Latest / The You Project / #1722 Why I Won't Retire - Harps

Transcript

#1722 Why I Won't Retire - Harps · The You Project

0:00
Speaker 1: O goody listeners. Hey, so I'm going to preface this
0:05
Speaker 1: is my little disclaimer. This is my little disclaimer for
0:08
Speaker 1: this episode. So I'm just sharing my thoughts. This is
0:13
Speaker 1: not as none of my episodes are really directive or
0:16
Speaker 1: instructional or prescriptive. But this is just my take what
0:22
Speaker 1: I'm about to share on retirement. Obviously, you've read the title,
0:27
Speaker 1: so you know what it's about. And I don't think
0:29
Speaker 1: it's advice that anyone should follow. But I get asked
0:34
Speaker 1: more and more as I'm heading towards what is I
0:38
Speaker 1: guess typically retirement age, people ask me about retirement and
0:43
Speaker 1: I actually I'm recording this on a Saturday. I sat
0:46
Speaker 1: this morning with a lady that I've been mentoring and
0:48
Speaker 1: coaching for in some way, shape or form actually for
0:53
Speaker 1: over thirty years, and these days I still see her
0:57
Speaker 1: once a week and her and I sit down and chat.
1:02
Speaker 1: And anyway, she asked me today if I'm going to retire.
1:08
Speaker 1: She didn't mean it in the next ten minutes, but
1:09
Speaker 1: she go she said to me, are You're going to retire?
1:12
Speaker 1: So I assume she was talking about sometime in the
1:15
Speaker 1: next five to ten years. And the truth is, I'm
1:21
Speaker 1: not going to retire. The truth is, well, let me
1:24
Speaker 1: restate that I have no intention to retire. Who knows
1:28
Speaker 1: what the future brings. But I want to explain to
1:31
Speaker 1: you what I see as the pros and cons of retirement.
1:38
Speaker 1: I'm really fascinated. This is not an anti work or
1:42
Speaker 1: an anti retirement conversation. This is a This is like
1:49
Speaker 1: I said, it's an opinion piece. It's a personal kind
1:53
Speaker 1: of take on something which I think there is. I
1:58
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of my information and kind of
2:05
Speaker 1: what's the word folklore, Probably not, but there's almost like
2:09
Speaker 1: this cultural belief or idea that we're all heading towards
2:14
Speaker 1: this this beautiful time of our life where life gets better,
2:19
Speaker 1: where we stop doing this horrible thing called work. So
2:24
Speaker 1: we step out of work and works bad, and we
2:26
Speaker 1: step into this non work phase of our life called
2:29
Speaker 1: retirement and retirement as good work is bad, retirement is good,
2:33
Speaker 1: and we get excited about that and we you know,
2:35
Speaker 1: we're looking forward to the golden years where we'll kick
2:40
Speaker 1: back and we'll relax and we'll probably spend a lot
2:43
Speaker 1: of time just having fun and fucking frolicking and in
2:46
Speaker 1: the sun and traveling around Australia. Or wherever you live,
2:50
Speaker 1: and you know, just living the life, just living the
2:53
Speaker 1: life of fun and joy and and look for some
2:58
Speaker 1: people that might be the case. My observation, again just
3:03
Speaker 1: my observation, my experience, my insight, that is not often
3:07
Speaker 1: the case. In fact, my anecdotal evidence seems says to
3:13
Speaker 1: me that more often than not, when people stop working,
3:20
Speaker 1: it has more of a negative than a positive impact.
3:24
Speaker 1: Over the There might be a short bump, a short
3:26
Speaker 1: kind of positive, but more often than not, I would say,
3:32
Speaker 1: more than fifty percent of the time, there is some significant,
3:38
Speaker 1: if not minor, to significant negative consequence, be it physical, emotional, mental, psychological, sociological,
3:49
Speaker 1: some kind of negative hit. Not with everyone, Not with everyone.
3:52
Speaker 1: Some people step out of work and into this fucking
3:55
Speaker 1: amazing phase of their life where it gets better and
3:58
Speaker 1: they get better and all of that. And that's definitely possible.
4:03
Speaker 1: But I have seen a lot of my friends and
4:06
Speaker 1: my parents of my friends retire over the years. My
4:10
Speaker 1: dad is one of those people. And again this is
4:13
Speaker 1: just observation and experience. But my dad retired I think
4:19
Speaker 1: at sixty four or five. He was running multimillion dollar
4:22
Speaker 1: shopping centers, probably billion dollar shopping centers these days, and
4:29
Speaker 1: you know, so he and when he retired, he was
4:31
Speaker 1: sharp as attack, he was fit, he was healthy, he
4:34
Speaker 1: was solving problems every day, he was having meetings every day.
