For those of you who have just connected, I retired 3 months ago from being a full-time academic after researching retirement planning for nearly 20 years. Now I am focusing on implementing my findings: for myself, for individuals and for organisations. As I promised when I retired, I am providing a month-by-month account of my findings from the other side. There are four things I’ll focus on from this past month:
Travel
Back from the cruise and Vancouver. Still not convinced about how travels interact with retirement adjustment especially with two over-stuffed cases to be unpacked and a whole lot of admin to take care of that built up while I was away. A cramped, 14-hour bumpy plane ride back with stale sandwiches leads me to hypothesise a negative relationship between air travel and retirement adjustment. I can’t fault the value of travel for catching up with people in person though. My travels to the US allowed me to catch up with Doug Hershey. Doug was the first academic to combine psychology and retirement planning. I consider him the original thought leader in the area and a great career mentor.
Vancouver, Queen Elizabeth Park- May 12th. Taken with my own camera.
Decision-making and prioritising
Doug himself retired about 5 years ago; he downsized and moved across America. So what’s more interesting than reading this blog? Hearing about how Doug and his wife Ilda made a very considered decision about where to move for their retirement. Their decision-making process involved not only identifying criteria for their new location but weighting those criteria, and then assigning scores to each of the possible locations. They then multiplied scores on each of the criteria by the weightings to give each possible location a total score out of 100. They narrowed it down from about nine locations to their final destination using this process. Interesting, huh? I wonder how many people considering a tree change or sea change put in that much effort? Or are simply impressed by the house they saw on a real estate website. It is an idyllic spot but so much more - it’s an ungated community with separate dwellings, a natural lake, forests, community garden, swimming pool, library, spa, health and fitness studios. Worth the extra decision-making effort, I’d say.
Time
You know that horrible feeling you get when your week seems too full to be manageable and how you’ll never get it all done? Well, I’m finding it follows you into retirement and experiencing the residual effect of that already. It feels like everything is happening at once, but the difference is of course these things are not being executed inside or in addition to a normal ‘work week’ – these are the normal ‘work week’. I’m probably talking about 14 hours of new activity. It’s hard to fight the impulse to mentally calculate 60 hours + 14 hours. Still struggling to combine all my diaries on a single mobile device given limited access rights to some email addresses and usability issues of others. Any suggestions?
Health
I mentioned in my last post that one of the buckets I was trying to fill more was health. Maintaining a regular fitness schedule was easy on a cruise with a gym on board and regular fitness classes scheduled. It’s a bit different when you return home and need to make more of an effort. One of the things I know from my research is the importance of implementation intention. This is where the more specific you can be about making a goal actionable - the better. So as soon as I got back, I scheduled some extra activities to try – Hot Yoga and a second HIIT class. Just to put you fully in the picture I previously attended a HIIT class on Mondays and a Yin Yoga class on Friday. Now I’m trying to fit something in every day and sometimes twice a day. Feels like a lot but I figure not everything will work for me, so I’ll drop it later. I’ll keep you posted on what did and didn’t work for me.
So if you are looking for some advice this month, I would suggest booking in just two new activities this month using the implementation intention idea. Remember to include what, when, where, with who, book ahead and turn up. Just booking it in does not count.
Don’t forget to visit my website at www.retirementdr.com.au. I’m offering free 30-minute meetings during June and July for anyone interested.
Joanne Earl is a Psychologist and Honorary Professor of Psychology and Retirement Planning. You can read more about Joanne’s retirement journey via LinkedIn or visit her website: www.retirementdr.com.au.