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“Does any part of your busy schedule stem from a feeling that you need to be busy?”
That sentence is part of a question posed by Edmund Marsh to Dr. Lefty. It ties in with an article I began to formulate a while back.
Should I Start a New Business?
The obvious answer is a resounding NO. Still, there’s a little gremlin inside me who sometimes shows his ugly little gremlin head; you should buy that building, you should start this business? Then I beat that little monster over his head until he goes away.
I’m 73 and comfortably retired, still, sometimes, I feel like I should be doing something constructive. Then good sense reminds me that committing myself to a new venture would require me to show up someplace. Oh the humanity.
Are you at all haunted by some need to be productive?
I’d love to donate more of my time, but I don’t want anything close to a mandated schedule or a place I need to be on time. The non-profits in my area mostly don’t impress me. I keep looking around, but I’m not going to jump into something unless I deeply feel the merit.
Martin, that about sums it up for me as well. I do find preparing taxes for AARP to be deserving of my time. Chrissy volunteers at a cat rescue, which helps in getting cats spayed or neutered, and off the streets.
I’m sure I could find other worthy assignments, but I’m pretty happy with my level of involvement.
I loved this short, but thought-provoking article. I am 2.5 years into retirement. During my first year (2024), my wife and I traveled to 5 states, doing the Airbnb thing, driving. Flying is too stressful and BS-laden for me today. We visited our two kids (one in TX and one in MD) and flew them and their spouses to us in NC. No grandkids, unfortunately.
I did fly to a couple of events in 2024… the NRA Coinvention and the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder’s Meeting. I have been to several NRA conventions, but it was my first & only time attending the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders’ Meeting. It was an event unlike any other I have attended.
The odd thing I am experiencing is the overwhelming desire to consider “opportunities.” Examples are college teaching opportunities, professional training positions, and even chaplaincy opportunities in Hospitals, workplaces, and Hospices. I need to slap myself and remind myself that just because I can doesn’t mean I should. I think it is the result of being a lifetime of overachievement, overambition, and success orientation, with a strong desire to serve.
In 2025, I focused on earning my chaplaincy credentials and pursuing and completing seminary studies, culminating in my Doctor of Ministry Degree. Because of my age (I am 75), I wasn’t eligible to become a permanent deacon in my church or a military chaplain, so I pursued the D. Min. as an alternative route to service. My dissertation was focused on Strengthening Christian Marriages, and today I am involved in premarital counseling within my parish.
I am certified as a PREPARE/ENRICH facilitator and a Ramset Financial Master Coach. I will be putting on my first Online “Financial Peace University” for my parish later this fall. In addition, I am completing coursework to facilitate the “Faith & Money Matters” and “God, Marriage and Money” courses for Compass Catholic. Marriage. These are all part of the ministry and are all offered pro bono.
I found my way to use my 58 years of financial services education and experience, along with my ministry education and over 35 years of serving various parishes in 9 different states throughout my working lifetime.
My wife and I are blessed financially, and it is a wonderful feeling to be able to help people without needing to generate income to provide that help. I hope all HD readers are able to “matter” in their retirement, and feel they still have “purpose!”
Mike I commend you for your service to others. I think the people you help are lucky to have you. Your quandary isn’t so much as should you do something constructive or productive, but rather how much is right for you. The great thing about being retired with ample good health and money is being able to say yes, or no, as your heart desires.
I work half the year. I feel I’ve had good practice at retiring. I think I could handle retiring for the whole year. I keep busy during my off time with rental houses, swimming pool, tinkering with cars and working out.
Short answer NO. I suggest mentoring someone younger, and helping your neighbors sorting out how to live the fullest at 70, 80 or 90 and above. We all need a community of generous people.
No, I think I’m busy enough. I volunteer a couple of days a week, swim everyday and help friends and family manage their retirement accounts. But, please don’t ask my wife whether she think I’m busy enough!
NO! I have perfected the art of doing nothing. Yes I do productive stuff but on my timeline . Isn’t that what working for nearly 40 years is for?
It sure is, Lester.
To add to the list of adjectives (purposeful, productive, useful, busy) we might need to feel we still have in retirement, I would add “mattering”. I can’t recall where I’ve read this but it really hit home for me. I’m 61 and planning to retire from a 30+ year engineering career next year. I’ve been fortunate to work with awesome partners on interesting projects with great clients, so I definitely feel like I’ve “mattered” in my career. In short, I’m equally excited and terrified about retirement. I’ve gone part-time as a transition and that’s been great. However I struggle to articulate how I will answer the inevitable “what do you do” question once I’m fully retired next year. Do I need another “job”, maybe buy some rental properties, ramp up volunteering, or just travel and visit friends and family? My wife will continue to work but it’s not a terribly demanding gig that she can do from anywhere and she loves it, so I wouldn’t encourage her to retire anytime soon.