4:37
Speaker 1: He had purpose, he had focus, he had responsibilities, he
4:42
Speaker 1: was creating new things. He was using his brain, and
4:46
Speaker 1: he was physically, mentally, emotionally and socially stimulated, making reasonably
4:52
Speaker 1: good all of those things. And he was part of
4:57
Speaker 1: than part of something bigger than himself, all of those things.
5:00
Speaker 1: And then on a Friday he retired. Then on a Monday,
5:02
Speaker 1: his biggest focus was, you know, what he would do
5:06
Speaker 1: around the house. So he never went and played golf.
5:10
Speaker 1: He never, you know, became a gray nomad traversing the bloody,
5:15
Speaker 1: big brown landscape that is Australia. He didn't take up
5:19
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of hobbies. He didn't go and volunteer.
5:23
Speaker 1: And again, I love my dad and my dad still
5:26
Speaker 1: God bless him, still kicking and still around. But I
5:30
Speaker 1: think that for Ron there was probably there was a decline,
5:38
Speaker 1: and I think he probably aged a few years in
5:41
Speaker 1: the first year, maybe four or five years. And I
5:44
Speaker 1: you know, that's just from the outside looking and that
5:46
Speaker 1: was my experience, because all of a sudden, he didn't
5:49
Speaker 1: need to be anywhere at any time. All of a sudden,
5:52
Speaker 1: he went from a lot of responsibilities to not many.
5:56
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, he went from being needed and
5:59
Speaker 1: expect to be in certain places and solving certain kinds
6:02
Speaker 1: of problems and having high level conversations and being creative
6:08
Speaker 1: and being part of a team, and being stimulated and
6:13
Speaker 1: having a focus and using his brain in a way
6:17
Speaker 1: that kept his cognitive function at a high level, and
6:20
Speaker 1: all of that stopped on a Friday. Because you retire,
6:23
Speaker 1: and you retire, and then life gets better, and truly
6:28
Speaker 1: for some people it does, of course, But I think
6:31
Speaker 1: that I think that's saying that retirement is arbitrarily good
6:37
Speaker 1: or for that matter, arbitrarily bad, is like saying that
6:40
Speaker 1: drugs are good or bad. It depends. It depends on
6:46
Speaker 1: how that works. It depends on the dose. It depends
6:49
Speaker 1: on whether or not where we're doing we're taking the
6:52
Speaker 1: right drug for the right issue, and we're taking the
6:55
Speaker 1: right dose and we're doing it in the right way.
6:57
Speaker 1: And it also depends when we come back to retirement.
7:01
Speaker 1: It depends what we're retiring from. For me, a good
7:06
Speaker 1: or a bad retirement depends on what psychological, emotional, physiological,
7:14
Speaker 1: and social impact that retirement has on the individual. And
7:20
Speaker 1: also I guess what it is they're coming out of, Like,
7:24
Speaker 1: what is the job that you are now not doing?
7:27
Speaker 1: What is the work, what is the environment? What is
7:31
Speaker 1: the thing that you've been in the middle of for
7:33
Speaker 1: the last probably not the last forty five years, because
7:36
Speaker 1: you probably had different jobs, but in the last year
7:39
Speaker 1: or two or three or four or five of your
7:41
Speaker 1: work life, what you were in the middle of. Was
7:43
Speaker 1: it good? Was it bad? Did you enjoy it? Did
7:45
Speaker 1: you hate it? Now, if somebody's stepping out of a
7:48
Speaker 1: job that they hated, that they didn't they they dreaded
7:51
Speaker 1: going to, or it was a bad culture or a
7:54
Speaker 1: bad environment, or they didn't feel valued or loved or needed,
7:58
Speaker 1: or it was bad on their physiology, it fucked up
8:00
Speaker 1: their back, or it gave them a headache core, well, then,
8:03
Speaker 1: of course, of course, then get the fuck out of that,
8:09
Speaker 1: get the fuck out of that. And maybe retirement is
8:11
Speaker 1: a much better option than that, or maybe there's something
8:14
Speaker 1: other than a shit job or retirement. Maybe. So the
8:20
Speaker 1: funny thing is with you know, because I'm sixty one
8:24
Speaker 1: now and I'm I'm still doing my PhD. I'm just
8:28
Speaker 1: entering my sixth year of that, so five years down.
