The decade just before retirement may be the busiest for professionals. We have decades of work and life experience that have value to people inside and outside of our workplace. We probably therefore have a full plate at work with responsibility for people and projects. We probably also have responsibilities and obligations in associations, church, clubs and so on. Add in family and friends and there is scarcely time to sleep, let alone sit down and engage in retirement planning. As a result we may get to retirement with a great reputation but no plans for how to live the last two or three decades of our lives and not enough money.
Of course there are certain things that we have to do but if we are honest there are an awful lot of things that we are doing simply because we are asked and said yes out of guilt, fear or obligation. I remember one such incident when I volunteered for something at church. It was not my area of strength or even interest but they needed volunteers and I felt obligated to volunteer. Immediately it mushroomed. After signing up I discovered that there was a mandatory training before the event which required several hours on a Saturday. During that training I discovered that we were required to show up a couple of hours before the event and stay for a couple of hours after for a debriefing session. It was at a particularly busy time in my life and I felt my whole body tightening up as each new requirement unfolded. Fate or God intervened and a couple of days before the event I came down with a severe dose of the flu that kept me in bed for days before and after the event. The point of the story is not that we should never stretch ourselves or assist others, but to think before we do and to choose wisely especially in light of the need to leave time and energy for time for things that are critical to our long term future.
Steven Covey left us a great tool in his urgent vs. important matrix. Urgent things tend to shout and scream at us until they get our time and attention. There are different types of urgent however. Some things like a crying child or sick relative are truly urgent. Other things that appear urgent are someone else’s priorities and attending to them not only derails us but debilitates us. Important things don’t clamour for our attention but neglecting them can have serious consequences. These are our priorities and we shunt them outside at our peril. Fail to take care of those things in the yellow box like planning for your future and you will regret it in the future. If you’re not familiar with Covey’s work then please read up on it. It is transformatory.
The problem is how to say no to the urgent. It could be your boss, your co-workers, your friends or even your church and it is important to them that you do what they are asking. It’s a dilemma we all face. I love what Brene Brown says and rather than paraphrase I’ll just let her say it – “The moment someone asks you to do something you don’t have the time or inclination to do is fraught with vulnerability. “Yes!” often seems like the easiest way out. But it comes at a price: I can’t tell you how mnay times I’ve said “sure!” in my squeaky I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this voice, only to spend hours, even months, feeling angry and resentful.” I bet that sounds familiar! She suggests this – CHOOSE DISCOMFORT OVER RESENTMENT. That means, choose feeling uncomfortable in the moment rather than resentment later. Volunteering at church at the time I did it was not a good choice especially since I did not explore the parameters before committing to serve. I should have taken the time to think it through before making any decision. No doubt you can think of your own experiences at work or volunteer associations when you said ‘yes’ and you should have said ‘no’.
Back to retirement though. It’s about moving our retirement planning into the important yellow box zone and making time for it by saying no to those things that appear urgent but that we feel instinctively aren’t part of our purpose. Writing down retirement planning as a priority and assigning time each week to it puts it up there with the other demands on our time and may make it easier to say ‘no’ to the things that we perhaps shouldn’t be doing.
Retirement planning will involve different things to different people and require different amounts of time. If you’ve been doing it for years then it may just be a matter of scheduling time to make sure things on track. On the other hand if you haven’t given it any serious thought you may need to plan meetings with financial planners, develop strategies for how and where you will live, follow up on those strategies and so on. Schedule in the time and see how much more relaxed you feel as you begin to take control of your future. Hold the time as sacred as you hold time at your job, church and so on. A decade or two from now you’ll be glad that you did!
middlingthrough 