When it comes to this topic, many of us say, “Yeah, whenever,” and plunge back into whatever we are doing.
The topic is not death or taxes. It is retirement, a goal that many aspire to but many more dread, often for financial or health reasons. However, retirement is a reality. Teresa Amabile, professor emerita at Harvard Business School, has been studying it for the past decade or so. The result is Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You. Along with four other colleagues*, Professor Amabile explores the psychological aspects of retirement, a less well-explored topic.
As she told me in a recent interview, “I wanted to find out what the experience of retiring was really like psychologically and what happens with relationships in our lives when we retire and what happens with our life structure, the way we live our days and our weeks and our months and our years. That’s got to change drastically. How do people manage those challenges?”
4-step plan
Essential to planning for retirement are four things to consider:
Alignment, as Amabile says, is a “line between their self that is their most important identities, priorities, current needs, their most important values as they are right now in their life, not as they were at the peak of their career, maybe 20 years earlier, but as they are now alignment between that and their current life structure.”
The second A is awareness: “You need to really have some insight into yourself and insight into your life structure and its dynamics and how it’s affecting you,” says Amabile. Self-awareness is essential to making the right choices for yourself and as a couple.
Agency is the third A. It is the ability to determine for yourself how you will live. If you have worked your entire life, what else will you do? What hobbies can you explore — or re-explore? Do you want to be active in your community? How will you and your spouse fulfill your desires and expectations?
Fourth is adaptability, which is the ability to roll with the punches. Few things ever go as planned, and so in retirement, you need to make plans for how you will flex when things go unexpectedly, either due to finances, health or community issues.
Cutting “the cord”
Disengagement from work is different for different people. There is no “magic bullet.” As Amabile says, “The detaching from work can be very tricky, especially for high-level leaders in organizations. Because of that strong identification, there’s a loss of professional identity that people fear. There’s also the loss of professional relationships where we may have worked with people for decades. They may have become close friends of ours, people with whom we shared a lot, people with whom we spent a lot of our time, a lot of our waking hours and the relationships with subordinates are valued if only because they give us this daily sense of respect.”
Re-inventing your purpose
In his book Independence Day: What I Learned about Retirement from Some Who Have Done and Some Who Never Will, Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times writes that some folks thrive in retirement while others do not. The challenge — health and finances permitting — is to live your purpose, renew your life spark and find something that motivates you. For some, it is continuing to work. For others, it is volunteerism. For all of us, it is to feel connected to family, friends and community.
Amabile and her colleagues call this search for purpose “identity bridging.” She explained, “One important thing that we saw people doing is what we call identity bridging. And that is finding some piece of that pre-retirement identity that was very important to you and figuring out a way to bridge that identity or part of it into your retirement life.” The need to remain relevant — to maintain your sense of self — capabilities and awareness — as you move to another chapter of your life.
The obvious target audience for this book is people who are retired or on the verge of retirement. But, as Amabile told me, “Many younger colleagues of mine have said it’s been very useful for them in thinking about helping their parents, and very young people early in [their] careers do need to be thinking about these retirement issues. It’s way more than saving with that 401k.”
Yes, retirement is the “r-word.” Prepare for it, and you will turn that “r-word” into “re-engagement” — engaging in what gives you contentment and joy.
*Co-authors of Retiring, along with Professor Amabile, are Lotte Bailyn, Marcy Crary, Douglas T. Hall and Kathy E. Kram.
Note: Watch the full interview with Professor Teresa Amabile
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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