I mentioned a number of things when talking about my post-retirement from employment (but not work) plans when writing last weekend.
One was that I would not give up on this blog. I hope that this is already apparent. There have been over 200,000 reads here since last Saturday.
I also said I would not give up on the YouTube channel. That has had more than 1.3 million views since then.
I also said I would be talking to others about the future direction of my work. That is happening, but something I have also been discussing this week (apart from theories of war) are issues that have been raised by people with experience of retirement, here on this blog. Precisely because quite a number of readers here are of an age where they have retired, or can imagine doing so, I thought I would share some thoughts on those issues.
Three stood out. One was that I might now have time to waste, or to dither, as one person put it.
Another was that losing the structure of work can result in a loss of direction - which is, I suspect, a variation on the above theme.
A third is a concern that my wife has raised, which is that having been used to having obligations to others for 45 years - which I have taken very seriously and have always tried to fulfil - the risk is that I might just find some more such obligations now to fill the void that those I have left behind have created.
In response, it has only really dawned on me this week why concerns around a lack of structure might be a real issue for some people. By chance I have a reasonably busy schedule until next Thursday evening, but the reality that I suddenly have considerable control over my time thereafter has only just dawned on me, however much I desired it, and planned to have it. The reality is that writing and blogging might only take up forty per cent of my time at most if they continue as now, and even if I take things a little more easily. There is time available to use.
I am not, however, worried about this issue. Although I have been more employed than self-employed over the last decade, my universities did have the sense to pretty much let me get on with things as I wanted, which was also my experience of the previous thirty plus years as a self-employed person. Organising my own time is not, then, a problem for me. I have what is called an internal locus of control, aided in my case by the fact that I am a decided introvert, although with what I hope are well-developed social skills. This means that, in broad terms, I resent someone else trying to control my life and have instead enjoyed managing it myself. As a result, the absence of an imposed work structure is not a problem for me: I have chosen most of my own work structure (within the need to meet obligations) for four decades. This requires a certain degree of self-discipline, the presence of which within me is most readily evidenced by the fact that I wake up and go straight to work on this blog every morning.
That said, because the obligations I have accepted have always meant the time has been filled, the current situation is different. I can see why the concerns I note above are relevant. My reaction, so far, is to imagine how I make this third stage career I have set upon work to best effect. My answer - so far - is to learn how to do blogging and video making better, because I have never had any training in either. I also want to use time that is now available to do a lot more reading and research.
This solution might not last, but yesterday I was encouraged to imagine what that training I am talking about might look like.
One way in which it might be evidenced might involve writing in ways that do, to some degree, involve more risk. This might mean more fully embracing the idea that I might be able to make mistakes, and that this is acceptable. I should already note a consequence of this: I am not sure I would have written some of this week's blog posts even a couple of weeks ago. In other words, part of my training will be to accept risks that, for example, as a professional accountant would have been unacceptable.
Another way of addressing this idea has resulted in me writing an outline training programme for myself. What has staggered me is how easy it has been to think of issues where I really need to learn more, and can do so. The list covers writing, video scripting, video production, filming and editing, and more besides. It also embraces the use of other media, and even where my writing should now be seen, and how I relate to other social media outlets like Blue Sky, Instagram, YouTube shorts, Substack and more. It is going to take a long time to address all these issues - and I really want to do so. It is absurd to think that there is not a great deal more I need to learn just because I have been blogging for nineteen years and seriously YouTubing for a year, even if both have enjoyed some success.
And then there is that reading. Finding time to read anything that was not directly related to task fulfilment over the last eighteen months. Like learning about the issues I note above, this activity has been pushed into 'after hours time' and what I now plan to do is move it into what might be called 'work time' so that I might have more time off.
So who are my new obligations to? I think I can list them, at least provisionally as:
- Me
- My wife
- Those I work with
- The readers of this blog
- My YouTube viewers
That's quite a list. I am not sure I need to add to it as yet.
One final thing I have become aware of, partly because I have had it drawn to my attention. I am a bit obsessive. I guess that writing almost 23,000 blog posts over almost 19 years is some indication of that, so I cannot deny it. The term has, however, been used constructively. An interview with photographer Martin Parr in the Guardian was used as illustration. At the age of 72, he said in response to the question as to whether he is constantly thinking about work:
“More or less, yes. I'm either thinking about things I haven't shot, or things I've done. What's got to be done. What can I do next? Where can I go?”
