Billy’s Life Lessons
Not philosophy. Just things that actually work.
Same honesty, same voice, wider subject — three books about growing older, losing the job title that used to define you, and building the next chapter of life deliberately, on purpose. Read them in order.
The books
In order
Nobody Tells You This at Sixty — Book One of Three Book I of 3
Nobody Tells You This at Sixty
A Book Every Man Over Fifty Wishes He’d Read Ten Years Earlier
Book One of The Later Life Trilogy. The smaller, stranger business of getting older — the reflection that starts looking like your father’s, the specific silence of a Monday morning with nowhere to be, the way old friends drift for no dramatic reason at all. The manual Billy wishes had been handed to him at sixty.
“Somewhere around fifty-nine, I started noticing a pattern. Men roughly my age would say some version of the same sentence, usually over a drink, usually a bit quieter than the rest of the conversation: nobody tells you this bit. Not the big, obvious stuff — everyone warns you about retirement parties and bus passes.…”
From the opening pages 
More Than My Job — Book Two of Three Book II of 3
More Than My Job
Who Are You When the Title Disappears?
Book Two of The Later Life Trilogy. For the stretch after the initial disorientation of getting older has settled — the part nobody warns you lasts as long as it does. If you’re not what you used to do for a living, what exactly are you?
“If you read the first book, you’ll know roughly where this one picks up. Not at the shock of the mirror, or the knee’s first formal complaint, or the strange first Monday with nowhere to be. This book starts a bit further on — in the stretch where the initial disorientation of getting older has settled, but you stil…”
From the opening pages 
Built to Last — Book Three of Three Book III of 3
Built to Last
Thirty Years Building Billion-Dollar Projects, and the Lessons They Taught Me About Building a Life
Book Three of The Later Life Trilogy. What comes after adjusting to this stage of life — actually building something on purpose within it. Thirty years of building things that had to work, translated, with a bit of adjusting, into the business of building an actual life.
“If you’ve read the first two books, you’ll know this story by now. The shock of arriving at sixty without a manual. The long, quiet reweaving of an identity that used to hang entirely on a job title. This last book is about what comes after both of those — not simply adjusting to this stage of life, but actually bui…”
From the opening pages