8:31
Speaker 1: Hopefully i'll be done in about six months, depending on
8:35
Speaker 1: a few things. So I'm still starting, I'm still learning,
8:37
Speaker 1: I'm still doing corporate speaking, I'm still doing seven podcasts
8:40
Speaker 1: a day. I'm still meeting people. Nearly every morning of
8:45
Speaker 1: my life, I sit with somebody who needs a bit
8:47
Speaker 1: of help. I choose to do that. I'm privileged to
8:50
Speaker 1: do that. I'm still at the gym seven days a week,
8:52
Speaker 1: and nearly every time i'm at the gym, there's somebody
8:55
Speaker 1: there that needs help that I'm working with or And
8:59
Speaker 1: I'm not saying any of this to sound good, but
9:01
Speaker 1: I'm busy as fuck right and a lot of people go,
9:04
Speaker 1: you're a workholicord. A lot of people would say, oh,
9:06
Speaker 1: you've got no balance and all of these things. And
9:09
Speaker 1: I understand looking through their window. No criticism on my
9:14
Speaker 1: part here, but looking through their window, I understand why
9:17
Speaker 1: they think that. I understand why they feel that. I
9:21
Speaker 1: think so for me, when I do the things that
9:25
Speaker 1: I do, I literally feel like even right now, so
9:32
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here talking about something that I find interesting
9:34
Speaker 1: and curious and something I want to unpack. I've never
9:37
Speaker 1: done this topic before as a standalone podcast, but I
9:42
Speaker 1: wanted to share it with you. And I find this
9:45
Speaker 1: particular pattern of thought or this idea or this kind
9:49
Speaker 1: of you know, me just sitting here in the moment
9:51
Speaker 1: trying to unpack what I'm thinking in a way that's
9:54
Speaker 1: going to resonate with you. But to me, like, technically,
9:58
Speaker 1: right now, I'm working because I'm doing podcast and I'm
10:01
Speaker 1: partnered with Nova on the Nova Network, and I've got
10:03
Speaker 1: to produce seven shows a week. This is one of
10:05
Speaker 1: the seven, and in essence, I'm being paid to do this.
10:09
Speaker 1: But right now, in the moment, nothing, nothing feels like
10:13
Speaker 1: work to me. Right now, I'm just in the middle
10:17
Speaker 1: of this curious, interesting thought bubble that I'm clumsily trying
10:21
Speaker 1: to unpack with you and for you to give you
10:25
Speaker 1: some insight into, for better or worse, the inner workings
10:29
Speaker 1: of my fucking mind. Who wants to know? But right now,
10:32
Speaker 1: I'm doing my job, or part of my job. When
10:37
Speaker 1: I do a radio interview, which I do quite a few,
10:40
Speaker 1: I'm doing my job. I'm not being paid for that,
10:43
Speaker 1: but that's part of what I do. When I go
10:44
Speaker 1: and do a corporate gig, when I do a keynote gig,
10:47
Speaker 1: a keynote presentation, whether i'm when I do a half
10:50
Speaker 1: day workshop, when I do a full day program with
10:53
Speaker 1: a company, I don't think, oh fuck, I've got to
10:55
Speaker 1: go and work with you know, like this week, I've
10:58
Speaker 1: got to do a some record this Saturday night and Wednesday,
11:01
Speaker 1: I've got to do a two hour I think it
11:04
Speaker 1: is a two hour workshop with AGL. And my feeling
11:10
Speaker 1: about that, my emotion around that is excitement. I'm like, Awesome,
11:16
Speaker 1: I get to hang out with a room full of people.
11:18
Speaker 1: I get to talk about the shit that I'm excited about.
11:21
Speaker 1: I want to inspire and educate and inform people. I'll
11:25
Speaker 1: probably meet one or two really cool people. I'll get
11:29
Speaker 1: paid pretty well to do that. And I'm literally doing
11:34
Speaker 1: something that gives me energy. It gives me energy. It's
11:39
Speaker 1: part of my purpose, it's part of my focus. There's
11:43
Speaker 1: nothing about what I do that feels like, oh God,
11:47
Speaker 1: I'm going to work because there seems to be some
11:51
Speaker 1: unwritten kind of understanding that works. A thing we've got
11:56
Speaker 1: to tolerate. We've got to tolerate work. One day we
12:00
Speaker 1: can retire. We've got to tolerate work so that we
12:03
Speaker 1: can get to the weekend. We've got to tolerate work
12:06
Speaker 1: so we can have four weeks holiday a year. But
12:08
Speaker 1: ah fuck, we just grind through. Imagine if we shifted that.
