Keeping Your Mind Sharp
our new course on memory and minds - full of ingenious strategies for NOT becoming a cognitive couch potato...
Becoming a 'late starter' entrepreneur
the 'retiree' landscape is blossoming with micro-enterprises - you may be a good candidate for joining this interesting new world...
Old Workers, New Expectations
Revision presented a half-day seminar on this theme - you may be interrested in our ideas and those of the participants...
Keeping Your Mind Sharp - Revision's latest offering
Mental 'fitness' is at least as important as we age as physical fitness is, possibly more so. Fear that our minds will deteriorate is one of the gravest concerns we have about getting older. Not being able to remember something, and remember it immediately - those so-called senior moments - unnerve even the most alert and sharp people.
Ann Zubrick is Re-vision's expert in this area. She stays across all the research, which is no small feat as there is an increasing amount of work on older minds and memory. She also has the rare knack of translating the research findings into practical strategies for maintaining mental acuity and memory, as the many people who have attended her community lectures will know.
Keeping Your Mind Sharp is a new line of workshops from Re-vision. Studies now show that mentally active people preserve their skills better and longer than cognitive couch potatoes. The workshops provide a range of strategies and techniques for maintaining 'mind fitness'
The workshops also help you to understand that memory and mental fitness are best thought of as simply aspects of overall health. Take the connection between memory and sleep. Research has shown that lack of restorative sleep can have a drastic impact on memory. But older people have a high incidence of insomnia. Yet people don't always think about the fact that they may be having trouble remembering because they are not getting enough sleep.
The Keeping Your Mind Sharp program is a four week course which will be run every month at Re-vision's South Perth office. The course costs $120 (with a $10 discount when two people register together) The next courses are:
Friday mornings October 7, 14,21,and 29 9:30am - 11:00am
Friday mornings November 4, 11, 18, 25 9:30am - 11:00am
Tuesday early evenings November 1, 8, 15, 22 5:30pm - 7:00 pm
For more details about the program and to register, click here
Besides the Keeping Your Mind Sharp course, Ann offers training to a wide variety of audiences. There are many younger people who want to improve their memory to enhance their work performance or their 'life performance'. The format can be anything from 2-hour "lunch and learn" talk to all-day seminars. Ann also works with community and workplace groups
Becoming a 'late starter' entrepreneur
We are meeting more and more people in their 50s and 60s and 70s making some fascinating life changes. Many are people who in the conventional sense have 'retired', but who actually haven't stopped working. Rather, they've taken on new and often very challenging directions. 'Second career' and 'entrepreneur' are terms that might better describe these people than 'retired'.
Often this new line of work developed by turning a hobby, passion or volunteer activity into a money-making venture - it needn't be a huge commercial venture, generating a quite modest income stream is still being an entrepreneur.
These are not usually 'small businesses' in the traditional sense of a deli or pie shop. Rather they are small ventures. Micro-enterprises. Often the people involved do not think of themselves as entrepreneurs but, of course, they are.
Joy Flower is a nice example. She has recently established a small enterprise called Art Discovery Tours. the tours visit the Swan Valley outside Perth to explore the natural beuaty of the area, its artistic forms and scuptural shapes as well as visiting galleires and meeting local artists. The first tours have been a great success and are proving very popular. Art and the local environment is a passion of Joy's. But not much like her 'first' working life which she spent as an accountant and later Company Secretary to a number of mining companies
If you, or someone you know fits the description of a 'late starter' entrepreneur - or even if you are just thinking of doing something more with a hobby or interest - please contact us. We are curious about what people are doing when they leave their full time work. All this is helping us understand better how work and retirement are being re-defined. All personal details will be kept strictly confidential, but we might be able to help your venture along, at least publicise it if you would like.
Old Workers, New Expectations
The theme - Old Workers, New Expectations - must have struck a chord because the inter-active half-day seminar conducted for the Institute of Public Administration Australia IPAA (WA Division) attracted some 80 participants. It was a productive morning for all of us.
The participants came away with a deeper appreciation of the change in attitudes of older people being older - in particular, that they don't feel all that old! and certainly not past their used-by date.
They were also very taken with the parallels Anne Butorac drew between sexism and ageism in the workplace. She described what has been learned over the years about countering sexism and encouraged people to think about whether similar approaches would work to counter ageism. It appealed to many as an interesting a productive approach.
We at Re-vision also learned a great deal as the participants answered a series of questions on their views and experience:
when does a person become old? what does old mean?
does ageism lurk in your workplace? how has it, or might it, be tackled?
are there examples of flexible/different work options for older workers in your organisation?
We analysed the responses, which were rich and thought-provoking. It is posted on IPAA's website: Analysis of workshop exercises. Our PowerPoint presentation is also on IPAA's website: Old workers, New expectations Presentation.