- Ten thousand (+) Americans retire every day.
- While retirement in the past marked the beginning of the end of life, nowadays it might be better described as the end of midlife.
- Retirement nowadays lasts decades – far longer than we spent in schools and, in some cases, longer than we spent in our careers.
- Increasing longevity and the changing nature of work requires more radical rethinking of life stages.
- The language people have grown to use about retirement is, at best, far from clear or realistic.
- “Retirement” connotes a retreat from battle or a step back to safer ground – a concept that does not capture the range of retirement adventures that many embark upon today.
- The old perspective on life stages might require rethinking – such as abandoning the old school – work – retirement timeline to spreading periods of wok, education and sabbatical throughout our lives.
- The challenge of those who are turning sixty-five (about 12,000 per day in the United States) will be to figure out what to do with the expected thirty more years of life that they face.
- Most people who have led active lives are “not good at” doing nothing, and “don’t like” doing nothing. This puts them in a position where they eventually become miserable – and they die. (For those of you who are familiar with the “Doom Loop,” this is “Q4.”)
- Planning on ways to move away from “Q4” is the key to a happy and productive retirement.