Retirement as a Career

Anticipating retirement in 4-5 years, I've already laid out a rough schedule for my days:

     9:00 AM      Rise & ready self for day (coffee, groom, dress)
   10:30 AM      Body Work (mall walking, stationary bike, weights, on a rotation)
   12:00 PM       Lunch on own
     1:00 PM       Mental Stimulation (Reading, brain games, statistics)
     2:00 PM       Emotional Work (Music, Art, Poetry, etc. - appreciating or creating)
     3:00 PM       Soul Stimulation (Bible Study, Devotional Writing, Blogging)
     4:00 PM       Slack time if any of the above run over
     5:00 PM       Dinner with spouse (prep and consumption)
     7:00 PM       Relationship Work (time with spouse and/or friends)
   10:00 PM       Frivolous Indulgences
   12:00 PM       Sleep

I fully expect to keep a spreadsheet on the above.  :)

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A couple of days ago, I ran across a post from a website called Quiet Revolution (it's mostly about introverts - go figure).  It warned about the artificiality of retirement and encouraged the benefits of lifelong work.  I've certainly heard that advice before, but it's the first time that I've thought about the idea of retirement as a 20+ year career that I will be devoting myself to soon.  Not a bad way of seeing it, really - as a job to do, and to do well.  It made me think that I should write up a job description for retirement, set annual goals and interim milestones, track my performance, etc.  Hm.

So here's the article - which may form a very useful guide to my next career.

Keep working.  

And make sure whatever you’re doing includes the 4 S’s of meaningful work:

S – Social

We are the most social mammals on the planet for a reason, and it’s not just the extroverts who can master this. Look, according to Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, our social relationships have a greater effect on our happiness than our income, religion, gender, or even health. What does a good workplace foster? Small team dinners. CEO AMAs. Lunch walking groups. Work sports leagues. If these are missing, start one. 

S – Structure

There are 168 hours in a week. Fifty-six are for sleep (eight hours a night if you can get it), 56 for work (including things like commuting and extra work at home), and 56 for your passion.

On structure, there are two things to point out. One, work helps create and pay for your third bucket—the fun bucket, the passion bucket. And two, if everyone in this structure has a third bucket, what can each person bring in from outside of work? Can the word nerd start a book club? Can the hospital volunteer start a company volunteer program? Can the late night DJ plan the Christmas party? 

Work structure should allow outside work passions to be big parts of our lives. 

S – Stimulation

Always be on the lookout to learn something new. In every job you have, ensure the steepest possible learning curves are between “value giving” and “value getting.” Examples to make sure this happens are things such as staying a maximum of two years in roles, initiating job sharing or job trades, planning regular development sessions, and scheduling quarterly growth meetings with one- and two-up managers. Make sure you can always say yes to the question “Am I learning a lot and adding a lot?” If your answer is tilted one way, it means you’re giving something else up. 

S – Story

There’s a reason why Medtronic, the medical devices company famous for popularizing the pacemaker, has family members of patients read letters at company meetings. How would you feel about your job if an 11-year-old girl thanked you for giving her five extra years of memories with her father?  

“Story” is all about feeling that you’re part of something bigger than yourself. It’s about first ensuring the company’s mission and higher-level purpose capture the heart and then bringing the mission to life by regularly sharing customer stories, hanging anecdotal posters on walls, and talking about it at open or closed meetings. 

At Facebook, you’re connecting the world. At Wikipedia, you’re giving the world the sum of human knowledge free. At your local paper, you’re increasing community. 

What’s your workplace story?

So, I say never give up work. Meaningful work. Work you love. Because you’ll be giving up the 4 S’s—Social, Structure, Stimulation, and Story—you get every day from being there.