Non-retirement

I "retired" last July. I use the quotation marks advisedly; what I mean is that I retired from full-time work and from being on someone else's payroll. I personally don't like the R-word; sounds too final for my taste.

A friend I'd invited to my retirement party (there we go: the R-word again) asked "aren't you nervous about this? It’s a big change.” Yes, it is a big change, but one I was looking forward to. And most of the people I know who have recently retired or are contemplating it, seem to welcome it; but by no means all of them. Some were looking forward to more time playing golf or just taking it easy in general; others had lots of projects lined up and I was in the latter group. Some, on the other hand, contemplate the prospect with uncertainty at the very least. After all, it’s not just the financial implications; it’s the loss of structure and, for many people, (particularly men) a large part of their identity.

Then there’s the group that were worried about it in advance but pretty soon realised the benefits; like a man I met last week who said he’d been dreading retirement but within 7 days was wondering why he’d been concerned. Maybe he hadn’t had a plan of how he would fill his days, but he soon realised there were already more other things in his life than he’d realised; or maybe he was just discovering lots of new activities, on the basis that nature abhors a vacuum. Like the retirees who use the old chestnut: “I don’t know how I ever had time to go to work.”

A few years ago I was in Canada, visiting my brother David who’s lived in wonderful BC for 30 years. He, like me, was contemplating retirement and he’d decided to invest in a few sessions with a retirement coach. That in itself surprised me; although I was very familiar with coaching principles and had coached a bit myself, I’d never come across retirement coaches before. “Cost me $700 and it was a great investment!” said David. The first thing this coach told him was: “I find that the people that are happiest in retirement are not the ones with the most money: they’re the ones with a plan.” That impressed me, even though I’m not a great planner; it certainly chimed with David, who is.

I did already have a plan of sorts but my next question was: what kinds of things should "the plan" ideally contain? So that’s something I am researching at present, for my benefit and hopefully for readers of this blog too. I’ll be talking to people who have retired, are planning to retire, or maybe just have it on the distant horizon. I will also be bearing in mind the wise words of Charles Handy, who coined the term “portfolio working” – a principle that I have found a great inspiration for more than 10 years now and which I’ll explain in forthcoming blogs. The beautiful thing is that portfolio working survives retirement. Watch this space!

If you haven’t heard of portfolio working and want to know about the principle, check out Handy’s “The Age of Unreason.” (Harvard Business School Press, 1998) It’s also referred to briefly in his autobiographical “Myself and Other More Important Matters” (Arrow Books, 2006)