by Joe Hearn | Jan 26, 2018 | Happiness, Pursuits, Retirement
I recently played a game of travel roulette with my friends. We showed up at the airport at 5 am with no tickets and no plans and told the ticket agent we’d go anywhere warm. The only conditions were that the flight had to leave that morning and cost less than $500. After running through half a dozen potential destinations, we ended up with the last four seats on a direct flight to Phoenix. The trip couldn’t have gone better. We had a blast.
This post started out as a handful of lessons and takeaways from that experience. It included my thoughts on spontaneity, the declining cost of distance, the demystification of travel, the benefits of packing light, living a proactive life and allocating your resources based on your priorities. Then I erased all of that and instead decided to write about only one key takeaway: Relationships.
Many times during the trip, as we laughed and had fun, I thought to myself “It’s so great to do stuff like this.” After reflecting a bit more, however, that initial thought evolved into “It’s so great to have people to do stuff like this with.” In other words, the hero of the story isn’t the experience, it’s the people. The friendships.
In What makes a good life? I wrote about the Study of Adult Development that Harvard has been conducting for the last 80 years. The key finding of that study is that relationships and social connections are really, really good for us. Those with close relationships were happier, healthier and they lived longer than those who self-described as lonely or lacking friends.
Psychologist and author Susan Pinker has done research that resulted in similar conclusions. In her popular TED talk “The secret to living longer may be your social life” she discussed the importance of friends. She cited a study that attempted to answer the question “What reduces your chances of dying most?” You can probably guess where this is going. Here are the variables in the study ranked from least powerful impact on longevity to greatest: clean air, hypertension treatment, lean vs. overweight, exercise, cardiac treatment, flu vaccine, quit boozing, quit smoking, close relationships, social integration/interaction. Just like the Harvard study, this research shows that relationships are critical. Ms. Pinker went so far as to say that those who prioritize their face-to-face relationships over time create a biological force field against disease and decline.
Self-reflection
Now that we know how important relationships are, each of us should do a little self-examination and reflection. How many close friends do you have? Are you proactive in making and maintaining your friendships? How is your relationship with your spouse, children and other family? How much time, energy and money are you investing in relationships?
Application
All of this obviously has huge implications for your retirement. As I’ve said many times before, retirement is more than a math problem. Money is important, but so are relationships. Don’t take them for granted. They will affect how happy you are and how long you’ll live. Reflect on some practical ways that you can be more intentional with your relationships. Here are a few ideas:
- Focus on the little things. Small gestures can make a big difference. Send a card to say thank you or to let them know you appreciate them. Call to catch up.
- Look for ways to help. Bring a meal when a friend is sick. Be a shoulder to cry on when they’re going through a tough time.
- Organize activities. One way to strengthen bonds is through shared experiences and memories. Organize a book club. Arrange a movie night. Plan a trip.
- Be trustworthy and a good listener. Nothing will end a friendship faster than gossip, backbiting or a lack of empathy.
- Be quick to fix problems. Don’t let small issues fester. Admit when your wrong. Forgive when you’ve been wronged.
- Start a group. We have a close group of friends that we’ve been meeting with every Sunday night for the last 22 years. We had no kids when we started and now the kids outnumber us. We travel together, share meals together, laugh and cry together, pray for and support one another, and generally experience life together. We’ve been through the best and worst that life can throw at you and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. Having a friend is great. Having a group of friends is even better. Consider starting a group around shared interests, activities, life stage, beliefs or whatever.
- Lay the groundwork for retirement. If you’re planning on moving somewhere new in retirement, start visiting that place now to make new friends. Talk with current friends to see if they have any interest in landing there as well.
by Joe Hearn | Jan 12, 2018 | Pursuits, Travel
For a while I’ve wanted to show up at the airport with no plans, no luggage and no ticket and ask the agent to book me a flight somewhere. I think it would be a fun experiment. Travel roulette. So a few days ago, I sent this text to four of my friends:
To my surprise, three of them took me up on it. We’ll all be at the airport tomorrow morning trying to snag a last-minute seat somewhere interesting. I’ll try to post a few pictures or videos to the Intentional Retirement Facebook page to let you know how it’s going. Maybe it will be fun. Maybe it will be a colossal mistake. Either way it will be memorable.
