Is early retirement a good idea? Not for your health
Early retirement is a dream but instead of chasing elusive goals that could have an adverse impact on health, make fundamental changes in your outlook and the way you live daily
You often come across people saying, “I want to retire by 40." But how many people who have actually retired at 40 have you come across? I haven’t met one yet. Early retirement remains a mirage.
I have however, sadly, known many people to suffer from hypertension, heart ailments and other lifestyle diseases before they turned 40. Why have we sold ourselves this chase of excess?
So, here’s a call to slow down. There’s almost nothing you can’t achieve by slowing down.
Thanks to advancements in medical science and agricultural productivity, we are enjoying the highest lifespan in the history of humankind but the question remains: Are we making it count? Are we willing to reset our work cadence knowing well that most of us would be celebrating our 75th birthday, albeit by ourselves? A long life is a blessing only if one knows how to design it well. What’s the point in being a CEO by 45 and then dragging an ailing body for another 30 years? Yet scores of professionals are running a marathon at the pace of a sprint, exhausted but never realising that it’s not even a race.
I was recently speaking to a group of newly minted partners at one of the Big Four auditing firms. All in their 40s, they had made it right to the top, an aspiration that they carefully harboured for the better part of their professional lives. You would expect them to be excited to have made it. But it was difficult to escape the sombreness of the room. The spark to carry on was admittedly missing though they had another two decades on the anvil. Most winners in the corporate relay races would resonate with their plight. And that’s because we have taken the need for speed quite literally, assuming it to be a zero-sum game, and that achievements will somehow address life’s existential crises. Consequently, health, family and relationships are routinely sacrificed at the altar of the corner office.
Also read: The power of hitting pause during a workday
But there is a better way. And it starts by making fundamental changes in your outlook and the way you choose to lead life on a minute-by-minute basis. Here are three proposals.
First, think of life in decades, and not years, for a year seems to rush by rather quickly but a decade leaves us profoundly altered. Second, think of your life as a portfolio of career and your career as a portfolio of enterprises, such that something keeps you always going. Finally, remain spiritually anchored in your life, as most of your external achievements are fleeting.
It’s often asked that if companies are built over centuries, why are they measured over quarters? And after all, what can transpire over 62 working days (read, a quarter). Yet inundated by the corporate rhymes, we tend to look at our lives and achievements at an unnatural tempo of quarters, even weeks. Instead, taking a long-term view can help you think clearly about the important matters, help you separate the signal from the noise, and focus on the more enduring. In your 20s, it’s a good idea to think of what you would like to be in your 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, and preferably another decade. Instead of peaking in your 40s, you may plan to take it easy and peak gradually. And that calls for slowing down.
A side-effect of rapid industrialisation and mass production is an ever finer division of labour. From a time when a person would need an end-to-end understanding of the whole undertaking, today they merely specialise in their narrow groove. This missing-systems view results in specialisation of labour, super-specialisation of professions, and hyper-specialisation of roles. Career progression is typically on ever narrowing silos to almost obscurity. Instead, a portfolio view of life and career keeps multiple possibilities open. Some of your undertakings offer you money, yet other provide pleasure, some bring about learning, and then there is fun elsewhere. You are not parasitically attached to one career, one employer, anchoring your emotional health to somebody’s vagaries.
Also read: An office design that puts worker wellness first
Most importantly, one needs the realisation that the only competition worth having is with yesterday’s self. The key question to ask yourself is: “Am I a better, more evolved person today?" And if your answer is yes, you are heading roughly in the right direction, regardless of the pace. Remember, any external progress in the absence of internal growth is meaningless. You realise the futility of worldly attributes and achievements once you reach the goal as in the case with the partners at the Big Four. By remaining spiritually anchored, you isolate your emotional makeup from the fleeting order of the world, which is largely beyond your control. You create the buffer and that’s your zone of discretion, keeping you uniquely human.
In summary, it’s time to slow down. Instead of rushing towards oblivion, you may as well stroll around, just in case you discover meaning along the way.
Pavan Soni is the founder of Inflexion Point, an innovation and strategy consultancy. He’s the author of Design Your Thinking: The Mindsets, Toolsets And Skill Sets for Creative Problem-solving.
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