We just wrapped up Labor Day Weekend here in the U.S. That is the unofficial end of summer and it
means we only have four months to go before we finish up this year and start a
new decade. That’s plenty of time to get
a few things done and finish the year strong.
Think about any financial, investing, lifestyle, relationship, health or retirement goals you had for 2019. How have you done so far? How can you make the most out of the next four months? Focus in on one or two areas where you’d like to make progress before year-end and get to work. Maybe that’s making a written retirement plan, increasing your savings rate or making a plan to finally get debt free. Maybe that’s repairing a relationship, starting a new workout program or learning a new skill. Maybe you’ve reached your health deductible for the year and it’s a good time to schedule that procedure. Or maybe it’s time to plan that trip (always a good idea). Think about how good it would feel to finish the year with a few major items checked off your To-Do list. Think about how much progress you could make in 2020 if you ended 2019 with solid momentum.
Part of my job here is to help people avoid
complacency. To push you to have a tough
conversation with yourself about what you really want out of life and to
encourage you to take those plans really seriously. Consider yourself pushed. Touch base if there’s anything I can do to
help. And props for everything you’re
doing so far. The fact that you’re
following along at this site tells me that you’re no slouch. Saving for retirement and being intentional
with life are not easy tasks. Most
people don’t do it. You’re in that small
minority of people who are laying the foundation for their future through
discipline, hard work and good stewardship.
Well done! Keep up the good
work. Finish the year strong.
“The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an inner scorecard or an outer scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an inner scorecard.”
The scorecard he’s talking about is how you measure success in any given endeavor. Are you playing your game or someone else’s? Do you compare yourself to others and try to win based on what they or the rest of the world think of you? Or do you focus on the things that matter to you and judge your success based on the goals and metrics that you’ve set for yourself (i.e. your internal scorecard)?
You can “succeed” with either scorecard. It’s just a question of whether or not that
success is likely to bring you happiness and fulfillment. Most people use a combination of both
scorecards, but during the first two-thirds of life the external scorecard
often wins. As a student, you had a
literal scorecard and it measured how well you did compared to the other
students and whether you reached the milestones of success set by the school. You likely focused on that scorecard to
please your parents or gain acceptance into college or a career.
During your working years there’s pressure to focus on the external
scorecard as well. Are you the top
salesman? How much money do you
make? What is your job title? How much is in your 401k? What professional designations do you
have? What industry awards have you
won?
And since we use the external scorecard at work, we often
use it in our personal life as well. How
big is your house? What kind of car do
you drive? What brand of clothes do you
wear? Where do you vacation? Are your kids in private school?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of those things,
but if the only reason you want them is to please others or win some foolish
game of status or achievement, then you’re winning at the wrong game. It’s possible to look totally successful on
the outside and be a mess on the inside.
The internal scorecard and retirement
When you retire, you buy yourself the freedom to design your
own game and set your own rules. You get
to decide what constitutes a success.
This is a much more rewarding game to play and it is more likely to
result in happiness and fulfillment, because the metrics you’re focusing on are
the things that are important to you. It
takes work, however, because you need to create the game and set the
rules. That means deciding what you
really want out of life and then holding yourself accountable to achieve it
using your internal scorecard. Your scorecard
will look different than mine, so I can’t tell you what to do, but I can give
you some general ideas on how to do it. Below
are a few resources that can help.
For lasting happiness, get off the hedonic treadmill.
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Because retirement is a time filled with fun, travel and leisure it is easy to make the pursuit of pleasure your orienting principle. That would be a terrible mistake. There’s nothing wrong with pleasure, but it must exist in the context of something deeper. Let me explain.
Meaning vs. Pleasure
I’ve written before about Viktor Frankl. He was a psychiatrist and holocaust survivor who wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning about his time as a concentration camp prisoner. Frankl founded a school of psychology called Logotherapy (literally “meaning” therapy). He believed that striving to find meaning is the primary motivational force in humans. This was in contrast to Freud, who believed that the pursuit of pleasure was the driving motivation.
I’m in Frankl’s camp. In my experience with retirees, those who focus on meaning often have a deep sense of satisfaction, purpose and happiness. Pleasure is a welcome byproduct of their pursuit of purpose. Alternatively, those who can’t find this deeper sense of meaning often self-medicate with pleasure. Pleasure with no greater purpose eventually feels hollow for most people. So how can you orient your retirement around meaning?
