Write your own job description for the next 10 years

Think about every job you have had. Each came with a description: a purpose, a list of responsibilities, hours, reporting lines and some idea of what good looks like. Someone else wrote it. You read it, signed up and got on with it.

Now picture the next ten years as a single role. What would the job description say if you wrote it yourself? It is a surprisingly useful exercise, and a kind one. It turns a vague wish to “slow down a bit” into something you can look at, talk about and adjust.

Why a job description works

Big life questions are hard to answer head on. “What do I want from my sixties?” can leave you staring at a blank page. A job description gives you a familiar shape to fill in. You already know how to read one. You know a good one is specific, and a poor one is all fine words and no detail.

It also fits the idea of dialling down rather than stopping. A role can change over time. Responsibilities shift, hours reduce, new duties appear. That is exactly how a gradual move into semi-retirement tends to work.

Start with the purpose statement

Every good role starts with a line or two on why it exists. Yours might be “to stay well, stay useful and enjoy the people around me”, or “to keep doing the parts of my work I love, and make room for everything I have put off”.

Keep it short enough to remember. You will come back to it whenever a decision feels muddled. Does this new commitment serve the purpose, or pull against it?

List the responsibilities, with a share of your time

This is the heart of it. Most job descriptions list duties. Yours should also say roughly how much of your time each one gets. Common areas include:

• Paid work. What share of a full-time week, and how it changes. Perhaps 80% for the first few years, then 60%, then less again. Name the parts of the work you want to keep.
• Health. Movement, sleep, food, check-ups. Not a fitness regime, just a steady commitment you can keep.
• People. Partner, family, friends, neighbours. The relationships that work has squeezed, and the ones you want to grow.
• Learning. A skill, a language, an instrument, a qualification. Something that keeps you curious.
• Giving back. Volunteering, mentoring, caring, community roles. Many people find this replaces the sense of usefulness work used to provide.
• Fun. It deserves its own line. If it is not written down, it tends to be the first thing to go.

The shares do not need to be precise. The point is to see the balance on paper, and to notice if paid work still takes up nearly all of it in year five.

Set the hours and the boundaries

A role has working hours, and so does this one. Decide what “working less” actually means for you: fewer days, shorter days, or a lighter role with less on your plate. Then write down the boundaries that protect it. No emails after a certain hour. No more than one evening event a week. Holidays taken in full.

If you are employed, every employee in Great Britain can request flexible working from day one of employment. Our guide to working 4 days a week before retirement walks through how that conversation can go.

Write the “stop doing” list

Job descriptions rarely say what is not part of the role. Yours should. Working less only creates space if something leaves. That might be a committee you joined years ago, the habit of saying yes to every request, a long commute you could reduce, or chores that could be shared differently at home.

Be gentle with this list. Stopping something is not failing at it. It is making room.

Decide how you will measure success

For decades, success at work has often been measured in pay, promotions and targets. None of those fit this role. Try measures like:

• How often you see the people who matter most.
• Whether you feel rested most weeks.
• One new thing learned each year.
• Time given to something beyond yourself.
• How many of the “one day” plans actually happened.

Build in review points

Good organisations review roles regularly. Do the same. A yearly check-in works well for many people, with bigger reviews at natural milestones: a birthday ending in zero or five, a child leaving home, or the date you can first access a pension. Our pension age checker shows when those dates fall for you. Under current rules, the normal minimum pension age is 55, rising to 57 on 6 April 2028, and State Pension age is 66 now, rising to 67 for anyone born between 6 March 1961 and 5 April 1977.

It is also worth asking how long you are likely to enjoy good health. Healthy life expectancy at birth in the UK is about 61 years. That is an average from birth, not a forecast for you. The healthy years calculator gives a personal estimate, which can help you decide when to dial down rather than leaving it all to the end.

Check what the role costs

Every role has a budget. Working less usually means earning less, but often by less than people fear, because tax and National Insurance fall too. As a worked example, someone on £45,000 in England paying 5% into a pension would take home about £510 a month less at 80%, and about £1,020 a month less at 60%, keeping roughly 64% of their take-home pay for 60% of the hours. Try your own numbers in the part-time pay calculator. Rules are general, so check them against your own circumstances.

A template you can copy

Copy this into a notebook or a document and fill in each line. Leave blanks where you are not sure yet.

Share it with someone

A job description is easier to stick to when someone else has seen it. If you have a partner, write yours separately, then compare. The differences are often the most useful part. If thinking about the future is making you anxious or low, it is worth talking to your GP as well.

The aim is not a perfect plan. It is a role you would genuinely want to apply for. Dial down. Don’t drop out.

Questions people ask