For close to the last 10 years or my career, I found myself longing more and more towards my ultimate retirement. No more getting up on those cold, dark winter mornings between 4:00 and 5:00am, I thought. No more 2 ½ to 3-hour commutes to my office in New York City — or the 60 to 70-hour workweeks. Not to mention having to put up with the seemingly never-ending posturing, end-runs or even sniper attacks by overly-ambitious corporate guerillas who count themselves as co-workers. Ah yes. Retirement. That golden period of life when I could finally work on that novel; pursue the study of music; catch-up on all of that deferred reading, and wake-up on my own without the alarm clock, asking myself, “What do I want to do today?” It all just seemed too good to be true. And guess what? It was. At least to a degree. I do wake-up on my own without the alarm clock — generally between 7:30 and 8:30 each morning. So far so good. But then I immediately come face-to-face with what turned out to be one of my most significant challenges in retirement — time management. How could that possibly be, one might ask? The whole idea of retirement is not to have to manage one’s time — because that’s the one thing of which a retiree is supposed to have in profuse abundance. Is it not? Here is what I very quickly learned about the passage of time in one’s retirement: a rigorous, self-disciplined approach to time management is arguably far more critical in retirement than when still working full-time. Why? Because it is far more insidiously easy to squander away whole days, weeks, and even months during one’s retirement than one ever could while still working full-time. When working, most of us have structured activities at specific times during the day that are mostly imposed on us by our employer, or dictates of our business requirements if self-employed. While engaged in performing these activities, which we often grudgingly refer to as “the grind” or “the rat race.” But they do serve a useful function in that they structure our daily activities so that we actually accomplish something, presumably measurable, each day (whether we want to do it or not). Full retirement, however, is another story — as I was to find out. I woke up slightly after 7:30 that first day, was shaved and dressed and downstairs in the kitchen making coffee by 8:15. I retired to my library to savor my first cup of coffee and to check emails on my smartphone followed by some light reading. A couple more cups of coffee and I noticed that it was almost noontime! “What happened to the entire morning?” I thought. After puttering around and taking care of what seemed to be a few simple, mundane items in my library, I checked the time and saw that it was approaching 2 o’clock. It seemed that I had only been working about 10 minutes — but 2 hours had elapsed. What the hell happened? Had I been a victim of missing time? Given that it was early March, I was fast approaching the time — weather permitting — for my outdoor afternoon ritual of a fine hand-rolled cigar with 4 ounces of bourbon, rum, or scotch. The time for this would get later as spring rolled into summer and the days became longer. And on those days that I felt might be particularly special, I would perhaps mix up to three servings of a Manhattan, Sidecar, or Aviation cocktail in a cocktail beaker rather than just imbibe on straight spirits. It would take me close to a half hour to get all of the necessary smoking and mixology paraphernalia into position either on the front patio or rear deck, including the Bluetooth speakers necessary to provide the requisite mood music for the afternoon experience. By the time I lit up the stick and took my first puff, it would be about 2:30. My cigars generally last 2 to 3 hours. That puts me to at least until 5 o’clock. Add another 20-30 minutes for clean-up and putting everything away, and we’re now going on to 6 o’clock. Time for a dinner with my lovely wife, then catching a couple hours of the news and streaming programming afterwards, and then it’s time for bed. Realizing that I accomplished absolutely nothing on this day, I rationalized it by counting it as the start of a ‘decompression period’ to adjust from the regimentation of the daily work life. However, as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months with virtually no change in my daily routine — and no productivity, I realized that my fundamental approach to retirement (which really wasn’t an approach at all) needed to change. Indeed, the fact that this very blog remained fallow all of last year is a testament to just how quickly wasted time can fly by. We are all no doubt familiar with that supremely ironic axiom of life that, the older we get — and the less time we have left — the faster that time whizzes by. I have a theory about that. I think that as we get older, our mental processes gradually and continuously begin slowing down. And as a consequence, it appears to us that time is speeding up. It really isn't — it just appears that way due the ever-decreasing speed of our brain functions. Do you remember how slow time used to pass when we were kids? It seemed like summer vacations lasted forever. I believe that's because our little brains were working a mile-a-minute — absorbing everything around us like sponges. But alas, that almost imperceptible, gradual slowing process seems to commence