Enjoy your weekend! And remember. Life is short. Be intentional.
~ Joe
by Joe Hearn | Jan 5, 2018 | Hobbies, Pursuits
Happy New Year! December is crazy busy in my line of work so I didn’t have much time to write, but the calendar has flipped, I’ve come up for air and I’m excited about 2018.
In past years I’ve written about my annual review process and how I set goals. You can read more about it here if you’re doing some 2018 planning of your own: Your plan for the New Year in 3 easy steps.
I’m a big believer in the benefits of reading so I usually have a reading goal each year. In 2017, my goal was to read every book, short story, poem and play by Ernest Hemingway. A few years ago, I set a goal to read 500 books between age 40 and 50.
I’m guessing many of you enjoy reading as well, so if you’re looking for a few book ideas for 2018, I created a page on Intentional Retirement with a list of everything I’ve read over the last five years. I’ll keep it updated going forward, so feel free to check back periodically. It contains a pretty eclectic mix, so there’s something for everyone. And if you have an idea or two for me, please send them my way.
As always, thanks for following along. Have a great weekend!
Joe
by Joe Hearn | Nov 16, 2017 | Happiness, Lifestyle Design
I just finished watching the new Ken Burns documentary on Vietnam. During the war, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had commanders and soldiers in the field collecting vast amounts of data each day that was then put onto punch cards and fed into a mainframe computer for analysis. The hope was that by measuring hundreds of different variables—casualties, villages pacified, roads cleared—they could gauge progress and prove that we were winning the war.
In hindsight, there were many problems with this strategy, not the least of which was that the things they really needed to know—the state of Vietnamese politics, the loyalty of the people, the intentions of Hanoi—were almost impossible to quantify and thus weren’t being factored into the equation. An Army adviser summarized it this way:
“If you can’t count what’s important, you make what you can count important.”
When I heard him say that, it struck me that you and I do something similar when it comes to life in general and retirement specifically. There are things that really matter and that have a huge impact on our happiness and fulfillment. Things like our sense of purpose, the quality of our relationships and the depth of our experiences. Unfortunately, those things are nuanced and hard to both measure and manage, so instead we tend to focus on things that are easier to quantify like the size of our bank accounts, square footage of our houses or the number of friends we have on Facebook. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with those things, but they don’t form the complete picture obviously.
This morning I spent time reflecting on the types of metrics I use in my own life and how I can do a better job measuring the things that are important and not just the things that are easy to count. As a part of that process, I went back and re-read some of my past articles. If you’d like to do something similar, I’ll post links to those that were particularly helpful to me.
Perspective
Metrics
Application
by Joe Hearn | Nov 3, 2017 | Happiness, Hobbies, Lifestyle Design
Jeff Bezos became the richest person in the world last week. In a little over 20 years, the founder of Amazon.com went from no money (or very little) to more money than anyone. Warren Buffett once called him “the most remarkable business person of our age.” That’s like Michael Jordan calling you the best basketball player or the Dos Equis guy crowning you “world’s most interesting person.” I’ve followed Bezos over the years and thought I’d share a few things we can learn from him about life and retirement.
You can accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Someone once said that we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in a year and underestimate what we can accomplish in ten years. Bezos started Amazon in 1995. That’s not that long ago. I remember what I was doing in 1995. I’m guessing you do too. In that short span he’s built a revolutionary company with hundreds of thousands of employees and transformed giant swaths of the economy. Most people spend about 20 years in retirement. I just went to the funeral of a friend who died at 102. He was retired for 40 years. That’s plenty of time to do some interesting things. No one expects you to start a billion-dollar company, but you don’t just need to ride off into the sunset either. Yes, you can relax and enjoy life, but you also have plenty of runway to take on projects or challenges that give fulfillment, meaning and purpose.