Time and again, those who want to create (and I only relatively recently realised that blog writing and making YouTube videos are creative processes) are almost all like that, and I am. We are constantly thinking about what is next, never happy with what has been done, and are always slightly distracted by thinking about what is possible. It's just the way we are. It's a plus, because life always has a purpose. It can be annoying or those around us. It also means that the energy for the next project is always there.
I want to remain obsessed with this.
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That all makes sense and, for me – at almost 85, exercise is an issue. I walk a lot but, because it’s been so cold for the last couple of months, I have walked rather than cycled in to town. Now that I have started pedalling again I realise that my cycling muscles have deteriorated a lot. I need to allocate time to go to the gym. I stopped swimming during the Covid lockdown. I must do that again. I need to rebuild and maintain my strength.
I did an over 7k walk yesterday discussing these issues
An Allotment?
I have done that
Not again….
The change that I most noticed on retirement was losing a defined ‘reason’. In one’s work life, there are always goals, whether one is employed or self-employed. In retirement these disappear, unless one creates ‘artificial’ goals. In my case retiring during the early phase of the pandemic exacerbated that, because my non-work activities disappeared at the same time as my workload. I had to ask myself ‘what am I for? Why am I still consuming the planet’s resources?’ Honestly, five years on I think I have still haven’t fully found good answers.
Good luck
I just re-discovered my Blog that I began writing back in February 2005. After a break of many years I’m thinking it might be fun to start writing again. Might that be fun for you? I love taking photographs, so used them a lot in my Blog – good excuse to both indulge in camera work and also talk about the pictures I was taking.
Oddly, today’s challenghe to me from a friend is to take photoes to specifically illustrate ideas on this blog….
A good reflection.
My observation (which is not meant as advice) is that retirement is best viewed positively, a new phase, with new possibility and new purpose, rather than the end of something.
It can also be a phase for exploring your identity, “who I REALLY am, what makes me tick”, because of the removal of outside pressures that come from employers or customers.
Thanks
I’ve been retired just over ten years now and, same as you, discovered a bit more of who I really am in this phase. I’d go further back than work though. I detect that entering a London County Council ‘mixed infant’ class aged not yet five years I was being marched to the beat of someone elses’ drum. That continued all my working life until aged 60. I have mostly lived life exhausted!
I love shaping my own day if I can – still have ‘intrusions’ of various kinds but they are not daily obligations. Actively seeking what I am interested in, reviving rusty skills, finding some place to serve others. I honestly cannot think I suffered bereavement on leaving work. I was delighted to exit.
🙂
“I might now have time to waste, or to dither”.
Time wasting (or dithering) is NOT time wasted! You are at your most creative when day-dreaming and your most observant when not observing. You learn so much more from people and build better relationships if there is nothing pressing to move on to.
So, embrace your empty calendar, have lunch with friends and get out on the fens with your camera/binoculars.
My thinking this week is being done whilst walking with binoculars around my neck and a camera in hand.
Hi Richard,
I offer no advice you are someone who has a very strong drive to achieve your goals. It is an admirable quality.
Retirement for me lies in the rekindling and development of my talents as an artist. Mornings are taken up with drawing the subject and depending on complexity sometimes painting in my chosen medium of watercolour. Inspiration often comes from long walks in the beautiful area where we live facing the Pyrenees mountains. Long holidays involving culture and simple pleasures are high on the list coupled with delicious meals out.
It can, and often does take time to free ourselves from the structure and demands of work, allowing relaxed, engaging thoughts to surface above all others.
Wishing you well in your chosen retirement.
Thanks Geoff
Enjoy the painting
My cousin retired from a a very high-powered Sales job with a big multi-national company 15 months ago. We all wondered how he would cope.
Answer: a total change of direction to something which takes a lot of time, involves travelling a lot, he can share with his wife, and where there is CANI – constant and never ending improvement. Plus an element of competition.
He photographs birds.
And being the obsessive he is, he travels the world looking for them and he shares his pictures on various forums/enters competitions/ makes calendars etc etc
Main thing is – he is happy and content and the various itches that made him a terrific sales person are scratched.
Methinks you are also finding the ways to “scratch your itches”.
I like that
Although I now have no inclination to travel beyond the U.K. and Ireland. There is so much here.
The subject of ‘retirement’ came up at a charity trustee meeting last night. At 61, I’m one of the younger trustees. The discussion went along the lines that retirement made a lot of sense at a time when you weren’t going to live much longer than age 65, when your job was backbreaking, when you got less productive as you got older, and when society had to make room in the job market for lots of young people. And an idyllic retirement was actually possible for your parent’s generation, who could take those expanding benefits and pensions and add to them a windfall profit from the sale of their overlarge property.