How to find meaning
According to Frankl, there are three different ways to find meaning in life. I’ll list those below and then relate them to retirement.
Through projects or work. All of us are designed to do something meaningful and productive. Retirement doesn’t somehow remove that need, it just means that you no longer have to base your choice on how much something pays. Maybe that means working part-time in a field that’s always interested you or volunteering for an organization you’re passionate about. Or maybe it’s running for your local school board or working on a big community project. Whatever it is, find something that will engage you and leverage your time, treasure and talents. What people really need, according to Frankl, is “the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”
Through experiences and relationships. Retirement (and life) is at its best when we have loving, healthy relationships with friends and family and we are engaged in meaningful pursuits.
Through challenges or suffering. This one might seem a bit counterintuitive at first, but if you think about the times in your life that made you who you are, that taught you the most, that filled you with pride and a sense of accomplishment, my guess would be that a lot of those times grew out of a significant challenge, heartbreak or tragedy. Frankl believed that we should welcome challenges and suffering, not because they’re fun, but because they can often bring meaning and growth. He knew that we can’t always control our circumstances, but we can always control our response to our circumstances. That from a guy who was in a concentration camp and found a way to redeem his suffering and use it as the soil from which he grew his philosophy, vocation and life’s meaning.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor Frankl
So as you move toward retirement, absolutely plan on doing fun and interesting things. Splurge on yourself. Be a little selfish. Just don’t treat the pursuit of pleasure as your ultimate goal. If you do, you’ll likely be disappointed. Instead, seek meaning and you’ll likely find pleasure and happiness as well.
When it comes to retirement, you absolutely want to dream big. Just don’t forget how important it is to eventually get those dreams off the drawing board. Here’s a simple framework that can help. It’s called the 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX for short) and was developed by several people at FranklinCovey and discussed in their book by the same name.
Discipline #1: Focus on the wildly important
The authors of 4DX write: “The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish.” It you try to do too much, very little gets done and the things that you do, don’t get done well. Concentrate your efforts on a few wildly important goals so you can do them well.
It’s up to you to choose what “wildly important” things to
focus on when it comes to retirement. Here’s
my suggestion, informed by almost 25 years of helping people plan for
retirement: Focus on money and meaning. The
money will help you sleep at night (and fund the type of retirement you want). The meaning will give you a reason to get out
of bed in the morning.
Discipline #2: Act on lead measures
Once you identify your wildly important goals, you need to
measure your progress toward achieving them. The authors of 4DX suggest there are two types
of metrics you can use to measure your progress: lead measures and lag
measures. Lag measures track the thing
you’re actually trying to achieve. In our
example above, having enough money to fund your retirement was one of the
goals. A lag measure would look at
whether you’ve reached that goal.
Unfortunately, that comes too late to be helpful. Instead you want to track lead measures. Those are the behaviors that eventually lead
to successful lag measures. So in our
example of money, lead measures could be things like 401k contributions,
savings rates or investment returns.
Discipline #3: Keep a compelling scorecard
“People play differently when they’re keeping score,” the
4DX authors write. The scoreboard brings
out our competitive spirit, drives us to stay focused on lead measures and
gives encouragement when we see progress toward the ultimate goal(s). Returning to our example, maybe your scorecard
tracks each pay period that you were able to save a certain percentage of your
income. Or if you’re tracking meaning,
maybe your scorecard tracks every time you have a date night with your spouse,
take a trip or work at learning a new hobby.
Whatever your lead measures, keep a scorecard to track how you’re doing.
Discipline #4: Create a cadence of accountability
In the final discipline, the 4DX authors say that you need to put in place a “rhythm of regular and frequent meetings of any team that owns a wildly important goal.” Depending on your goal, that “team” could just be you or it could include others like your spouse, financial adviser, friends, children, etc. Meet regularly with whoever has a vested interest in the outcomes you’re trying to achieve so you can track your progress and hold each other accountable.
Dreaming without doing is a recipe for disappointment. The 4 Disciplines of Execution will help you
turn your retirement plans into reality.
Quick Note: I recently posted a video to YouTube on the 8 Habits of Successful Retirees. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can click the link to watch it and click “Subscribe” to see future videos.
