As I settle into my third attempt at retirement I find myself struggling with time management. Now that I don’t have to manage my time, now that the day is all mine to do with as I please, I find myself getting nothing done.
I start the day with big plans and high hopes, and suddenly it’s late afternoon, I’m wandering around the house hungry and disgruntled, and I have accomplished very little beyond making the bed and brewing a pot of coffee.
This looks about right!
Often I haven’t even eaten and only realize it when my stomach starts giving me angry reminders. Like right now, when I just went and got a peanut butter sandwich at five o’clock because a cup of yogurt with a sprinkle of granola won’t hold a person all day.
So what is the problem here? What is keeping me from doing All The Things? Especially the Things I Want To Do?
Attitude.
Right now my attitude sucks and I need to find a way to make it better. This was made painfully clear to me when I read this post one of our subscribers, Ryan M. Williams, posted today about Resetting Expectations.
I have finally started to think that this retirement is actually happening. I won’t be going back to work. I won’t have anyone demanding my time on a regular basis. I am free to do whatever I want to (or need to) do.
And that freedom has nearly overwhelmed me.
I am by nature a night owl. My mother told me once that when I was very little, maybe a year old and an only child (siblings would come along eventually to upset that cushy spot), she would put me to bed at 7:30 or so, as parents were expected to do. She would check on me through the evening and every time she came in I would be awake - not yelling, or crying, or demanding to get out of the crib - just … awake.
When I gained control of my schedule at work I chose to start at 9:30 so I didn’t have to get up early, and my 6-hour sleep schedule was between 2 and 8 am. Sometimes I struggled to get the lights out by 2, but that was the goal, and I haven’t used an alarm in more than a decade.
Now? I have no schedule. I can - and all too often do - stay up until 3 or later, sleeping away most of the morning. I still wake up about 8, but I look at the clock, shrug, and go back to sleep. It sometimes feels like I am trying to make up all the sleep I shorted myself.
I don't have to answer to an alarm clock any more, but losing that structure is a double-edged sword and I need to reset my days.
But that lack of a sleep schedule is like ripples in a pond, pushing everything later in the day. I make coffee at 11 or noon, have some toast or yogurt, check email while I eat, do a few household chores, and if there’s a medical appointment, or something that needs doing during business hours, the day is suddenly gone and it’s time to cook dinner.
I lose entire days this way, telling myself that I have tomorrow, or the rest of the week, to do whatever didn’t get done today.
"Tomorrow" isn't the answer, now is it?
Reading Ryan’s post today made one thing abundantly clear: I am not setting any daily goals. Well, except for coffee, and that’s more a matter of survival - for the people around me.
The weekly posts that I promised you have slipped a bit lately and this is part of the reason why. I have let the goal slip to “this week” instead of “Sunday,” and while it makes me unhappy it hadn’t reached the point where I had done anything about it.
I recognize that things need to change a bit, that I need to give myself some daily goals. Ryan’s list looks like a good place to start: write, meditate, exercise. The exercise and meditation can combine in the yoga-like routine my physical therapist gave me for my back, which will make the writing easier, too.
Using the standing position of my adjustable desk would be a good goal to add. I got in the habit of standing at work and I should give it a try here at home. That could combine the writing and exercise, too!
I don’t know how this will go, but it is certainly a step I need to take. Losing the structure that a day job gave me has cast me adrift in ways I did not expect. Now I need to figure out how to reshape my life to the new paradigm.
As I think about this and share my thoughts with you I find myself getting excited about the possibilities, about the opportunity I have in front of me to build the kind of retirement life I want to have.
Thanks, Ryan, for the reminder of what I can do with the freedom of retirement!