Hello: I'm Peter and I'm a workaholic.....
Many a true word said in jest....
I'm prevaricating about retirement...mainly because I have become conditioned to needing to work. Running your own business does that.
Actually I think I'm addicted to work: it is easier for me to stop drinking for a week than not do any work for a week.
I'm 65 in April next year and will still be working. I really don't want to be working beyond my 66th, I am dropping to a 3 day week from 1 January, but before I finally set a date and walk away I need to learn to not need to work.
Any suggestions, serious ones?
Peter, my background is that I retired 7 years ago aged 45, having worked a 60+ hr week international travel etc, for 25 years at an independent US-owned investment house.
To say the step-change was a shock was an understatement, but I knew that if I carried on it would definitely kill me - literally. I joined a gym, became teetotal and lost 4 1/2 stone.
The key (for me) was to approach retirement like a 'job':
- If your Pension is in an investment you control, you are an investment manager
- If you have properties you maintain, alter, extend etc, you are an estate manager
- If you have school-age kids (I do) then you are a taxi-driver, home-tutor and banker
- If your wife is happy to step aside (mine was) then you can become cook, cleaner, housekeeper
- And there's always something needs doing in the garden
My advice is structure your day - even if it feels artificial at first (and it is artificial - as others have noted, all real task-centered urgency goes) you will achieve more and maintain a sense of purpose and direction.
Within a year, you will wonder how you ever found the time to work.
Good luck.
