Some people love the freedom and serendipity of being spontaneous. Long-term plans make them feel boxed in. Others prefer structure in their schedules, finding it a better way to get the most out of their time.
And then there are people like me, where it depends. Sometimes we want structure; other times we want an open schedule. Now that I’ve retired, a lot of inputs have changed.
When I was working, I usually liked to have plans for my scarce time off. I didn’t want my free time to be “wasted.” It was hard enough to squeeze in all the things I really wanted to do even if I was efficient with my free time. If I didn’t “maximize” use of my weekends, holidays, and vacation days, there would be even more things at the top of my want-to-do list.
It took me awhile after wrapping up my full-time career to realize that those habits tell me little about my natural preferences for balancing structure vs spontaneity. Those preferences were developed under extreme time scarcity.
Now that a majority of my time is my own, how much do I want to plan vs leave to chance? How much structure is just right?
I do NOT want to spend day after day “doing nothing.” However, I’m more willing to intersperse relaxing-and-reading days between active days, because I have more than two days a week to do chores and plan fun. I can fit more things into my personal time without so much rigidity.
In fact, too much advanced planning means that I can’t decide to do things like a spur-of-the-moment overnight trip to the coast, as we did last week because the weather forecast was so glorious for Monday and Tuesday. It was great! Had I locked in other plans, I wouldn’t have had that option.
On the other hand . . .
Because I’m a data nerd, I put together a spreadsheet of friends I enjoy seeing and how many days it’s been since the last time I remember us getting together. Even with all my new-found time, there are still too many entries that are a hundred days or more.
And now that I’m almost halfway through my first full summer of retirement, I see how quickly nice-weather seasons pass, especially here in New England. If I don’t plan more to see the people I want to see, it won’t be that long before the days turn shorter, the weather gets worse, and it will be harder to make myself leave the house.
I’ve been retired for almost a year, and I still haven’t figured out the right balance between structure and allowing for serendipity. One of my retired friends told me that it might take me a few years to figure out how much scheduled activities I’ll want in my retirement. She’s right.
Time changes
I think one thing that can cause retirees to feel a little disoriented early on is that our relationship with time radically changes.
For those of us who retire at the usual time of life (i.e. not young), there’s another factor in how we experience time. When I was younger, it felt like my “immediate” time - today, this week, this month, this year – was extremely scarce outside of work. But my “someday” time, as in “I want to do some wonderful thing someday”, seemed much more expansive. Of course I knew even then that no one is guaranteed to live an average-length life span. But it used to be that people my age who suffered from fatal illnesses or accidents were statistical outliers. Pretty soon the illness part at least will be average. I feel this viscerally in a way I didn’t ten or even five years ago: Even if I’m very fortunate, I’m unlikely to have too many years left with the health and stamina to do things like travel overseas to see places I’ve been hoping to visit “someday.”
So yes, my immediate time has much more breathing room. My days, weeks, and upcoming months feel much more abundant. But my long-range “someday” time feels a lot more limited.
My relationship with time has flipped. And that, too, complicates the planning versus spontaneity balance.
I think it will be awhile yet before I find an answer that’s right for me. But at least now I feel like I understand the question.
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