12:13
Speaker 1: Imagine if we could find a way to do something
12:20
Speaker 1: that is just something that we want to do, or
12:22
Speaker 1: something we're excited about or passionate about, or something that
12:25
Speaker 1: we're good at. Right, something that doesn't feel like in
12:29
Speaker 1: inverted comma is going to work. That's my life. And yes,
12:35
Speaker 1: I did lots of things that felt like work. And
12:37
Speaker 1: by the way, I'm not saying I'm great, I've figured
12:40
Speaker 1: it all out. I'm saying we don't need to go
12:45
Speaker 1: to work like this fucking heavy psychological and emotional anchor
12:50
Speaker 1: just weighing us down. And no, most of us can't
12:53
Speaker 1: just switch out of the thing we don't want to
12:55
Speaker 1: do into the thing that we do want to do
12:57
Speaker 1: in five minutes. It's a process. But the idea of
13:01
Speaker 1: doing something that doesn't feel like work, because I fucking
13:05
Speaker 1: love it, because I'm meeting people, I'm connecting, I'm learning
13:09
Speaker 1: new things, Like even on this podcast, I get to
13:13
Speaker 1: meet people that in their fields are fucking incredible. They're
13:18
Speaker 1: thought leaders, they're scientific leaders, they're creatives and other people
13:23
Speaker 1: that nobody's ever heard of who are just as fucking impressive.
13:28
Speaker 1: You know, the other day, I spoke to DeAndre, who
13:31
Speaker 1: spent four and a bit years in prison for selling coke.
13:35
Speaker 1: And while he was in prison, he did three quarters
13:37
Speaker 1: of a business degree or something else degree he told
13:40
Speaker 1: me on the show. I forget, but similar maybe it
13:42
Speaker 1: was building a construction degree. And then he came out
13:45
Speaker 1: and then he did a degree in excise science and
13:47
Speaker 1: he duckst his course. And he's got three kids and
13:51
Speaker 1: a missus I would say wife, but not wife yet
13:54
Speaker 1: a lovely fiance, I should say, and he's building his
13:57
Speaker 1: own business. And he's like, what a great dude. I
14:02
Speaker 1: loved meeting him. Yesterday, as I'm recording this. Yesterday, I
14:06
Speaker 1: spoke to Heston Russell, the guy that got fucking savaged
14:10
Speaker 1: by the ABC. You know, this unbelievable human who spent
14:15
Speaker 1: over ten thousand hours in combat, combat hours more than
14:19
Speaker 1: ten thousand, This fucking leader, this mind blowing, courageous, fucking
14:25
Speaker 1: interesting dude that I get to. I would never talk
14:28
Speaker 1: to him, but I get to talk to him because
14:31
Speaker 1: I created this job. By the way, nobody gave me
14:34
Speaker 1: this job, So don't go yeah, but you're lucky. No,
14:38
Speaker 1: I remember, you know the story. I created this job.
14:41
Speaker 1: I started a podcast. I had no listeners. I got
14:44
Speaker 1: a few listeners. That show didn't work. I started another
14:47
Speaker 1: show that didn't work. I started another show that didn't work.
14:50
Speaker 1: And this was the was it the fourth or third?
14:53
Speaker 1: I think it was the fourth version the You Project.
14:55
Speaker 1: And I hate to bang on and be repetitious, but yeah,
14:59
Speaker 1: the first six hundre episodes I lost money, right, But yeah,
15:03
Speaker 1: sometimes you've got to do the thing that's hard to
15:05
Speaker 1: get to the thing that's good. But even though those
15:07
Speaker 1: times when I wasn't making money and it was hard,
15:10
Speaker 1: I was still enjoying it because I was learning and
15:12
Speaker 1: growing and evolving. But nobody said to me, Hey, Craig,
15:15
Speaker 1: we've got an opportunity for you to become a corporate speaker.
15:19
Speaker 1: We've got an opportunity for you to start a podcast.
15:21
Speaker 1: We've got Even when I worked in radio, even when
15:23
Speaker 1: I wrote for the Herald Son, even when I wrote
15:26
Speaker 1: my book, I got more discouragement than encouragement about writing
15:31
Speaker 1: a book. Because you probably won't get it published because
15:34
Speaker 1: you're not a writer. And I'm like, well, how many
15:36
Speaker 1: books have you written? Fuck all, Well, I'll tell you what.
