Welcome to sixty-seven, a “working retirement” learning & sharing journal site. Traditionally the term “retirement” means withdrawal from active working occupation or business life with no regular 10-5 work hours. This period also means to many as time for relaxing, vacationing, travels, or other less stressful activities. However, for some workaholics with non-physical work career, even at mid-sixties, there remains much to be done. I call this period as “after-career” exploration.

By conventional standard normal retirement age in US is 67 to receive social security or old age benefit insurance. However, retiring at this age is probably a privilege of wealthy few but for many it is still working with reduced work hours. Unlike the past older generations, new modern elders who are still healthy and in good physical shape continue working for longer period.

Fear of Career Transition

Transitioning from a comfort career to an unknown is always scary. At this period, we feel raw and vulnerable again not knowing what comes next! When vulnerable, we either turn to inspirational books, training to enhance extra skills or a career counselor. While wondering, I found a perfectly fitting inspirational book by Chip Conley “Wisdom @ Work: The Making of a Modern Elders: Currency, NY (2018). This book is amazing and will write my thoughts about it in a separate post.

A Period of Experimentation

Although uncertain, I have a bucket lists of things I plan to accomplish in this period. Time is limited. As this is the beginning of a new chapter, I plan to do some experimentation to test and evaluate what works and what does not work before jutting my long-term goals. In the meantime, I have following tentative short-term goals with focus on the following four areas:

Life-Style Change

• Healthy Life-style: During this “after-career” period, I plan to lead a healthy-life style by eating only healthy foods, avoiding junk foods (eg. sugar, fatty & salty snacks).
• Daily Work-out: I have not been doing lot of workouts which is harmful for body metabolism. Being active is built into our DNA. People with active life style experience less chronic illness like heart disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes and others. It is recommended at least 4000 steps daily may to avoid develop metabolic problems. My goal is to maintain at least daily 10,000 steps.
• Practice minimalism. Buy things that are absolutely essential & learn to live with less. An Inspirational Source: The Unbearable Heaviness of Clutter | The New York Times: Jan 3, 2019.

Knowledge Consumption

• Life-long Learning: Develop a habit to learn for life and learn constantly. As Chip Conley puts it “Work, Learn and Evolve and Retire to next rewarding chapter“. Thinking outside of box, learn and do anything freely without any risk of failures! Evolve in this constantly changing world!
• Learning to Learn: There is so much new & useful information every day, but time is limited. This is a topic many people struggle with every day, what to learn and what to skip? Following these inspirational posts by Sarah Drasner‘s Learning to Learn and Jonathan Desrosiers‘s Consuming Knowledge, I am working on developing a routine of consuming knowledge and habit to learn for life.
• Books Reading. Develop a habit of reading books and document lessons learned.
• Choose Productivity: Spend time being more productive than being nice & fitting in with others or socializing.

De-Cluttering

Inspired by Marie Kundo, Japanese de-cluttering diva, and her recent sensation in the US media including this Atlantic article Tidying Up With Marie Kondo Isn’t Really a Makeover Show, I have also pledged to do something about this at home & digital spaces.

For digital addition, my goal is to read Digital Minimalism by Carl Newport and apply as much as possible in my own personal life. Practice intellectual self-improvement through learning and writing – as suggested by Arnold Bennett, a British writer, in his book “How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day” published in 2017.

Gardening

As a family, we have been doing organic gardening for many years. For the past several years, I was not able to participate due to my daily long-hour store job. From this year, I plan to take part in gardening as part of health & wellness activity. In addition, I have also some plans for yard work, general house maintenance and other house-hold activities.

Work in Progress

As this is the beginning of a new chapter, currently things are little unsettled with lot of known unknowns, uncertainty & curiosity and a period of trial and error. As content starts filling this space, then it is expected that this site starts taking its shape. Thanks for vising & and continue reading!