Bright, shiny object syndrome

If you lack motivation now or have it only in fits and starts – FIND IT!  And find it now, before you retire!  Find it in bulk.  Bottle it, bag it, freeze it, save it, put it on lay-away – but find it and find it in spades!  There is no point at all in being retired with sixteen hours of daylight on your hands if you are not motivated to get up, ready to do battle with those sixteen hours! 

One of the many things I knew about myself before going into retirement is that I do not do well in unscheduled time.  It’s the main reason I could never freelance or run my own business. 

 

I also know that I suffer from “bright, shiny object syndrome” …. oh look, a crossword puzzle ….. ! 

 

So somewhere, somehow – I had to figure out how to motivate myself … almost on an hourly basis.  As I suspected, it’s a slippery, downhill slope to the couch and the remote.  (Also, if I could go cold turkey, I would cancel my cable and thus remove the temptation to laze around and veg.  But I am still too addicted to the nightly news and OHL hockey.  And cancelling my cable, but continuing to watch programs on-line doesn’t count.  I’d still be vegging plus running up my monthly internet bill to boot!)

And once again in the guise of the messenger that begs not to be shot, the best way I have found to stay motivated … scheduling. 

 

Just like you have been doing on a daily basis for possibly your entire life. 

 

Because despite all of your brave talk about retirement freeing up all of your spare time, about how you are going to spend your days doing “nothing” – you are still going to need a calendar.  In fact, my calendar has become my life line (so buy yourself a pretty one at the next boxing day sale!) 

 

If you do not want the TV remote to become your new best friend, you have to immediately begin to build and maintain a structure to your days.  

 

I’m not implying you should start scheduling your days on an hour by hour basis (unless that works for you!).  At the very minimum, you need a daily “to do” list.  The list can be as simple as a mental note to wash the car and bicycle to the park.  Or it can be as elaborate as a detailed list written down in a daytimer.  Either way – you have to figure out a way to accomplish something on a daily basis.  For the over-achieving, it can be solving the world’s nuclear crisis.  For the rest of us – just getting the laundry done or actually reading War and Peace may enough. 

It really does take a year ….

But the very best piece of advice I can give anyone – my seventh mad retiree tip – it takes at least a year for you to grow into your new retirement lifestyle.

I had assumed it would take a year or so to get the hang of being “gainfully unemployed”.  Other gainful employees I spoke to assured me of the same.  Though some did suggest 18 months to as long as two years

Well, I’m here to tell you that it really does take at least a year to make the physical, emotional, psychological and financial adjustments necessary to feel comfortable with your new and permanent state of affairs.  It takes a year to develop a new mindset – exactly the same amount of time it did whenever you started a new job.   One full calendar year to fall into patterns, to develop some new, bad habits, to get bored with sleeping in to just past the crack of dawn ….

Of course, how successfully you made the necessary retirement lifestyle and psychological adjustments depends entirely on how you have spent that first year of retirement.  If you went into retirement with your mandatory list, with a carefully and fully researched plan, and social network in place, what you find you have at the end of your first year of retirement is an enormous sense of satisfaction and optimism.  A feeling of having just started to accomplish something worthwhile.   A very profound feeling of fulfillment.  What you now have is twelve months of experience and knowledge you can carry forward into year two and beyond.

All because you had a plan.

If you do not go into retirement with a list, or a plan of any kind – I suspect you will not be nearly as content and happy at the end of your first year.  I suspect you will have spent a lot of time in your pyjamas, in front of the television.   At the end of the day the only retirement resource you have is you.

 

 

 ... next time - motivation and scheduling

(sounds an awful lot like work!)

About that list ….

Then I actually retired and discovered that there were days when my “list” was of absolutely no value to me at all!  A year out and I have discovered that there are items on my list that I thought were my deal breakers, the only raisin d’etre there was for early retirement.  Now, some of those items don’t seem all that important at all.  And there are now activities on my list that I didn’t see coming ….. that bird watching group, for example!

Here’s my fifth mad retiree tip - once you have actually retired, be flexible about your list … because once you’re out in the big, bad retired world with all that free time on your hands, you will be surprised, and perhaps even a little bit shocked with how you eventually end up spending all of that time.  Have I mentioned bird watching ….. ?

 

There’s no prize for getting to the end of your list first …

Here’s my sixth mad retiree tip – don’t start volunteering, don’t sign up for any long-term courses, don’t commit to any short term contracts, don’t make any major life commitments, etc., during your first year of retirement.   You need time to make the adjustment from gainful employment to gainful unemployment.

I was adamant that I wanted to lead non-stop campus tours starting the moment I retired.  Heck, if y’all remember, I was desperate to get the gig leading tours at the Mattamy Athletics Centre.   As many campus tours on as many days as I thought I could possibly manage.

But no opportunities presented themselves. 

And now, one year out – I am extraordinarily thankful they did not.  If they had, I would now be complaining long and loud about how much of my new-found free time I was losing to these “volunteer opportunities”! I realize now, at the end of my first year, that not getting any gigs as a regular, volunteer tour guide was the best thing that could have happened.  I needed this first year to settle into my new mindset, to let new patterns and schedules develop naturally.  Now, at the end of my first year, I can see where I might be able to fit a few volunteer opportunities into my schedule – only if I have the time, of course!

 

 

.... you know what?  It really does take a year!