What Will I Do All Day? : March 2019

Saturday, March 30, 2019

What Will I DO?

When the time came to decide on a title for my book, I remembered the question I got from several people I had interviewed: “What will I do all day?” That’s it! That is the question that keeps people going back into work every day instead of crossing the line into retirement. I had my title.

Not only is this my book title, it’s also the challenge many of us experience when we leave full-time work, and for the first time have lots of free time. And the answer is more than just filling up the hours with a bunch of activities.

If you want to figure out what you will do all day, consider these “doing” quotes:

“Those things that make your heart come alive; do them more often.”

“Pick something you aren’t just able to do; instead, pick something you feel like you were made to do and then do lots of that.” –Bob Goff

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” –Rumi, 13^th Century Persian poet

Now give it a try. Have fun answering the following questions. Then come up with a plan for making this a part of what you do all day.

What makes your heart come alive?

What were you made to do?

What do you love to do?

Friday, March 15, 2019

Start Something

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This morning when I woke up at 5:40 am, I was glad I went to cycling class last night. If I hadn't, instead of pulling the covers up tight, I'd be halfway through a class that started at 5:15 am, and required getting up at 4:50 am.

By going to cycling last night, I met my three classes/week goal, and I gave myself the gift of going to bed without setting an alarm, waking up naturally, and arriving early at my favorite coffee shop to sip café mocha and write.

It’s not easy to do today what you can put off until tomorrow. In fact, research shows we’re not very good at predicting how difficult it is to do something in the future. How many times have you been convinced you’ll be successful starting a diet on Monday, and so you indulge in the triple chocolate cake on Saturday? We think tomorrow, or the future, will be easier. It’s not.

At my YMCA the stairs have inspirational messages printed on the risers. One that captures my attention is “Tomorrow you’ll be glad you started today.” I thought about this quote as I sweated through last night’s cycling class. Today is yesterday’s tomorrow. I’m glad I started.

What does this have to do with retirement? Daniel Pink writes in his book Drive, “Upon comprehending that they [Boomers] could have another twenty-five years, sixty-year-old boomers look back twenty-five years—to when they were thirty-five—and a sudden thought clonks them on the side of the head. ‘Wow. That sure happened fast,’ they say. ‘Will the next twenty-five years race by like that? If so, when am I going to do something that matters? When am I going to live my best life? When am I going to make a difference in the world?’”

Time passes quickly. So what are you putting off until tomorrow? And next week? Month? Year? The next twenty-five years are going to pass faster than you can imagine. So if there’s still something you want to do with your life, do something today.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert says, “Any motion whatsoever beats inertia, because inspiration will always be drawn to motion. Frans Johansson of The Click Moment agrees, “By taking action, you open up a wide range of new ideas, possibilities, and connections.” By putting something into motion, you “create something for these forces to latch on to. You must actually do something, even if you are not sure where it will lead.”

The time to start is today. That’s it. Tomorrow you’ll be glad you started today.