But today, we agreed that retirement is not only not worth striving for, it’s impossible for most – and something you should do your best to avoid. The notions it’s based on are simply no longer true.
When age 65 was chosen as the retirement age, most people died at 63. Today, not only are you likely to live into your 80s or 90s, but your older years are going to be active and productive ones. Retiring at age 65 would mean your spending two decades doing needlework and gardening.
A fellow trustee – nearing 80 – said that when retirement was first developed, everyone thought leisure was automatically more fulfilling than work. You know better. You take pride in a job well done, enjoy being part of a team, and know that work – of one form or another – is as integral a part of your life as play. Wise words!
My retirement will be a new form of work.
I am finding it useful, to muse out loud about that process of chaneg though.
I agree with so much of what you wrote in this post. I will continue to “work” whilst being newly retired. Academic life involved so much time that was allocated to self chosen tasks. I will still do this and my final out of office mail says I will spend my time thinking and writing about things I am interested in. All I need to do is learn a new way of allocating time to those things.
Good luck, Colin.
Whenever anybody says that I am obsessive about something, I mentally translate it to dedicated.
Maybe.
But I will live with obsessive.
I happen to live with someone who is also an obsessive (eight medical qualifications, for example). She recognises what she took on.
Just read a wonderful book, ‘The Stranger in the Woods’ about a young man who went to live in the woods of Maine and stayed there for 27 years. He said one word in all that time, ‘hi’, when his path crossed with a hiker. He didn’t do any hunting or gathering but survived by thieving from nearby holiday cabins, an estimated 1000 break-ins over the period! He was eventually caught, otherwise he might still be there. That activity aside he spent a great deal of time doing absolutely nothing, simply sitting at the mouth of his tent (he never built a more robust shelter) with his mind in neutral. According to medical opinion quoted by the author, such (in)activity can be very healthy, a bit like Transcendental Meditation where the objective is to empty the mind. Only he took it to an extreme, though not consciously, it just evolved. The lesson I took is that we can become addicted to ‘busyness’ and this can sometimes be a problem for retirees. However, if we recognise the benefits of not doing anything, at least some of the time and not feeling guilty about it then our lives will be healthier.
Retirement is constantly changing. I’ve been retired for nearly 25 years, and widowed for 20. At first I was active — wrote a cookbook, chaired and wrote for friends of local ancient woodland, was treasurer for local church, travelled to see daughter in Australia. I was willing to do other things, and frustrated that no-one wanted me to do them. Now I’m 85, I’ve simply got less oomph, and find even daily life is a strain sometimes. One just has to keep adapting.
Thanks
I realise that eventually my rate of activo9ty will decline – it must
But I am planning to knock in as much as I can before it does 🙂
All very apt considerations .
The numbers of views on here , and YouTube , social media etc shows you have a wide influence.
I just wish you and other heavyweight colleagues and others of similar perspective {and some on here?} could somehow establish a kind of latter day Beveridge movement – maybe the equivalent of Trump’s Project 2025, so that BBC couldn’t have the temerity to have an Any Questions panel such as the one tonight with far-right Matt Goodwin featured without any counterweight voice other than mainstream centre-right people.
Was he on again?
They know where I am – I did the equivalent of QT in Scotland – where it is called Debate Night. It is made by the same production. company. They have never called for QT and it went well in Scotland.
Or we can teach our children? It’s really quite scary when you are up against the world. which you are quite often. Standing alone is difficult. Standing together is something we need to learn.
That’s also something we need to teach our children.
I used to identify who I was by the jobs I did. When I left the RAF on medical grounds after 16 years, for example, I couldn’t work out who I was. I had identified myself as an RAF Officer. The collapse of my marriage (to a bastard) threw me into a similar position. I searched for careers which would suit me; some did – acute mental health – and some didn’t. I went to university. Eventually I retired “properly”.
I’ve stopped searching now, but I’m still yearning for – what? I’m not sure. I don’t achieve much in the productivity sense, but I’ve learned more about so many topics in the last few years than I ever did in the previous forty something.
I do daydream a lot. That saves my sanity. I think about things. I watch birds. I look at nature. I listen to music (sadly, a botched op means I can’t play instruments any more). However, I’m still left with the uncomfortable feeling that “I could have done more”.
