IF ALL WORK and no play makes for dull boys and girls, in the past couple of years we seem to have been leading more interesting lives.
The backlash against the aspirational, go-getting yuppie of the 1980s began with the idea of “downshifting” — relaxing one’s commitment to career in favour of a better quality of life.
Now, the notion of “protirement” tries to take our revolt against the work ethic a step farther. Whereas the downshifter clings to the world of work by going part-time, the protirer wants to leave the world of wage labour altogether and replace it with something more fulfilling.
Like most of these clumsy marketing categories, the idea of protirement arrived from America. The word was coined by Frederic M. Hudson, a self-help author and founder of a work balance institute, as part of his effort to make retirement sound a little more fun. Recently, however, the term has been used to describe a younger generation. In essence, the idea aims to put a more positive and more militant spin on the idea of dropping-out, rather than downshifting.
Whereas the downshifter spent impecunious afternoons watching daytime television and smoking Lambert & Butlers, the protirer is likely to be pursuing his own hobbies and ploughing his own furrow. And whereas the downshifter wanted only to change gear, the protiree wants to get a new car — or preferably a bicycle, given the austerity of the regime that he likes to lead.
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A recent survey discovered that nearly half of all 18 to 35-year-olds in Britain were making plans to protire after the age of 30, and that one in 15 workers under 35 have made the break and walked out of their jobs. But where do they go? Men, it seems, aspire to a spot of organic farming, while the women favour a dose of charity work. Other protirers get creative — and spend their days twisting coat hangers into objets d’art for sale on their market stall. Some of the most charming become florists, and find themselves wrapping up expensive flowers for the yuppies who can still afford them.
For the protirers, executive burnout arrives early, enabling them to short-circuit the career path cannily before they have had the misfortune to lift a finger. Faced with the prospect of working themselves into a frenzy to pay for the pensions of their babyboomer parents, they would prefer to take it easy and grow some spuds.
The Achilles’ heel of the protirers is that their new lifestyle is sustained not by the spuds but the money they made on selling their house to move to the country — or from the fat inheritance bequeathed by daddy. Without a private income, the protirer should be warned that there is a good chance that he will end up back in the office with his tail between his legs — and at a lower rung on the management ladder.