15:39
Speaker 1: I'll write a book and I'll see what happens. I'll
15:41
Speaker 1: work like a motherfucker, and I'll see if I can
15:43
Speaker 1: learn about publishing and editing and distribution. I'll see if
15:47
Speaker 1: I can learn about how the science of books and
15:49
Speaker 1: the process of book writing and publishing and branding and
15:53
Speaker 1: marketing and selling works. I'll see if I can learn that.
15:58
Speaker 1: And so you know the idea that you know we
16:04
Speaker 1: are at the mercy of fate or destiny, that you
16:07
Speaker 1: know we just end up where we end up. Certainly
16:12
Speaker 1: we are influenced by things. Certainly there are things that
16:15
Speaker 1: are out of control, and certainly you and I had
16:18
Speaker 1: no control over where we were born or who we
16:21
Speaker 1: grew up around, or what we grew up around. But
16:26
Speaker 1: you know this idea that work has to be something
16:28
Speaker 1: that we suffer through for fucking forty five years and
16:32
Speaker 1: then we try to escape when we're forty five. There's
16:36
Speaker 1: lots of research, and if I have time, I'll share
16:39
Speaker 1: some of it with you before we wind up. But
16:42
Speaker 1: this idea that retirement is a great thing. It's a
16:45
Speaker 1: culturally ingrained It's almost like this thought bubble that we
16:50
Speaker 1: grow up believing that that retirement is some kind of
16:53
Speaker 1: trophy or reward or thing that we get after having
16:58
Speaker 1: endured all this hardship. And the underlying thought is, the
17:05
Speaker 1: underlying thought is that work is something that we need
17:08
Speaker 1: to get out of as soon as possible. And I
17:12
Speaker 1: think when you think of work as a negative thing,
17:16
Speaker 1: or if work is a negative thing for you, it's
17:19
Speaker 1: not a good experience. You don't like what you do,
17:22
Speaker 1: you don't like the people you work with, or you
17:24
Speaker 1: don't like the environment, or you don't like the lack
17:27
Speaker 1: of income or whatever, then I understand that. But we
17:32
Speaker 1: all have the ability to be able to make tiny
17:35
Speaker 1: changes day to day, take tiny steps forward day to day,
17:41
Speaker 1: and over time reinvent ourselves. Of course, it won't be quick, easy,
17:45
Speaker 1: funnel painless, of course. It will be hard, of course,
17:50
Speaker 1: of course, But that's no reason to at thirty five
17:53
Speaker 1: or forty you put our fucking hands under our knees
17:56
Speaker 1: and go, oh, well, this is me. This is me.
17:59
Speaker 1: I had recently on the show who is now at
18:04
Speaker 1: fifty three, she's doing her PhD. I'm not suggesting anyone
18:08
Speaker 1: needs to do this, But at forty three, she wanted
18:11
Speaker 1: to enroll in. She wanted to enroll in university. She'd
18:15
Speaker 1: never been to university. At forty three, she didn't even
18:18
Speaker 1: have enough money to pay for the application. Her girlfriend
18:22
Speaker 1: needed to pay the sixty or seventy bucks just though
18:25
Speaker 1: she could apply. She was living in poverty with three kids,
18:30
Speaker 1: single mum like not making ends meet. She figured out,
18:34
Speaker 1: She figured out a way. I can tell you when
18:37
Speaker 1: she's not going to be retiring anytime soon, because she's
18:41
Speaker 1: doing what she loves and she's found her thing. Having
18:46
Speaker 1: said that, am I saying retirement is bad. I'm not
18:49
Speaker 1: saying that. I'm saying for some people. It is bad
18:53
Speaker 1: for some people, depending on what you're coming out of.
18:57
Speaker 1: This is my big asterisk, depending on what you were
19:00
Speaker 1: coming out of and what you were going into. To
19:05
Speaker 1: assume that once you stop work your life gets better
19:09
Speaker 1: and you're happier is probably not the best assumption. I
19:14
Speaker 1: was going to say something harsher than that, we humans
19:20
Speaker 1: working or not, we need to be occupied. We need
19:23
Speaker 1: some kind of focus, some kind of purpose. We need stimulation.
19:28
Speaker 1: We weren't built to sit on the couch. We can
19:34
Speaker 1: sit on the couch, but it is self destruction. One
19:38
Speaker 1: oh one. We were built to have a purpose bigger
19:44
Speaker 1: than us. We were built to have connection. We were
19:47
Speaker 1: built to use our brain and our mind and our body.
