Time-management tips for retirees
Managing your time is just as important when you’re retired as when you’re working — and can be just as difficult.
“Managing an abundance of time is as challenging as managing a scarcity of time because it requires you to ask what matters to you,” says Laura Vanderkam, author of “Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done.”
Here are eight time-management tips for retirees:
Forget multitasking. Before retirement, most people find meaning in their accomplishments. There’s a tendency in retirement to recreate the experience of being busy by multitasking, which simply stresses the brain.
“It’s a huge source of low-level chronic stress,” which takes a much bigger toll on our health and well-being by our 40s and 50s,” says Christine Carter, a senior fellow at U.C. Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. “As we age, we want to challenge the brain, but we don’t want to tax it.”
For brain health in your older years, you should learn new things and practice recall, but do them one at a time so that you can focus deeply and more enjoyably on the task at hand.
Retirement is the time to make a difference, so assess the meaning and value you have for other people. Then prioritize doing what matters most.
List 100 things you’d like to do.
Pace yourself. It’s one thing to list those 100 things and another to do all of them. “You could challenge yourself to do one every two weeks, a big one every two months,” Vanderkam says.
As you prioritize the things that matter, you’ll naturally find that there’s less time for you to squander on the more mundane or
workaday items.
Introduce regular activities. You may find that doing something regularly, like volunteer work or a hobby, provides necessary structure to your days and weeks. Or, as you become involved in your church or a community nonprofit, seeing the same people regularly nurtures new relationships, which contribute meaning.
Build in downtime. Don’t fill your entire week with commitments. You want to create that sense of leisure, which is your payoff after a long career, by blocking out some downtime on your calendar. Rest is especially important as our bodies age and we need more restorative time.
Consider assigning a limited window of time — perhaps one day a week — for the humdrum but necessary chores of life, like renewing your driver’s license or calling vendors.
Designate a day for must-do jobs.
Set clear boundaries. Think through your ideal daily and weekly schedule. How often do you want to be social? What time do you want to be home and in bed? Honor your own boundaries by setting and sticking to them.
Just say no. Brace yourself for disappointing people who want to see you more than you’d like or ask you to do things that don’t interest you.