I know the retirement transition is different for everyone, and I’m grateful for the HD community to help me think about what it might look like for me.
Having had a scheduled work life for more than 40 years, I found it necessary to share with everyone how much I planned on doing once I was retired – exercise, travel, read, learn a new language, volunteer, etc, etc. The list was extensive. I felt I had to justify not having a job. Then one day someone said to me “You know it’s OK not to do anything.” That was an epiphany for me. At that moment I felt less angst about the transition into retirement. I no longer felt the need to justify not going to work. I became much more selective about what I chose to do. And I finally learned to say “no” to things I wasn’t passionate about. Now, every once in a while, when asked “What are you doing today?” I get say “I don’t know” and I’m OK with that.
You got some great advice, Chris.
I’ve been retired for 8 years and have not missed work at all. I like to have some involvement with professional things but where the time commitment is limited and I don’t get trapped into a huge time commitment. I volunteer some and serve on a board of a local halfway house and help where I can. I have always like investing a spend some time each day looks for good investments. I mow the lawn and “putter” around the house. I have done a lot of work on genelogy trying to find my roots so I can leave some history to my kids. These are all little things but they still the “little monster” of wanting to be productive.
Dan, you got some interesting answers to your question. I think each of them tap into the mindset I’m forming of my ideal post-career lifestyle. I’ve always struggled with achieving a balanced life. I used to think that I was over-busy because that was just what life thrust upon me. But I also knew that I was “wired to work”. I’ve always managed to replace idle time with something “productive and useful”. I’ve used those words frequently of late, as recently as last night talking with friends over dinner.
But I’d still like to find balance. I’ll probably always be schedule-driven, so I’ve encouraged my wife, who is not quite the long-planner that I tend to be, to help me build fun time into our schedule, especially time with family and friends.
But, like you, “productive” for me–right or wrong–holds the connotation of being useful in an economic sense. I know the first part of my retirement will be caught up in catching up on some of the off-time I’ve missed for the last few decades. But, I don’t dismiss the idea of a second career. Or, maybe not.
Edmund, I got the idea for this post shortly after selling my business. I think the reason I abandoned it was because the calling in my brain seemed to subside as time marched on. The most prominent habit that remains from my working days is probably the schedule-driven thing. Google calendar is the only app that remains open on my Chromebook 100% of the time. The difference between ‘now’ and ‘then’ is that today it is filled with retirement stuff like grand-kid events, get-togethers with friends and cousins, and of course doctors appointments. Between both me and Chris, that sucker is pretty full.
Hopefully, your schedule transitions to whatever it is that floats your boat.
Edmund, yesterday I spent nearly two hours on the clifftop above Runkerry Beach, just beside my vacation home, watching two thresher sharks hunt — breaching again and again, smacking their tails into the water to stun their prey. By most measures, it wasn’t a productive period. But my soul would disagree.
Mark, I definitely agree with your soul.
Mark, I like your response, and I would’ve relished the sight while sitting by your side, if it wouldn’t have spoiled your mood. But, some part of a happy life is about balance, isn’t it?
I love getting lost in my vegetable garden–pulling a pesky weed, helping a new bean tendril find the pole to climb or squashing the new beetle that’s threatening to ruin my squash and cucumbers, and has even found a ripe tomato to its liking.
But is it wise to ignore the clock all together? Does all play and no work make Jack grow tired of his toys?
Edmund, I think we’re all circling the same tension around retirement. Two hundred and fifty years of Western work ethic doesn’t loosen its grip easily—I felt that pull too.
I’m sixteen months into retirement now. Before I stopped working, I told myself a story: take a full year off, extend it through the following summer, then ease into a part-time, low-pressure job by my second fall. Looking back, it wasn’t really a plan. I think it was more a concession to my own anxiety about productivity, a way of promising my future self I wouldn’t drift too far from being useful.
But somewhere along the way, I fell in love with having full agency over my time. I can say with certainty now: there will be no job waiting for me this fall.
What’s interesting is that I didn’t stop being productive—I just started doing it differently. Without really planning to, I built my own structure: mentoring in sports, then founding and running a new racket sports club. My need for purpose didn’t disappear with retirement; it simply went looking for a new form to take.
Maybe that’s the real trick to a contented post-career life—not the absence of productivity, but trading forced productivity for chosen productivity. Doing the work because it’s yours, not because it’s required. But most importantly of all: still leaving enough empty space in the week to sit on a cliffside and watch the sharks.
Great answer! I have done something similar. I even got that part time job after one year of retirement but the first time the boss yelled at me I quit with a smile because I could.
Working on your own terms!
After I retired I became productive by volunteering. It was and is wonderful feeling to help and be needed. In Baltimore, I helped out at the nursing home Where my mother spent her last days and in Greece I volunteered at an organization that helped feed those in need.