19:51
Speaker 1: We were used. We were built to interact. Like there's
19:55
Speaker 1: this underlying and prevalent idea in our culture that if
20:00
Speaker 1: if you love to work, there's something wrong with you
20:03
Speaker 1: or like you have some kind of unhealthy addiction or problem.
20:09
Speaker 1: And I get criticized as a percentage. It's a very
20:13
Speaker 1: small percentage, but I interact with a lot of people,
20:16
Speaker 1: so it still adds up to me in quite a
20:17
Speaker 1: few people. And they don't attack me, but it's like
20:24
Speaker 1: they're critical of how much I work and basically tell
20:29
Speaker 1: me that I don't have work life balance, Like there's
20:35
Speaker 1: no you don't have any balance. I'm like, well, okay,
20:39
Speaker 1: so let's say i'm there's one hundred and sixty eight
20:44
Speaker 1: hours in a week. So let's say i'm working. Now,
20:47
Speaker 1: I'm working forty hours like regular for let's go thirty
20:50
Speaker 1: five hours, thirty five hours, and thirty five hours I'm working.
20:54
Speaker 1: There's one hundred and sixty odd hours in a week.
20:56
Speaker 1: One hundred and sixty eight minus thirty five is one
20:58
Speaker 1: thirty three. That means I I be working for thirty
21:00
Speaker 1: five and not working for one thirty three. Of course
21:03
Speaker 1: there's sleep in there and all of that. And people
21:04
Speaker 1: would go, yep, that's good, that's good, and they're saying
21:08
Speaker 1: that's a good model based on the number of hours
21:11
Speaker 1: that I just rolled out. Thirty five. That's good, that's sensible.
21:16
Speaker 1: That gives you an opportunity for work life balance. I'm like, okay,
21:20
Speaker 1: what about this? What about sixty hours? No, that's ridiculous.
21:24
Speaker 1: That's too much. That's bad for you. Is it based
21:28
Speaker 1: on what? Well, well, it's a lot of hours. Cool,
21:32
Speaker 1: So is it about the well, even at sixty I'm
21:35
Speaker 1: still not working one hundred and eight hours a week.
21:39
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting you work sixty. By the way, there's
21:41
Speaker 1: a point coming. Okay, Well, what if I'm working thirty
21:44
Speaker 1: five hours but I don't like my job. What if
21:47
Speaker 1: I'm doing thirty five hours but I don't like the
21:49
Speaker 1: culture or the environment, or the company the organization that
21:53
Speaker 1: I work for, or the people that I work around.
21:55
Speaker 1: What if that place and that job and those people
21:58
Speaker 1: are toxic for me? What if they stress me. What
22:02
Speaker 1: if I wake up on Monday morning and even though
22:04
Speaker 1: I only work seven hours a day, five days a week,
22:07
Speaker 1: but I wake up on Monday morning exhausted because I
22:11
Speaker 1: couldn't fucking sleep Sunday night, because I'm so anxious and
22:14
Speaker 1: I'm so dreading this place that I've got to go
22:17
Speaker 1: to because I can only work thirty five hours a
22:19
Speaker 1: week because I need work life balance because everyone told
22:22
Speaker 1: me so. Now I'm spending thirty five hours a week.
22:25
Speaker 1: Is there a chance? Is there a chance that that
22:29
Speaker 1: is more destructive and toxic and stupid than doing sixty
22:33
Speaker 1: hours a week of something that gives me joy, of,
22:36
Speaker 1: something that fulfills me, of something that energizes me of,
22:40
Speaker 1: something that helps me grow and learn and evolve, and
22:43
Speaker 1: something that gives me connection, something that helps me develop
22:48
Speaker 1: skill and keep my brain working and operating at an
22:52
Speaker 1: ideal level. Something that puts me in the middle of
22:56
Speaker 1: helping other people and inspiration and fun, that allows me
23:01
Speaker 1: to travel into state and to more than twenty countries,
23:04
Speaker 1: which I've done, to talk to people all around the world.
23:08
Speaker 1: Something that allows me to share my passion and interest
23:11
Speaker 1: and curiosity. Oh no, you should work thirty five. It's
23:14
Speaker 1: a fucking stupid argument, and it's based on arbitrary numbers
23:20
Speaker 1: with no consideration of the impact of the work, the
23:26
Speaker 1: impact of what the person's doing. Let me tell you
23:29
Speaker 1: unequivocally that ten hours of something that you hate is
23:35
Speaker 1: worse for your health than fifty hours of something you love.
