Sculpting a living legacy

W Ehave just one life to live. We should wisely balance making it count for generations to come even as we have fun and live well ourselves. Whether your goal is to retire early, on time or later than "normal", here’s a multilayered question for you to mull over the next few years or decades. (Warning: It has the potential to elevate and extend the philanthropic trajectory of your life.)

How will I spend my extra leisure time in retirement without growing terminally bored? There’s plenty of empirical evidence drawn from around the world to unequivocally prove boredom kills. Almost all of us have heard true stories of executives who retired at a predetermined age, faced a massive deceleration in their activity levels, and then died within 18 months of starting retirement.

At their well-attended funerals, the comments by friends and acquaintances of the "recently departed" generally run along these lines: “Wasted! Still so young. "He" (it’s far more often men NOT women who pass away soon after they retire) only just stopped working! And he worked so hard for so long. [A sigh followed by a long pause]... wastedlah!”

Apart from such oral accounts percolating across our cultural consciousness through their telling and retelling (and easy WhatsApp forwards),

what’s more compelling than the many anecdotes recounted is solid, statistically valid analysis.

One such research project involved questioning and tracking more than 7,500 civil servants in London. While I’ve only recently become aware of this robust piece of research, its initial exercise was carried out in the late 1980s, while I was still living in or near London in my mid-20s.

The respondents, who were then aged between 35 and 55, or one to three decades older than I was then, were asked ― among other questions ― whether they had felt bored at work in the one month preceding their interviews.

You may ask yourself, “Who never gets bored at work?” fully expecting the simple answer, “No one!” But instead, that simple question revealed something amazing to me concerning the nuts and bolts of retiring with class, living shorter than average and also living longer than average!

You see, two decades later, in April 2009 (when I was a month shy of 45), that research project was resuscitated. Therefore, those respondents who were still alive would have been between 55 and 75. Understanding that requires nothing more than basics of simple arithmetic. Nonetheless, an Earth shattering discovery was made when one simple check was run on the entire sample size.

You see, all 7,500 people who were interviewed two decades before in the late 1980s were traced by the researchers. One key metric they measured at the 20-year mark was to see how many from that original sample group had died on or before April 2009.

BOREDOM IN RETIREMENT

Basic statistical analysis led the researchers to a shocking conclusion. Let me share with you what I learnt about that revelation by quoting from my source:

“What the researchers found was that civil servants who reported being very bored were 2.5 times more likely to die of a heart problem than those who hadn’t reported being bored.”

That is statistically relevant; you may read more about that study here: www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ curious/201003/science-shows-you-candie-boredom-literally

The key takeaway for all of us interested in the dynamics of retirement is that each of us must be courageous enough to make radical changes to our primary job or business so we derive true joy and interest from our careers. You see, I believe life is too short and too precious to be wasted on work that does not fill us with passion and a persistent sense of purpose.

While I am referring here to the work we do prior to our respective official retirements, it is vital to also understand that boredom IN retirement is also debilitating because almost everyone who begins his or her own retirement believing that it will be one long vacation will soon find the lack of structure injects retirement with boredom and emptiness. (Also, remember we now know what boredom can lead to.) meaningful future retirement, here’s a 3-pronged gradual approach:

1. Instead of moving from full tilt at work to full cessation of work, consider choosing to stagger one additional day of rest every few years beyond our official Malaysian retirement age of 60 when contracts can be drawn up to allow for shorter working weeks for less money.

2. Either in full retirement or during a planned multi-year slowdown of personal employment, spend time exercising more and more; not so much to add years to your life but rather to add life to your upcoming years.

3. Set mature grown-up goals by identifying your core values, and then looking for ways to serve ever increasing numbers of people in line with your unique blend of personal values.

The best way I know to sculpt my own hoped for powerful personal philanthropic living legacy is to love my work while opting to gradually gear down my hours to rest, strengthen and hone my mind and body.

The end result would be to serve an ever-growing slice of humanity in increasing measure by honing my skills and working progressively smarter, not harder, particularly after the age of 45!