I am haunted by a need to be informed to learn what is going on and my obsession is to try and squash the fake and misinformation on social media- an impossible task I know. But when I read some of the junk people post and others believe I can’t help putting out facts.
I write an article for my blog everyday and have for many years. Sometimes I still feel I should be doing something, but I have no idea what.
Out of habit I am still up by 5:00 am and try as I may, I can’t break it. I too am out of steam by 2:00 in the afternoon.
Dick, it’s true that squashing misinformation on social media is an impossible task. I see your social media posts, and get a chuckle from one of your frequent detractors, whose rambling criticisms are nearly incoherent. I used to pay him a left handed compliment every now and then, but I don’t think he understood the sarcasm.
Wife: “What are you doing?”
Husband: “Nothing.”
Wife: “You did that yesterday.”
Husband: “I didn’t finish.”
LOL, B, this could be the secret of life.
Along with Dana (DrLefty, below), I believe that much of our activity comes down to how we are wired. In this regard, I’ve long felt torn in two directions. My retirement life reflects this, split as it is between productive mornings and “me time” afternoons. And not all of it need be busy. Watching clouds drift by and ants in the grass are just as engaging and meaningful now as when I was young.
Jo Bo, maybe not “torn in two directions”, perhaps your breaker panel has two different circuits. One circuit runs your productive side, and another your “me” side.
I’m thinking of a former co-worker who, after 20 years of retirement, is wound just as tight today, as he ever was on the job. That dude needs another circuit.
As others have said, it depends what you call “productive.” In my first year of retirement, I’ve earned little money (a bit of royalty money from books, plus I’ve got a settlement coming from Anthropic because they used my books without permission for AI), so in that sense, not very productive.
But I’ve also completed a new co-authored book manuscript, had three journal articles accepted, written a weekly baseball column, produced nearly 30 Bible studies for our church’s small groups ministry, and taken hundreds of Peloton classes. Oh, and bought and sold homes.
Earning money, though? Nope.
I wouldn’t say I’m “haunted” by the need to be productive. I’m just wired to be. As I said to Ed, I’d be unhappy if I had nothing to do, but I don’t want to have too much to do, either. Finding that balance is my current challenge.
The great thing about being retired is having the ability to work on your own terms and finding the right balance without suffering consequences from the powers that be.
Or even my own “responsible firstborn” guilty conscience!
Honestly, when I wrote this one I was thinking of being productive and/or constructive in a professional sense. So far, commenters have gone in the direction of our personal connections with family and friends. The efforts described are most definitely productive to those around us, and of more importance than any pursuit of money making initiatives. Thanks, gang.
I remember the John Wooden quote : “Never mistake activity with accomplishment”. I change it slightly to ” Don’t mistake busyness with accomplishment”.
As I ease into retirement I am learning in life that I accomplish more for my family by being “present” than by just being busy.
I’ve spent decades as a commission salesman away my family thinking that my busyness being gone long hours at work benefited them. But now I see being “present” is the greatest gift I can leave with them when I am no longer on this earth with them
Dan, thanks for an interesting post. I’ve thought about this quite a bit over the last 9 years. I’ve read, and believe, there is a difference between productivity and being productive. Productivity is a measurement; being productive is how we behave and act – engaging in things we value and want to accomplish. Another way I think of it is that I want to be useful – to my family, friends, community, and greater society. I’m lucky enough to enjoy a comfortable retirement and I get to define how I want to be useful. Jonathan wrote frequently about continuing to do work he loved and that he felt helped people. I believe that HD is full of smart, experienced, and good people. I enjoy hearing how many of them have found ways to be useful.
Dan, “Productive” is an interesting word choice; I suppose it depends how you define it. Over the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of mentoring three groups of seniors through a racket sports development and fitness course. A portion dropped out along the way, but plenty finished and are still playing.
Every one of them, I’d say, has picked up a noticeable boost in vitality, most have shed some weight, and quite a few have ended up with a bigger social circle than when they started. All the hours I put into it are pro bono, so by the strict, spreadsheet definition of “productive,” I suppose my first year of retirement failed miserably…I’m happy with that!
I’m retired now and sometimes I’m haunted by the idea of being productive. I think most Humble Dollar readers suffer from this same affliction. My solution: take a nap. A good nap cures just about everything including a poor night’s sleep, boredom, general crankiness, etc. After the nap you are rejuvenated so you can now read a book, watch the World Cup, plan dinner, wash the car, get some exercise, you know important stuff. 😅
Naps are a huge part of my master plan. I’m a natural early riser and sometimes run out of steam after lunchtime. I can fall asleep quickly for a 20-25 min power nap, wake up alert, and take on the rest of the day and evening. Retirement makes this nap strategy much easier!
Sweet 16!