23:41
Speaker 1: You are better to do something that you love, even
23:46
Speaker 1: if it's by the way. I would rather do something
23:48
Speaker 1: that I love for one tenth of the money, as
23:53
Speaker 1: long as I can live, I'd much rather that, As
23:58
Speaker 1: many of you know, and I don't say this to
23:59
Speaker 1: sound good bad, this is just the truth of my life.
24:03
Speaker 1: At least twenty percent of the work that I do
24:06
Speaker 1: I do for free because I can, because my paid
24:10
Speaker 1: work is quite well paid. And I'm constantly being this
24:14
Speaker 1: is not an invitation to reach out with respect, because
24:19
Speaker 1: I get in undated with shit. But there are some
24:22
Speaker 1: people that and some not for profits and some you know,
24:28
Speaker 1: some organizations that I make a decision and I go,
24:32
Speaker 1: you know what it's this is going to take this
24:34
Speaker 1: much energy and time and focus, and this is a
24:37
Speaker 1: good investment of me. And I think me investing my
24:40
Speaker 1: time and energy and skill and knowledge and love and
24:43
Speaker 1: emotion into this person or this group or this organization.
24:47
Speaker 1: I think it's a good investment and I might be
24:48
Speaker 1: able to help them. That's why I do it right.
24:52
Speaker 1: But when I'm doing that stuff, which is unpaid, I
24:55
Speaker 1: am I am getting just as much joy, just as much.
25:01
Speaker 1: And so if you are coming out out of work
25:05
Speaker 1: and into retirement again not a bad thing. It depends
25:08
Speaker 1: what you're going to. If you're coming out of work
25:11
Speaker 1: and then you're coming in something where you have connection
25:14
Speaker 1: and you have purpose and you can still learn and
25:16
Speaker 1: grow and evolve and you have joy, and you can
25:21
Speaker 1: stay physically and mentally emotionally in shape or maybe even improve,
25:27
Speaker 1: then retirement could be fucking spectacular for you. But we
25:32
Speaker 1: need to think about what it is we're going to.
25:36
Speaker 1: Don't just buy into this ideology of work is bad
25:41
Speaker 1: retirement is good because it just doesn't stack up. I
25:46
Speaker 1: did a little bit of research before I'm going to
25:48
Speaker 1: whip through some of this. So the Journal of Epidemiology
25:53
Speaker 1: and Community Health, which is quite a big journal, found
25:55
Speaker 1: that retirement was associated with a twenty to forty percent
25:59
Speaker 1: deep increase in physical activity for many people. In other words,
26:04
Speaker 1: when they retire, up to four in ten people move
26:07
Speaker 1: less or the implications of that well, reduced activity increases
26:13
Speaker 1: the risk of cardiovascular disease diabetes OBC, and all of
26:17
Speaker 1: the issues surrounding that or potential issues surrounding that. Another
26:22
Speaker 1: study published in Health Economics in twenty seventeen showed that
26:27
Speaker 1: people who retire earlier than normal have a thirteen percent
26:33
Speaker 1: higher chance of dying. Cognitive decline. The Journal of Economic
26:39
Speaker 1: Perspectives demonstrated that individuals who retire show faster cognitive decline
26:44
Speaker 1: compared with those who keep working. Okay, so if we've
26:48
Speaker 1: got people the same age, one group keeps working, one
26:51
Speaker 1: group's retires, then there's in other words, their brain stops
26:56
Speaker 1: working as well. And that makes sense, doesn't it. Now.
26:59
Speaker 1: That's not to say everyone who retires is going to
27:02
Speaker 1: have more cognitive decline than everyone who keeps working. Of course,
27:08
Speaker 1: like I said, if you're going to retire, cool, retire,
27:11
Speaker 1: but retire well, retire with a plan, Retire with some intention,
27:17
Speaker 1: with some process, so that you don't wake up a
27:21
Speaker 1: year after retirement and you're fucked. What about depression? The
27:29
Speaker 1: American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry discover that retirement can lead
27:35
Speaker 1: to an increase in depression, particularly for people who come
27:40
Speaker 1: out of a job where their identity was really intertwined
27:46
Speaker 1: with the work that they did, and also specifically for
27:50
Speaker 1: people who go from an environment and a situation where
27:54
Speaker 1: there was a lot of socializing or socialization to a
27:59
Speaker 1: new paradigm where the socialization has disappeared, if not diminished.
