If retirement can be bad for us, as Norman Swan and other researchers have suggested, the obvious question is: what can we do about it?
The answer is not that we should all keep working until we drop. Rather, we need to understand what work provides beyond a pay packet and deliberately replace those things when we retire. Five ingredients appear particularly important: challenge, purpose, social connection, movement and curiosity.
For decades, work forces us to use our brains. We solve problems, learn new systems, make decisions and cope with unexpected situations. Retirement can remove much of that mental stimulation overnight.
Crosswords and puzzles have their place, but genuine challenge usually involves stretching ourselves beyond what is comfortable. Learn conversational Italian before a trip to Italy. Take up bridge, photography or woodwork. Join a choir even if you have never sung before. Learn how to edit videos or use artificial intelligence.
The important thing is to keep being a beginner.
Challenge can also come through paid work. Rather than moving abruptly from full-time employment to doing nothing, some people may benefit from working two or three days a week, consulting, mentoring or running a small business. The objective is not necessarily to earn money. It is to keep the brain engaged.
Find a reason to get up in the morning
One of the most underestimated losses in retirement is purpose.
During our working years, someone generally expects us to turn up. There are problems to solve and things that need doing. In retirement, nobody may particularly care whether we get out of bed at 7am or 11am.
That freedom initially feels wonderful. Eventually, however, endless leisure can lose its attraction.
Purpose doesn’t have to come from something grand. Looking after grandchildren, helping at a food bank, restoring a garden, serving on a community committee, mentoring a younger person or caring for an elderly neighbour can all provide it.
A useful question is not simply, “What do I want to do in retirement?” but “Who or what needs me?”
Being needed gives life structure and meaning.
Protect your social network
Retirement can shrink our social world surprisingly quickly. Colleagues we have spoken to every day for 20 years can gradually disappear from our lives.
That makes it important to build social connections outside work before, and particularly after, retirement.
Joining groups is one of the simplest strategies. It might be a walking group, book club, service club, church, sports club, gardening group or community organisation. The activity itself is almost secondary. What matters is having somewhere to go and people who expect you to be there.
Researchers studying healthy ageing consistently identify strong social relationships as one of the factors associated with better physical and psychological health.
Friendship therefore deserves to be treated almost as seriously as exercise. Don’t simply wait for other people to make contact. Put lunches in the diary. Organise outings. Invite people for coffee. Create traditions.
Move throughout the day
Going to the gym three times a week does not necessarily compensate for spending most of the remaining hours sitting down.
Work often provides incidental movement without our noticing it: walking to meetings, climbing stairs, commuting or simply moving around an office, shop, farm or workplace.
Once retired, it becomes easy for breakfast to merge into reading the newspaper, checking emails, watching television and spending several hours sitting.
The solution is to make movement part of everyday life. Walk to the shops. Garden. Play golf. Take the stairs. Walk the dog. Go dancing. Swim. Do strength training.
In particular, maintaining muscle strength and balance becomes increasingly important as we age because they help preserve independence.
Instead of thinking only about “exercise”, think about movement. Look for reasons to get out of the chair throughout the day.
Stay curious
Finally, cultivate curiosity.
Curious people keep asking questions. How does that work? Who was that person? Where does that road lead? Why is everyone talking about artificial intelligence? What would it be like to visit Vietnam?
Retirement offers something enormously valuable that working life often lacks: time to investigate those questions.
Travel somewhere unfamiliar. Read books on subjects you know nothing about. Attend lectures. Talk to younger people. Research your family history. Take courses. Visit museums. Experiment with new technology.
And resist the temptation to say, “I’m too old to learn that.”
Perhaps the most useful retirement plan, therefore, isn’t simply a financial plan. Alongside the question “Will I have enough money?”, we should be asking:
What will challenge me? Who will need me? Who will I spend time with? How will I keep moving? And what am I still excited to learn?
A successful retirement is not about withdrawing from life. It is about gaining enough freedom to engage with life differently.
We may retire from employment, but the evidence suggests that we should be very cautious about retiring from learning, contributing, connecting and participating.