by the time we hit adolescence. So, while we can;t do anything about the continual slowing of our thought processes, we can still make the most of the time we have about being smarter and more disciplined with the way we use the time remaining to us. There are multiple ways to do this. What I'm about to describe is what simply works for me. The first thing I did was to establish structure to both what I wanted to achieve during these years — both short-term and long — and how I expected to fulfill those objectives through specific actions. I also knew that writing down those goals and steps towards implementation was extremely important in achieving them. I started by establishing benchmarks for what I wanted to achieve during the next 12 months. In my case, it was the completion of the first draft of my novel; where I wanted to be in my progression in the study of music; a schedule for reinvigorating this blog with key topics I wanted to feature throughout the year; and finally, identifying and forecasting sources of additional income to supplement my pensions (because having to reduce one’s discretionary expenditures during retirement….. sucks). If you think achieving each of your goals will go beyond a calendar quarter, make sure you estimate (and write it down on the same document) where you think you need to be at the end of each quarter to make you projected end-date. Once your goals and associated milestones have been established for the upcoming year, you should create daily checklists for yourself as reminders of what you want to accomplish each and every day in order to make your milestones. If you don’t do this, trust me — time will absolutely get away from you beginning Day 1. Take some time over morning coffee or tea to review your progress on a weekly basis to digest the progress you’ve made over the previous week, and to make adjustments to either your daily activities or milestones, if needed. Above: One of numerous potential approaches that can be taken during retirement with which to resist the propensity to simply watch time (and life) pass-by with disconcerting speed. Now if all of this seems like way too much work to embark upon during your retirement — that’s absolutely your choice. One of the few great things about retirement is that you get to determine how you want to live it. Some of us are perfectly content with waking up each morning simply enjoying the relaxation and watching the day pass by.
I don’t happen to be cut from that cloth. And as a result, I developed the strategies I’m outlining here as hopefully helpful suggestions for those retirees with a like mindset. There are certain things I’ve wanted to accomplish in my life that I deferred to my retirement when I would “have more time.” And this brings me to the final point I would like to make, from my own experience, regarding waiting for anything in life. First, tomorrow is not guaranteed. My wife and I have both been fortunate to make into our retirement years — but not everyone in life is so blessed. So, if you find you have special things you want to accomplish in your life, start working on achieving them once you know what they are — even if you think you don’t have the time while you’re still working and perhaps even supporting a growing family. Second, even if you make it to retirement, you have no idea what your mental acuity or physical capabilities will be like once you get there — and those factors could make achieving your personal aspirations more difficult. As for me, my mental and physical capabilities still seem to be adequate, but the degradation of my vision makes it more difficult for me to do the kinds of things I want to do. And let’s face it — in terms of me fulfilling one of my own aspirations, mastering a musical instrument at age 70 is much more difficult than at age 7 — of even age 37. So, the earlier you can start, I think the better your chances of seeing true fulfillment. And finally, one of the more sinister aspects of retirement, at least for me, has been what I perceived to be age stereotyping and perhaps even discrimination. I worked continuously in railroad operations for 50 years before retiring two years ago. I took six months off, and when I decided I wanted to return to being actively engaged in business activities with others, I couldn’t help but get the sense that I was being perceived as frankly old, maybe tired, passé, and perhaps even irrelevant to the reality of the today’s world. I sensed people looking at me thinking, “You’re retired. Why do you want to do anything? Go back to the ‘home.’ The world is moving on (and you ain’t part of it).” Hopefully this is not the experience of many others in my age group. But I for one do not intend to fade quietly into the night. I have stuff I wanna do, and things I want to share. And I intend to do it with the time I have left. So it’s for those like-minded individuals that I wanted to share my own thoughts about effective time management during the retirement years. ‘Cause it’s easy to waste, and we don’t have much left. I hope this may have been helpful to some. Good luck! © 2025 David Nogar All Rights Reserved
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David Nogar worked in railroad operations for almost 50 years until retiring from the transportation business in early 2023.
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