I don’t think that you will have any trouble getting the balance right, Richard. Being obsessive works in your favour. I suspect your mind keeps you on track – mine travels too fast. Take risks – it’s how we reach new heights. TS Eliot said “If you don’t go in over your head, how will you know how tall you are?”
I now turn to this blog for my “balance” in day to day news. It’s a terrific resource. Thank you for writing it.
Many thanks, Hannah. Appreciated, and go well. Everyone has value. Even Trump must have, somewhere.
Continuing to think about “retirement”. I like to watch the birds flying across the road, hither and thither. And I have a great view from my bed of the River Mersey in the distance, and across the Wirral to the hills of Wales when it’s a clear day. I spend a lot of time just watching the view from my window, looking up ships on the Mersey on the Ship AIS App, and occasionally looking up “interesting” planes on Flightradar24. It’s always a big thrill when I get to see a Beluga – usually when there’s an East wind. Just sitting and watching is good to do when you have the time to do it. Smile.
My favourite plane sighting ever was at our caravan in Bwlchtocyn (near Abersoch) though! There was a sort of screaming sound from behind me while I was sitting at the front door looking towards the mountains of Snowdonia. Suddenly there was a plane only maybe 10-20 feet above the caravan roof, turning left over the hedge between us and the next door field! Eeek! The pilot turned his head and looked at me just before the plane disappeared. The fighter jets train over there often, from RAF Valley on Anglesey. But not usually that low!
Another thing that I “enjoy” (!) is learning French and Maths on Duolingo. I will never travel to France, but after I finished the Welsh and Latin courses (both not very long and apparently no longer updated) I wanted something to go on with. If I finish the French course I’m going to try Italian next. I gather that learning a new language is good for the brain, and can stave off dementia. Here’s the link on New Scientist, but I’m not sure if you’ll need a subscription to read it all fully.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2468853-why-being-bilingual-really-does-seem-to-delay-dementia/
Using our brains is vital.
last week I achieved ’80’ and spent the day with a friend and his binoculars, wandering, strolling, drinking coffee, light lunch, chatting, he identified birds and plants, I identified Ash-die-back (Lathkil Dale). He emailed afterwards to say ‘roll on your 90th’. My Father and I walked regularly in the Swiss Alps, the last time being when he was 93 – at 76 he was above base camp on Everest, and he had walked in with his own Sherpas (ie not in a group – they went too slow!). I’m not sure that I will be able to equal his energy, but I do wonder how I had time to work. Like Hannah, I was married to a bastard who told me I would not be able to cope alone. I enjoy myself both alone and in retirement, life is full, including reading your blog – so enjoy your retirement from your paid position, use your well deserved Sheffield University Emeritus position as much as needed, keep our mind active with your blog please and I am sure that life will treat you well and keep you busy.
Many thanks, Susan and thanks too for sharing that. Enjoy your ninth decade.
I’ve been retired for 29 years ( teacher ‘managing’disruptives ) .After many years with husband holidaying in ancient campervan round France my husband suddenly developed dementia. ( nearly 2 years ago). We have since been to Northern Greece with wonderful tour company and a friend and a son has driven us back to favourite places in France. This year we are going to Albania and Corfu with the same travel company and friend , then back to France with the same son again. I’m determined we do everything we want while it’s possible.Im aware this won’t be possible for ever and I see friends with partners in far worse health than mine. I have amazing sons who do everything they can to support us both and are brilliant.I do have times when I feel depressed and as though I am just ‘existing’ but I try to be positive( though I don’t always succeed). What I used to take for granted I now have to make arrangements for. I never ever expected this but I try to make the most of what I can do.
Good luck and thanks for sharing.
Just an Idea for getting important concepts across in a very simplistic way that is really memorable. There is a type of software you can get that will enable the creation of a video presentation accompanied by sketches drawn rapidly at a pace with your dialog. These can be an extremely useful way to explain things that are embedded in memory by the drawings. I found one online that depicted MMT as a bath with the water topped up to pay for things and the excess funds drained away as taxes via the plughole. This helps the viewer to see money creation in the correct way. You could use this software to explain MMT so everyone was capable of fully understanding how it functions.
I read your blog posts every day, but there are a number that I want to point out to friends unfamiliar with your work. Because of this, I think it would be helpful to create a collection of your most critical, must-see, videos on money and economics that are cataloged and available to those just discovering your blog for the first time.
All noted and on our discussion list
Steph Kelton uses that graphic (or one v similar) in her “finding the money” video.
https://findingthemoney.vhx.tv/packages/finding-the-money/videos/finding-the-money-official-trailer