Episode 32
Replying to a commenter
Transcript
Now that's a smart question. I wish I would have known to ask that question when I was about, you know, a couple of years out from retirement. But, you know, it can help other people. So I'll answer from my experience. Obviously, I'm not a mental health professional and I don't know anything about anything. But I can tell you what I believe would have helped me to consider a successful retirement transition. So I think the things that we need to do to prepare are going to come down to our personality type and our personal situation. But taking money out of it. Here are five things that I think would have made a big difference to me for a successful retirement transition. So each question is going to ask you to score your degree of agreement or disagreement from one to five. So if you strongly. Agree with the statement I'm about to make. That's a five. If you strongly disagree, that's a one. And we're going to do this for five questions. So write each question down if that helps. And if you can share your score, I think other people would benefit from hearing what other people scored. I know I would have again, like for me, I've said this on a lot of my posts. If I would have known that it was common to struggle with this stuff, it would have made it easier just knowing. So for. Each statement I'm about to make. Give yourself a score from one to five. One. I strongly disagree. Five. I strongly agree. Number one. I hate my job. If you strongly agree with that, that's a five. If you strongly disagree, that's a one. If you think I don't hate my job, but I certainly don't love my job. That might be a two or maybe I don't like my job. That might be a two. Um, but kind of determined for yourself where you land on that. Spectrum. The idea behind this question is from what I've heard from, uh, from you, um, is that if you, um, hate your job, the transition is a little bit easier. I don't know if that's true for everyone, but I've heard that enough to include it as a criteria. Number two, I have actively participated in several hobbies in the last 12 months. And, you know, we would all say we have hobbies. We would list hobbies. I would probably list six or seven hobbies if someone asked me, but I would say four or five of them are what I would consider sort of deprecated. Like I've just sort of outgrown them or grown tired of them and they wouldn't have done me any good in my retirement transition. So, um, I would only count activities, you know, hobby activities that you've actively participated in within the last 12 months. So if you've actively participated in two or three hobbies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you defined four hobbies, distinct hobbies in the last 12 months, that's like a four or five. Uh, I hadn't actively participated in any hobbies in the last 12 months before I retired. And so that would have been a one. So, uh, score appropriately based on how many distinct hobbies you have been actively engaged in within the last 12 months. Number three, I have more personal friendships than I have work friendships. Um. Sometimes you don't know while you're still at work. So that's a little bit of a tough one. I would have scored zero personal friendships, zero work friendships because I'm not counting family. But then after I left the workplace, there were a couple of work friends that I had that kind of stuck. Like, you know, we would message each other and then pretty soon we'd go do something together. And then I realized, hey, these guys were always my friends. They were always personal friendships, but you don't know because you're both kind of like stuck with each other either way. So you don't know until you're out of the workplace. In my case, I was fortunate that a couple did stick, but I don't think they would have known either until I left the workplace. So how many personal friendships do you have? How many work friendships do you have? Score a high score if you have significantly more personal friendships than work friendships. A low score if you have significantly more work friendships than personal friendships. Number four, it's easy for me to unplug during vacations. Meaning you don't feel like you need to check your email. You especially don't receive texts during your vacation. If you check your email from time to time, just because you don't want to have that mountain of email or any weird, horrible surprises when you get back to work and you check it a couple of times, you know, that'd be like a five or four. Even if you're not sure. Yeah. That's a seven. If you feel like you have to check your email every day, that's like a two. If you're getting texts and you're responding to texts, that's like a one. You kind of have to determine for yourself, but you really want to say a one is I can't unplug at all. When I'm on vacation, I'm mentally still at work. A five is I couldn't even tell you the name of my company when I'm on vacation. I just block it all out. But score yourself appropriately. And number five is I have a consistent exercise regimen. I dislike this one because like everything you read is like, stay active, get exercise. And it just feels like such a trope to say, stay active. But it is true. And so for me, it wasn't so much that I had an exercise regimen. Um, but I needed some structure. And had I like, um, known that I walk every morning for, you know, two miles, that would have been structure that would have helped me build some sort of structural building blocks around my days. Um, but, um, if you have currently sort of a defined exercise regimen, give yourself a five. If you just, you know, try and hit so many mile, so many steps a day or whatever, maybe that's a two. Okay. So you can do a lot of those steps, but, um, score yourself appropriately on, um, your exercise routine. Okay. What was your score? Um, if you scored below a 10, you probably need to be working on some of those things. Maybe other things, if you scored above a 15, um, maybe you're not going to struggle quite as much. I could be wrong. I don't, you know, again, I don't know anything about anything. Um, but I know for me, if, if I would have taken this assessment. Okay. If I would have been in a place where I could have scored above a 15, I would have done better, but, um, you know, everybody's going to have their own, uh, experience. Um, but I would just say, if you score below a 10, take a hard look at those criteria and, um, trying to determine whether or not there may be other criteria that you need to be considering. Um, if you score above a 15, it's still worth looking at, but, um, I would personally have been less concerned for my own transition. Okay. If I would have scored above a 15 on this assessment. Um, and then there are going to be criteria that I haven't thought of because these are things that, um, impacted me. Tell me like, if you have a criteria that you think is really important to have in this assessment, I'll add them and I'll do another one. And, uh, we'll just keep building on this thing until it captures more, a more broad, uh, spectrum of people right now. It's kind of tailored to me because I'm all I know. Um, I do, um, have a lot of input that I received from you, uh, you know, in previous posts that helped sort of, um, inform this, uh, little self self-assessment, but, um, I'd love to hear of any criteria that you would add for your personal experience. And, uh, you know, we'll just keep building on it and hopefully it'll help some people as they're moving into retirement. Good luck.