Be stubborn on vision, but flexible on details. That’s how Bezos describes the leadership team of Amazon. They have an uncompromising vision for the company, but they are flexible and willing to try new things to make that vision a reality. That same strategy works great when planning for and living in retirement. Know what you want out of life. Stay true to your vision and values, but when opportunities present themselves take advantage of them. Or when things don’t develop exactly how you anticipated they would, don’t be afraid to change up your tactics.
Experiment. Amazon Prime, Amazon Web Services, the Kindle, Echo and Alexa all started out as small experiments. Bezos and his team are constantly experimenting and making small bets. Some of those fail, but some are wildly successful. The more things they try, the greater the odds that they’ll hit on something big.
Take a page from that playbook. Don’t be afraid to experiment. I have a client who took up golf when he retired, but quickly realized it wasn’t for him. Rather than getting down when things didn’t come together as anticipated, he started experimenting with a bunch of different activities. What did he settle on? Beekeeping. That’s right, he now keeps thousands of bees, rents them out to farmers for pollination and packages and sells their honey. It’s now a huge part of his days in retirement and he would have never discovered it without a willingness to experiment. And while we’re on the topic of experimenting…
Be inventive. All of those experiments usually lead to inventions and innovations. The Amazon of today looks very different than it did at the beginning. The same should be true of your retirement. Don’t spend 20 years in a rut. Iterate, create, grow and evolve. That growth and change won’t happen automatically. You need to experiment and invent. As I said recently: You don’t find yourself. You create yourself.
Invest in yourself. The knock against Amazon from day one has been that it doesn’t show a profit. But the reason it doesn’t show a profit is because a) it charges low prices so it can gain new customers and grow the business and b) it reinvests every dime it makes back into the company to help it grow faster. All of those experiments, inventions and innovations cost money. The payoff has been huge, but it wouldn’t have happened without a willingness to invest in them. Warren Buffett once said that the most important investment you can make is in yourself. In retirement, you have time and money. How can you invest those in ways that enrich and improve you and your life?
Keep a “Day 1” mindset. Bezos works in a building named “Day 1.” It’s a reminder to him and his team that they always want to act with the same energy, focus and willingness to try new things that they had on Day 1 of the company. Someone recently asked him what Day 2 looks like and he said “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”
We’re all going to die, so it will eventually be Day 2, but a life that has purpose and meaning is generally incumbent on keeping a Day 1 mindset as long as possible. It’s characterized by a willingness to take risks, try new things, build relationships, invest, act and work towards some greater purpose. In retirement, it’s tempting to ease off the throttle and orient your life around comfort and security rather than purpose and meaning. There’s nothing wrong with a little R&R, but keep your Day 1 mindset as long as possible.
Use a “regret minimization framework.” Before starting Amazon, Bezos had a great job at a wall street firm. All he had to do was keep showing up for work each day and he’d be set. But he saw how quickly the internet was growing and felt a pull to get involved. As he pondered the decision he wondered which course would result in the fewest regrets when he was 80. He called this his regret minimization framework (You can tell he is a computer science grad). He didn’t think he’d regret leaving a job, because he could always find another job. Leaving mid-year meant giving up his annual bonus, which was a big deal to him at the time, but he didn’t think his 80-year-old self would be concerned about it. He didn’t think he’d regret trying the internet business and failing because then he’d just get another job. The one thing he felt he’d really regret would be not trying and always wondering what could have been. It’s the old Mark Twain quote. We don’t regret the things we do as much as the things we don’t do.
So as you think about your life and how you want to spend it, use a regret minimization framework. What actions and decisions will result in the least amount of regret for your future self? Pursue those things. Yes, it might be scary, but it will ultimately result in the greatest level of happiness and fulfillment.
~ Joe
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