by Teresa M. Amabile, Lotte Bailyn, Marcy Crary, Douglas T. Hall and Kathy E. Kram
This is far and away the best book I’ve read on retirement in many years (and I’ve read a lot of books on retirement).
In Retiring: Creating a Life that Works for You, Teresa Amabile and her collaborators present a fresh and thoughtful exploration of retirement. Through a research-based approach complemented by engaging storytelling, they challenge common beliefs about retirement and provide a practical framework to shape a retirement life aligned with your values, aspirations, and personality. The book goes well beyond financial planning and offers valuable insights that can help you discover what will bring you meaning and satisfaction in this new phase of life.
A main point of the book is that each person’s retirement journey will be different, and that’s very helpful for people entering the transition. Many are used to comparing their timeline and expectations to peers throughout their lives and careers, but in retirement, the pace and length of the transition period will vary greatly. This will be liberating for many people to know upfront. The authors note that retiring well takes work, but it’s worth it and offer a high-level roadmap to building a new life structure that fits your priorities, aspirations and circumstances.
An important finding from the research that the book is based on is the four developmental tasks in retirement. This provides readers with a logical sequence of areas of focus to use as a guide, armed with the knowledge that the timeline is flexible based on your particular situation and priorities. The first task is deciding when and how to retire. It’s an important decision that deserves careful consideration and evaluation of key financial and non-financial factors. The second task is detaching from work, both in managing your exit from the workplace, but psychologically as well. The latter can be challenging for many people who encounter a period of significant change and loss that they are often unprepared for, including a loss of identity, structure, social connection and sense of purpose. The third task is experimenting to build a new life structure. Think of it as a working draft version. This comes from exploring new activities, relationships, organizations to join and be open to trying new things. The fourth task is consolidating the experiments and the working draft version into a stable structure in your retirement life.
Throughout the book, the authors present Life Maps from retirees who participated in their research, free-form drawings depicting their life and how they invest their time – one before they retired and one later in retirement. The Life Maps underscore the point that each retirement is indeed different and they provide vivid portraits of the shifts people experience in moving from a work-focused phase of life to a more diversified life they create in retirement.
Teresa Amabile, who recently retired from Harvard Business School, turns her research expertise to the subject of how to build a fulfilling retirement. Her background and expertise in creativity and motivation infuses this work with insights on how you can channel your curiosity discover new pursuits and cultivate intrinsic motivation as you transition away from full-time work. The book reframes retirement not as a “winding down,” but as a time full of potential for personal growth, connection, and achievement.
Rather than viewing retirement as simply “free time,” Teresa Amabile and her co-authors encourage you to establish a balanced routine that blends relaxation and fun with meaningful activities, such as creative projects, part-time work, or mentorship roles. They argue that having a structured approach to the days and weeks will help you find a rhythm and purpose, while still allowing for the spontaneity that this stage of life affords. Recognizing the risks of isolation, Amabile and her co-authors highlight the importance of nurturing relationships, finding new communities, and staying engaged. They suggest avenues for building connections, such as joining groups centered around shared interests, volunteering, or even forming new social circles.
Retiring: Creating a Life that Works for You is a comprehensive and inspiring guide for anyone seeking a fulfilling retirement. Through a balance of research, real-life stories, and actionable recommendations, Amabile and her co-authors will help you see retirement not as an end, but genuinely as a new beginning.
Listen to my podcast conversation with Teresa Amabile
Read the Book – Retiring: Create a Life That Works for You
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