retire

Author: Ken Cook

Every day of your working life you had some task awaiting you. Regardless of whether you were self-employed, the president of a national corporation or the janitor at the local elementary school you had a set of defined duties and responsibilities. Even the self-employed and top executive had bosses usually denoted as “clients” or “customers”.

Now you have reached retirement and no more boss, right? Wrong. Now you work for time, spouse, neighbor, children, friends, and others. You will have an entirely new set of guidelines to follow and goals to achieve. I know this intimately from watching my brother-in-law’s retirement for the last fifteen years.

To help you cope with your new responsibilities and duties make sure you define the parameters for your new “clients”. You are perfectly well permitted to block of “you” time so long as that time maintains the momentum you have developed and ads constructive activities to your schedule. Blocking out sleeping time or “drunk” time is not so cool nor is it good for you or your “clients”.

Ben Northcutt, the same brother-in-law to which I earlier referred, offers this advice, “Keep a schedule. While every minute need not be pre-determined it is important to know that lunch time is noon and dinner time is six. I get a little flexible on breakfast time.”

Ben spent decades as a police chief and was always “on call”. His duties would often stir him from a sound sleep and send him into the dark and unknown. He certainly enjoys the comfort of home and his computer but he also understands sometimes there are interruptions and he does not let those throw him off. His church and family schedule are pretty much all he goes by these days.

Here are some other tips for those of you about to enter or just now entering retirement:

1. Save that “you” time and make sure everyone knows that is your time but do not block out all day every day. An afternoon for golf, a morning for fishing, an evening in the game room playing pool with friends. Whatever you like, fill in the blanks.

2. Keep up your momentum. If you are accustomed to arising at six in the morning keep roughly the same schedule.

3. Never stop learning. Pick some mind and body challenging activities to keep you sharp mentally and physically.

4. Master a new skill. This has been the hope and dream of retirees for many generations. Today’s world offers many new areas of exploration. My cousin Bill, after retiring from IBM, went for his commercial driver’s license and did some long haul trucking. In fact, he is in his middle seventies and still takes day runs.

5. Be careful about others who did not just retire. Your children and friends probably still have daytime routines requiring them to be elsewhere. When you are bored or lonely that probably means you did not anticipate that time alone and did not properly plan or prepare. Remember that and prevent it in the future.

6. If you expect retirement to be a big pyjama fest you must have yourself confused with Hugh Hefner or Liz Taylor. If you are one of them then I apologize. Get up, get out and get busy!

We all want to hear from you as well so please feel free to comment and share. Just do not share with this man who evidently puts all of his chickens into one basket:

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