Retirement represents the upending of, perhaps, years of routine, of identity, of social interaction, and of those things that had importance in the context of a job and career. The big question is then “what do I now to meet my needs related to social interaction and purpose?” Or, more fundamentally, “what are my needs related to social interaction and purpose?”
I think Chapter 2 of Hyrum Smith’s book Purposeful Retirement gets it right in identifying that even the fundamental question above hinges on turning in your title (i.e., your work identity) and figuring out that you have value simply because you are you. Once you challenge and dispel some of the beliefs that underlie the importance you attribute to a title or identification with work, you can begin to work on the questions in the paragraph above. Smith uses the following examples of beliefs that sometimes get in the way of a successful retirement transition:
- Unemployed people are lazy;
- Personal value comes only through hard work;
- Important people have important titles; and,
- If I am busy I am important.
I suspect each of us would resonate at different levels with the various beliefs that can create a transition challenge. For me, the second and fourth bullets above hold the greatest challenge. Let’s take a deeper look at these two beliefs.
Personal value comes only through hard work. Having grown up on a farm where there is always work to be done and there are no performance appraisals delivered by your boss, you learn to take pride in the work that gets done and the outcome that’s produced. And, it’s often built on the belief that “the only work worth doing is hard.” Smith provides an example in the book of an individual who had many family activities that were either missed or interrupted due to work. Because the individual was needed at work, there was little guilt associated with such absences or interruptions. I can relate to this individual’s story as I experienced the same thing in my career. Rarely did a vacation go by that wasn’t interrupted in some way by work-related events that necessitated (or did they?) my involvement. In Smith’s example, now that the individual is retired, however, he is expected by family members to be at all family events because “what else did he have to do?”. The exponential growth of family events that interrupted this person’s “checklist of things to get done” was a serious irritation to the retiree as his perceived lack of productivity was a clear departure from his hard work belief. The solution, for the individual in the example and for me, is to realize that time with family and taking time for conversation IS a valuable substitute for the checklist items. Note, however, I still believe the “all things in moderation” statement holds within it some truth. I’ve been working on this belief and, hopefully, my family has noticed…. In addition to family time, this “hard work” belief has also gotten in the way of regular exercise for me. After all, when you grow upon the farm your work IS your exercise. Regular exercise is one of my earliest priorities.
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
Oscar Wilde
If I am busy I am important. Surprisingly, I think this belief is dealt with using the very tools we’re taught early in a business career. In a world of emails, social media and 24/7 news coverage, it’s easy to get caught up in the sheer volume of information and related activities (e.g., browsing the Internet and following the endless ratholes it holds). The key is to stop being busy and start being productive. In other words, time management, prioritization, and discipline. As Smith says in his book, “[w]hen you feel productive, you feel great at the end of the day.” And for this purpose, I interpret productive to mean having engaged in some degree of activities that provide value to you. If you’re a person who enjoys interacting with people, being a greeter at Walmart all day will make you feel good, while mowing the lawn may not. For me, I have found that I will be best served, at least at this stage, by having a routine and figuring out the balance between, and the timing of, reading, exercise, creative activities in the woodshop, joint activities with my amazing spouse, family time, time with friends, educational time, volunteerism, and hobbies. To accomplish this, I’ll need to limit the daily amount of time spent on, for example, emails and social media. I don’t need to be as responsive to emails as I was at work, so I won’t be. “Either you consciously plan and decide how you want to fill your time and act purposefully or you allow outside forces to fill your time for you.” (Purposeful Retirement at page 45.)
Congratulations if you see the potential conflict between these two beliefs and the steps necessary to counteract them in retirement. No one said it was going to be easy, but it sure holds the prospect of being fun!
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
J. Lubbock
