Once again, before ER everyone worries what they'll do all day. Once they're ER'd, everyone wonders what the heck they were worried about.
Or, as Khan says, "To do" vs "To be". I wonder how much less "busy" and more productive everyone's work would be if we spent more time on the latter than the former.
There are things I want to do when I retire (or at least I think I want to do them), but if I lollygag around when I'm retired like I do when I'm on vacation, I'll only accomplish a fraction of them. Maybe I am just fooling myself about what I want to do or how strongly I want to do it.
It sounds like you see your choices as:
- Stay at work where you can make optimal use of your money and (your employer's) time.
- ER and work hard to finish your list, even if you're not enthused about it. In other words, working for yourself without pay.
- ER and screw off, but feel guilty.
A fourth choice might be to compare your post-ER priorities to your pre-ER priorities. You might also want to take a look at your deadlines-- in my case weeks moved into months and opened up more time for leisure/unplanned opportunities.
Philip Greenspun has a fairly cynical/bitter perspective on the subject:
Early Retirement
For those who are already retired, are you doing the things you had dreamed and planned to do after retirement?
Yep. If anything I tend to overschedule my time and not leave enough to be flexible or to screw off. I'm learning to plan nothing during the afternoon or nothing on one day a week. I'm still learning.
Do you find that you have to cultivate some self-discipline even to do things you wanted and planned to do?
Sure. Especially if the surf is up. The other side of that is having the self-discipline to get things done today because you're pretty sure that the surf is going to be up tomorrow.
It helps if you have a spouse, partner, or exercise buddy who expects you to be present at a certain time/place to be doing something with them. Nothing succeeds like peer pressure.
If you're not carrying out your pre-retirement plans, do you feel worried or guilty about it, or have you changed your mind and decided they aren't all that important to you?
Sounds like rationalization!
I've changed some things because they're just not worth the effort. For example I used to bicycle 3000 miles/year to work, fantasizing about all the recreational bicycling I'd get done when I ER'd. When I ER'd I realized that it was hot, sweaty, painful, gear-intensive, dangerous, and not at all as much fun as surfing. When you add in taekwondo or other activities you realize that you can be in perpetual workout/recovery mode or you can choose a couple activities that won't grind you down into a pulp. I haven't cycled in several years.
There are times when I find it necessary to go surfing four or even five days in a row. I know now that I will pay a physical price for pushing so hard, and I change plans as necessary.
Sometimes education changes your priorities for you. Reading "Younger Next Year" made me realize that I needed to do something active every day unless I was really sick. Before reading that book I used to have "workout" and "rest" days, and I try not to do that anymore.
Before ER I used to scramble to keep up with yardwork. In ER I've been able to sit back, decide what yardwork I want to do when I'm 80 years old (not much), and redesign the yard accordingly. Instead of "Prune the bougainvillea this weekend" it's been "How can we stop having to prune these so often?" We're using half the water, mulching a whole lot more, no more fertilizer, doing more ground cover, and moving plants to better places. Sounds very Zen but it's also a lot less work.
Our first two mango trees grow so tall that they obscure our view. I've planted a couple more mango downhill of them (OK, they planted themselves), I'm keeping them pruned back, and I'm using much less water. Next time I prune the first two mango it'll be with a 14" reciprocating-saw blade, in five more years it'll be with a chainsaw, and in 15 years I'll have someone cut them down. Maybe we'll get some funky end tables out of the trunk wood.
Did deliberately taking some time to just sit around doing nothing for a while after you retired get the urge to be a slacker out of your system?
Absolutely. The first couple months of ER are better spent recovering from a career of chronic fatigue.
There's also the issue of forcing things. There are times I'll try to write a few pages on a topic and it's just not working. If I push it I can get two or three pages done-- and they're utter crap. Nothing makes you more aware of that than having your spouse give you "the look" and saying "You write better than this." You learn to go do something else for a while and wait until you feel like writing. That "feeling" is usually your brain telling you it's figured out the solution that you were previously trying to force. And when I try again, the writing goes much faster/better.
Right after ER we renovated our master bathroom. During our working years we would've planned the project, drafted a timeline, staged all the materials & equipment, taken a week of leave, and worked 14-hour days to get it done. "Enjoyment" would have been the satisfaction of a job well done.
Instead we spent nearly nine months on it. We'd work a couple hours almost every morning but we spent a lot of time discussing options, trying out solutions (oops), and changing the plan. We enjoy the process of home improvement almost as much as the results, and being able to stretch things out gave us a lot more creativity. We were also able to make sure that we'd be able to spend more time
in the whirlpool tub rather than just taking pride in doing a good job.
Anyone can work their assets off. Being a slacker is a lot more challenging than it looks.