Just a short post today. As spring arrives, I want to share one of my favorite poems with you and encourage you to use this time of warming weather, blossoms and new beginnings as a visual reminder to make the most of your time. The poem, by A. E. Housman, is below.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide
Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.
You don’t need to be a poetry expert to understand what Housman was saying. Life is short. And when you realize how quickly years pass and you do a bit of mental math, you understand that there’s not much time left. So don’t wait. Don’t continue to procrastinate and defer your dreams. Decide what things, big or small, are important to you and then get busy doing them. Have a great week. And, as always…
Be Intentional,
Joe
P.S. I took Housman’s words to heart in a literal way last year and went out to Washington D.C. to see the cherry blossoms (see above photo). Sometimes the best way to “stop and smell the roses” is just to stop and smell the roses.
Happy New Year! It’s that wonderful time of year when we all get a blank slate and a chance to make a resolution or two. That got me thinking about actions and aspirations. What if I told you that my goal for 2019 was to become an Olympic swimmer, but I never got in the pool? Or if I said I wanted to write the great American novel, but never bothered putting pen to paper? How confident would you be that I’d reach my goal? Not very, right? That’s because most people realize that major accomplishments require major effort. You’re not going to achieve an exceedingly rare outcome by putting forth a mediocre effort. Said another way, your actions need to match your aspirations.
How about this one: What if I told you I want to retire someday. Big deal, right? Actually, it is. We take it for granted because it has become so ingrained in everyday life, but when you think about what retirement really is, it’s a wonder anyone can do it. Retiring is like saying: “I want to quit my job tomorrow and never work again, but I want to be healthy enough and have enough money to do fun and exciting things and also maintain my standard of living for 30 years or so.” Seriously?! I think most of us have a better shot at the Olympic team.
The 1% Life
I recently saw a video of writer/speaker/businessman Gary Vaynerchuck talking to a young man who was describing the kind of career he wanted—meaningful work that paid handsomely but gave three to four months off each year for travel. He was lamenting that it wasn’t happening and asking for advice. Gary asked him several questions that made it pretty clear that, aside from daydreaming, the kid wasn’t putting forth much effort to get his dreams off the drawing board. This was Gary’s response (and I’m paraphrasing): Look, you’re asking for a 1% life. In other words, a life that is so unique and amazing that only 1% or less of the people in the world get to experience that. What you’re asking for is ridiculous and you’ll have to do ridiculous things to have any hope of making it a reality. So you’re asking for this 1% life, but you’re not really doing anything to achieve that. If you want a 1% life, you need to do 1% things.
To borrow Gary’s phrase, retirement is a 1% life. And if you want to make that 1% life a reality, you need to do 1% things. And I’m not just talking about money. Finding meaning is pretty darn hard as well. There are plenty of retirees who are cash rich and lifestyle poor.
Unfortunately, we often treat retirement like it’s a 99% life that happens to everyone as long as you make a few 401k contributions and maintain a pulse. It’s not that easy. You won’t reach your retirement goals by simply having a certain number of birthdays. It takes financial stewardship, intention, hard work, effort and sacrifice. It takes deciding what you really want out of life and taking those plans seriously. It takes being proactive. It takes experimenting and practicing so you can refine your plans and get good at actually doing stuff. It takes building into your relationships and working on your marriage. It takes eating right and exercising so you can maintain your health. All of those things are in your control, but they’re not necessarily easy. But neither is retirement. It’s rare and unlikely. It’s a 1% life. Are you doing 1% things to get there? Stick around because I’ve got a ton of stuff coming your way this year that will help. Here are two that you’ll see in your inbox soon:
January Health Articles
I don’t care how much money you’ve saved, retirement won’t work without your health. Take care of yourself so you can get out there and enjoy life. Follow along at Intentional Retirement during January and I’ll post several health-related articles and resources to help you start the year off right.
aMUSEments
Sometimes you just need a little inspiration. A muse, if you will. With that in mind, each Friday in 2019 I’m going to send out a quick list of the coolest and most interesting things I’ve found that week relating to retirement.
The list might include trip ideas, articles, products, quotes, retirement tips or anything else that looks interesting or inspiring. The goal is to give you a quick dose of motivation as you head into your weekend. Keep an eye out for the first one in a few days.
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