Hello, I am Kevan Hall, founder of Your Portfolio Life. Like most people I went through the usual changes in my life growing up, leaving home, having a family, and changing jobs. I also moved countries and set up my own business. At each of these transition points I read a lot, learned new things, and moved on.

Then, more recently, I was facing a new change, I started to think about stepping back from working full time. I have spent the last 30 years developing and running training programs and writing books about new ways of working and I am an avid reader, so I threw myself into researching this next stage of my life.

Frankly, I was horrified, the traditional idea of stopping work and gently declining into old age didn’t sound like me at all. I learned that 90% of people retired with a financial plan but only 10% had a plan on how to spend their time.

I learned that it was possible to actively redesign your life following some simple principles to increase fulfilment, engagement, and happiness. There was a lot of great research out there, so I brought it together and found ways to make it practical and applicable for myself. I found it made a huge difference and wished had learned about these things earlier.

I also found that about half of people were re-evaluating aspects of their lives following COVID. Young people were thinking about what they wanted from work, people with families wanted better work life balance, and more people were retiring early even though they were living longer. Everyone, unsurprisingly, was in search of purpose and happiness in life.

At work only 20% of people describe themselves as highly engaged, 19% are miserable and the other 60% are “emotionally disengaged. Given we spend 40% of our waking lives at work for 40 years we have no chance of a happy life if we are not happy at work. This seemed like a massive waste of human potential and happiness.

I think we can do better. I founded YPL to bring together the best research and expert trainers and coaches to help people to design the lives and careers they want.

You can see more about our workshops, webinars and coaching here.