Live · Brand manifesto
Make the Next Ten Years Bigger Than the Last Ten
Ageing is inevitable. Becoming less interested in life is not.
We have been given a script
There is a familiar story about what happens as we grow older. We work, raise families, build careers, pay bills and keep everything moving. Then, somewhere around sixty, the language changes. Suddenly we are expected to slow down, take it easy, lower our sights and be grateful if nothing much goes wrong.
Some of that change is welcome. Nobody needs to spend the rest of their life racing from one obligation to another. But relief from responsibility and retreat from life are two very different things. It would be a shame to gain control of our time only to surrender our curiosity.
Relevant@60 begins with a simple challenge to that script: what if the next ten years could be bigger than the last ten? Not necessarily richer, louder, busier or more impressive. Bigger in experience. Bigger in discovery. Bigger in the sense that we are still actively participating in our own lives.
Capability matters more than appearance
Ageing changes how we look. It would be absurd to pretend otherwise, and exhausting to make the preservation of youth a full-time occupation. The more interesting question is not whether we look as we did at forty. It is what we are still able to do, enjoy and become.
A game of tennis, a long walk, a difficult climb, learning to use a new tool or finally mastering something that once looked impossible can change the way we think about ourselves. Physical activity matters, of course, but not simply to chase a number on a scale or an extra year at the end of life. It matters because strength, stamina and confidence make the life we have more interesting.
Looking capable in the mirror is pleasant. Feeling capable in the world is better. And capability need not be measured against anyone else. The person who begins with a walk to the shops and eventually reaches the next village has every reason to be proud of that progress.
Think in three-year chapters
Consider this: a university degree commonly takes three years. In three years, someone can arrive knowing very little about a subject and leave with a genuine understanding of it. We accept that transformation readily when the student is twenty. Why should we assume it is unavailable at sixty?
Three years is long enough to learn a language well enough to use it, become a confident walker, develop as a painter, make films, take up photography, learn an instrument, understand a new technology or get involved in a completely unfamiliar community. You do not have to become an expert. You simply have to become somebody who can do something they could not do before.
And there may be several such chapters ahead. Three years exploring one interest does not close the door on the next. It opens it. The point is not to draw up a punishing ten-year improvement programme. It is to realise that the future still contains enough time for genuine development.
Three years ago can feel like yesterday. Three years ahead can feel too short to bother beginning. Yet it is exactly the same amount of time. Imagine what could be different if we treated it as an opportunity instead of a limitation.
Three years is enough time to get a degree. What could you become good at in the next three?
Do not mistake rest for retirement from life
There is nothing wrong with a quiet afternoon. One of the privileges of later life is being able to read a book, sit in the garden or simply do nothing without having to justify it to anyone. Boredom can even be enjoyable when it is freely chosen and temporary.
The trouble begins when doing very little becomes our default, not because we love it but because we have stopped asking what else might be possible. Days are easily filled without becoming memorable. An evening disappears into a screen; a week disappears into errands; a year disappears into habits that no longer quite satisfy us.
This is not an argument for filling every blank space in the diary. Bigger does not mean busier. It means that our days contain enough curiosity, purpose, affection, effort and occasional surprise to feel like our own.
Do not fight ageing. Refuse the assumptions.
None of this requires pretending to be young. We can accept wrinkles, take recovery seriously, adjust our ambitions and recognise that some things take more effort than they once did. Acceptance, however, is not the same as surrender.
There is a vast difference between saying ‘I cannot do that in exactly the way I used to’ and saying ‘people my age do not do that’. The first invites adaptation. The second shuts down possibility before it has been tested.
Nor is there one approved model for a fulfilling later life. Some people want mountains; some want a garden that finally flourishes. One person wants to build a small business, another to volunteer, sing, study, travel or reconnect with old friends. The common thread is engagement. Stay interested, and life tends to remain interesting.
The freedom to choose again
A working life teaches us to be reliable. Other people need our time, attention and effort. We become good at meeting those demands, sometimes so good that we forget to ask what we might choose if the next chapter were genuinely ours.
Retirement can be a remarkable gift: less obligation, fewer opinions to satisfy, more freedom to try things without needing to turn them into achievements. You can be a beginner and make a mess of it. You can change your mind. You can discover that you like something unexpected, or that an idea you had cherished is not for you after all.
Experience has its own advantages. We know more about what matters. We can be selective. We do not need every activity to be commercially useful, socially impressive or even particularly sensible. Enjoyment can be enough. So can companionship. So can the quiet satisfaction of being a little better at something than we were last month.
Make the next ten years count
The invitation is not to reinvent yourself overnight. Start where you are. Add something rather than endlessly taking things away. Walk a little farther. Cook a dish you have never tried. Join a class. Call somebody. Visit a place you have driven past for years. Try an activity at which you may initially be terrible.
Then notice what happens. Small experiments give us stories to tell, and stories create momentum. Confidence is built through participation, not by waiting until we feel ready. One new interest may lead to another; one new friendship may change the shape of a week; one decision to go out may create the memory you return to years later.
The next decade will pass whether we make a plan or not. We cannot control how many years remain or what surprises they will bring. But, within the circumstances we have, we can decide to meet them with more curiosity than resignation.
When you look back from the other end of those years, the ambition need not be to say that you stayed young, looked young or even that you accomplished everything you imagined. It can be something simpler, and much more satisfying:
To feel that you used them — not just survived them.
That is the idea behind Relevant@60. Not how to live forever. How to live more.
Relevant@60 · A reconstructed edition based on the original September 2026 manifesto interview.
ISSUE 01 · 02
ISSUE 01 · 06
ISSUE 01 · 09