot or rejuvenate one’s career as a more “seasoned” worker.
First, keep the level of curiosity high. It is important to have the curiosity to find out new things. There are new discoveries, inventions and solutions every day. We should stay keen to learn new things. Avoid the “blanket” statement of “be there and done it!”. Try to look a bit closer or dig a bit deeper into the issue before dismissing it.

I went swimming this afternoon and two interesting points dawned on me.
1) I believe everyone swallows some water involuntarily while swimming regardless of how well you swim. The natural response is to “cough out” the water even though we know it is too late. That response sometimes messes up your swimming rhythm and pace. Similar to life itself, we sometimes need to stop our “natural” response/reflex (in particular negative one) to a situation and move on; otherwise other parts of our life may be adversely affected.
2) Correct technique is very important in swimming. If you swim with the right technique, you go smoothly and gracefully (seemingly effortlessly). The harder you hit the water does not guarantee you will swim faster. For learning, in general, one needs to know and practise the right technique in order to make progress effectively.

In recent years, the topic of early retirement has come up among some of my friends despite their “tender” age. I thought it is an interesting subject and definitely worth some pondering.

One related question is: Retire or Reboot one’s career? There is no shortage of examples of people that have successfully rebooted their careers including the Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Arnold returned to the stardom after his stint in U.S. politics. Despite his mature age of 68, he still managed to draw audience. He has recently flexed his acting “muscle” on taking on a serious acting role in the new movie Maggie.

We will brainstorm on how to reboot one’s career next.

Recently, I have read an article from Time Out London making fun of Tom Cruise for not acting his age titled “Eight ways Tom Cruise can make us like him again”.

Though I am not a fan of Tom, I would say the following two things in his defense.
1) He can act (please note we are talking about acting in the sense of performance) whatever age in movies as long as it comes across as convincing. For that, we have to give that to him (it still works for him).
2) His eccentric/unique behavior is part of the package/image that he is projecting. He has been undoubtedly a top actor/entertainer for decades and the result speaks for itself.

And yes, I am going to see his new movie “Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation” this weekend.

I became a great uncle today (for the second time) as my nephew in Hong Kong became a proud father for the first time.
Congratulations to the parents and their extended families!

My great nephew is a cute baby boy with 2 dimples and a full head of hair.
The parents are in the process of deciding on the name. Any suggestions?