28:08
Speaker 1: Let's talk about social health. So research in Social Science
28:12
Speaker 1: and Medicine, which is another journal, found that retirees report
28:16
Speaker 1: twenty five percent less social interactions. So this of itself
28:23
Speaker 1: is not necessarily terrible, but there can be consequences to
28:26
Speaker 1: that disconnection, isolation, loneliness, and so on. What about longevity.
28:33
Speaker 1: This is interesting workers who this is the National Bureau
28:38
Speaker 1: of Economic Research. Workers who retire at seventy live significantly
28:43
Speaker 1: longer than those retiring earlier than seventy, largely due to
28:48
Speaker 1: continued engagement and purposeful activities. Again, like I'm saying, doesn't
28:54
Speaker 1: mean you've got to keep working. It means either keep
28:56
Speaker 1: working doing something where you're stimulated and using your brain
29:01
Speaker 1: and socializing and having connection and having a purpose and
29:04
Speaker 1: focus and moving your body. Either that that's my suggestion,
29:08
Speaker 1: or retire into something similar where you've still got all
29:13
Speaker 1: of those factors that impact your level of wellness. There's
29:18
Speaker 1: a whole lot more, in fact that I don't have
29:21
Speaker 1: time to share. But look, I think I just wanted
29:25
Speaker 1: to share with you my thoughts around this because I
29:30
Speaker 1: know a lot of you. I know we have a
29:33
Speaker 1: lot of listeners around My biggest demographic is forty to fifty.
29:40
Speaker 1: In fact, I think late thirties to fifty, but we
29:43
Speaker 1: also have quite a lot of listeners over fifty. And
29:48
Speaker 1: it's I think the question is not will I or
29:52
Speaker 1: when I retire, but if I'm going to retire, when
29:55
Speaker 1: will that be? What will that look like? Is the
29:59
Speaker 1: store that I've been told the truth? Is my life
30:03
Speaker 1: going to necessarily get better when I stop working? And
30:07
Speaker 1: I know when I pump it out like this and
30:09
Speaker 1: I explain it like this, it seems obvious. But nonetheless
30:14
Speaker 1: there seems to be a lot of ignorance and kind
30:16
Speaker 1: of presumptuousness or assumptions around this that I'm doing this
30:22
Speaker 1: thing that I need to do because I need to
30:24
Speaker 1: make money, and this is the way that it works.
30:26
Speaker 1: And you work for this many years and then you
30:27
Speaker 1: get to this number, this arbitrary number, and the number
30:31
Speaker 1: differs from place to place, but typically it's somewhere in
30:34
Speaker 1: the sixty five or sixty and boom, Now you're going
30:40
Speaker 1: to retire. I am going to say, just quickly, I
30:43
Speaker 1: went to a wedding, my best mate's kids wedding lovely
30:51
Speaker 1: Laura and Vin and Tony, two of my mates. We're
30:58
Speaker 1: at the wedding and we're talking to them, and retire. Now,
31:01
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, both Tony and Vinn have retired
31:04
Speaker 1: and did it great. And they did it great because
31:09
Speaker 1: they get up every day and they've got stuff to do.
31:11
Speaker 1: They've got people to connect with, they've got they've got
31:14
Speaker 1: projects on the go, they've got habits and behaviors and
31:18
Speaker 1: an operating system, for want of a better term, that
31:21
Speaker 1: keeps them physically and mentally and emotionally and socially up
31:25
Speaker 1: and about. So retire, don't retire, retire now, retire soon,
31:32
Speaker 1: retire fucking way down the track. Whatever you do, but
31:36
Speaker 1: do it consciously and question the status quo, question the
31:42
Speaker 1: collective mindset that work is something that we need to
31:45
Speaker 1: get out of as soon as possible. Make sure you've
31:48
Speaker 1: got yourself financially okay, and then get the fuck out
31:51
Speaker 1: of there and make sure when you retire, that you've
31:53
Speaker 1: got you know this and that in place, and all
31:55
Speaker 1: those things are good ideas and sound advice, but the
31:59
Speaker 1: underlie kind of prevalent idea that you need to get
32:02
Speaker 1: out of it as soon as possible, because then you
32:04
Speaker 1: can kind of start living. When you put that under
32:07
Speaker 1: the magnifying glass, it really doesn't hold up. See you
32:12
Speaker 1: next time.