Even before the era of email and working from home, it could be hard to fully leave your job at the office. If you had a high-stress job, chances are you thought about it off the clock. Sometimes you got phone calls at home. Pre mobile phones, doctors, IT folks, and other professionals carried pagers.
But the separation between “work” and “time off” has gotten blurrier in recent years. Once it became possible to answer email from pretty much anywhere, even on vacation, too many workplace cultures expected that. Other times the impetus was internal. Maybe you feared looking like a slacker when layoffs came around, if you didn’t check in during days off. Or, as in my case, checking work mail became a natural thing to do during downtime. Riding in a car? Waiting for a train? Commercial break during a football game? It became a habit.
Sometimes it took me into a second vacation week before I could truly relax and unplug, and not feel the urge to whip out my cell phone.
I guess it makes sense, then, that even among some of us who understood the down sides of being “on” too much of the time, our professional lives can bleed into our retirements. Four-plus decades of “being productive” can be a tough habit to break.
However, now that I’m into my second year of retirement, I want to take a look at how many profession-adjacent things I’ve been doing because I truly want to, versus out of habit.
I think I’ve weaned myself off of “I miss the prestige of my professional persona.” I do occasionally, but less than I’d expected. I’m also coping with “I feel guilty about not being ‘productive’” – if that happens, and it’s not often, I can usually talk myself out of it.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the habit of work. It’s been a bit like going through work email when I didn’t have anything more compelling to do. I’ve got more time! That means I can do lots profession-adjacent stuff when there’s nothing better to do! If the choice is interesting tech stuff or decluttering the house . . . well, you can guess which is likely to win.
But those kinds of habits are starting to make less sense to me now. I want to reassess. Because if I don’t leave more space for other, new things to do, it will be hard to discover them.
To start, I’ve cut back significantly on my profession-related social media posts. For awhile I began most weekday mornings scouring websites looking for interesting R-related items to promote. It felt nice to still be “reporting” that way – I always loved news . . . but almost every morning? Really? Is that something I want to still do now that I’m fortunate enough to be launching a new life chapter? Or is it just out of habit?
I’ve decided I want to start my mornings in a different way now. I still often read profession-adjacent news, but for myself, not a potential audience. I’ll post if something interests me. But less often.
I also still plan on freelancing, but only when something arises organically that’s truly interesting. I’m still coding public-service hobby projects, the issue I spoke about in Atlanta a few months ago. My latest is a chatbot that answers questions about neighborhood events. But that’s a hobby I started years ago, which I’d like to continue.
And, I still enjoy speaking occasionally about generative AI and/or the R programming language, which is very much associated with my former career. In fact, I’m giving a presentation on Generative AI and R later this morning to “R Ladies Paris” (sadly it’s a remote meetup and I won’t be in Paris).
“Goodness Sharon, is this your idea of retirement? Working even on Sundays?” joked a professor at emlyon business school after reading about the event. He said he was joking. But it’s not a bad question!
This presentation fits into one of my goals of helping others learn about new and useful technologies. That made it worthwhile. I didn’t just say yes out of habit.
Even so, it took a fair amount of effort to put together an hour-long technical presentation about a topic in the midst of rapid change. Between preparing the presentation, writing this blog post, and putting together a lengthy roundup of neighborhood holiday events . . . it certainly wasn’t working full time, but it was more than I’d envisioned Thanksgiving weekend would look like in retirement.
I’ve concluded that I’d still like to do more presentations in the future – but maybe not for awhile. And if it turns out I don’t end up presenting at a conference at all in 2026 the way I did this year in Atlanta? I think that’ll be fine.
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