9 ms·

I guess this is why you should work less hard and do more to cultivate hobbies. I can’t imagine retiring and doing nothing. So many projects.

maroonblazer 7y ago
I had the same reaction but then wondered whether the thing that makes work 'work' might help stave off cognitive decline. I.e. At least a few times a week I don't feel like working but, because my livelihood depends on it, I have no choice but to force myself to. On the contrary, if I don't happen to feel like engaging in any one of my numerous hobbies it's easy for me to veg out instead and thus risk cognitive decline. Perhaps there's some threshold of 'vegging' that isn't obtained if one has enough hobbies.
- alex-mohr 7y ago
  Choose. What you happen to be feeling at the moment can control you, or not. See e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=discipline+is+freedom https://www.google.com/search?q=discipline+is+freedom
q5jwB6bD 7y ago
I totally agree. I have so many interests and so little time. I can't wait until I can retire so that I can focus on the things that really interest me. I'm hoping to form groups of like minded people with similar hobbies. I envision my future as one of those old dudes playing chess in the park, except chess would be replaced with one of my many interests.
- hunta2097 7y ago
  I also have this intention. I am about 15-20 years from retirement but I have palpable fears that I will forsake my dreams of doing something creative, falling into the rut that I've seen my older relatives and friends follow. You do meet the odd creative and intelligent senior but they are the minority. I hope I fall into that category when I retire!
  - stevesimmons 7y ago
    I hope to emulate my father. He worked til 70. Then went back to university to study a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. After a few months off, he got bored, and has just started back doing a Masters in Aeronautical Engineering. He will be 77 when he finishes.
    - rdevsrex 7y ago
      Damn, that is inspiring. Here I am whining about how late it is in my life to go back to school to get a Bachelor's and your Dad is racking up masters :) I wonder if there are age limits for PhD programs? Also, I will say, I wish the US was more like Europe in giving people the ability to full-time type work but part-time. I think a lot of older people would jump at the chance to work 40-60% and make full time hourly pay.
  - clarry 7y ago
    > I also have this intention. I am about 15-20 years from retirement but I have palpable fears that I will forsake my dreams of doing something creative, falling into the rut that I've seen my older relatives and friends follow. I really hope to shift down from 5 days / 40 hours a week to something that allows me to start pursuing my dreams long before I retire. It should help me develop the habit instead of being paralyzed by the sudden shock at an older age. Actually the thought of having to wait to retire & be an old fart before you can get really started on the things you always wanted to do sounds very very depressing. (Unless you're making FU money and retire early, which I'm not)
    - distances 7y ago
      If it's not too private, what kind of dreams are these?
      - clarry 7y ago
        I want a plot of land. I want to plant trees and see them grow. I want to grow my own apples; Finnish apples are second to none and you can't buy them in a grocery store. I want to grow berries, vegetables, flowers, birds, butterflies. I'd like to have a piece of forest too, though mainly for sake of preservation and relaxation. Maybe as a source of firewood for sauna. I also want to make music, and possibly do other arts.
- electronWizard 7y ago
  Retiree robot wars
- itronitron 7y ago
  Make sure your hobbies are far removed from your previous day job or you will probably lose interest very quickly in them after retiring.
- cko 7y ago
  > Ask a wage slave what he'd like to accomplish. Chances are the response will be something like "I'd start every day at the gym and work out for two hours until I was as buff as Brad Pitt. Then I'd practice the piano for three hours. I'd become fluent in Mandarin so that I could be prepared to understand the largest transformation of our time. I'd really learn how to handle a polo pony. I'd learn to fly a helicopter. I'd finish the screenplay that I've been writing and direct a production of it in HDTV." Why hasn't he accomplished all of those things? "Because I'm chained to this desk 50 hours per week at this horrible [insurance|programming|government|administrative|whatever] job. > So he has no doubt that he would get all these things done if he didn't have to work? "Absolutely none. If I didn't have the job, I would be out there living the dream." Suppose that the guy cashes in his investments and does retire. What do we find? He is waking up at 9:30 am, surfing the Web, sorting out the cable TV bill, watching DVDs, talking about going to the gym, eating Doritos, and maybe accomplishing one of his stated goals. > Retirement forces you to stop thinking that it is your job that holds you back. For most people the depressing truth is that they aren't that organized, disciplined, or motivated. https://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ https://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ This was so true for me, anyway. I've always had beer tastes on a decent income, so I was financially free five years into working. Now I have all the free time in the world and it's killing me. I do have so many interests but no motivation or discipline to do them.
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Daynil 7y ago
I don't understand how so many people can anchor their lives to work. If you do that, when you retire, you've lost your meaning of life. I have a list of things a mile long that I just can't get to because 40 hours a week is already spoken for. Early retirement speeds cognitive decline? Maybe if you sit on the beach and/or watch TV all day long, but that sounds kind of miserable if done for more than a few weeks.
- um_ya 7y ago
  Some of us see work as the meaning of life. Traveling and doing things just for the experience alone seems kind of meaningless. Great for vacation, but not great for long term goals. Perhaps if you're at a dead end job, then work might feel meaningless, I agree.
  - markus_zhang 7y ago
    totally agree with you. if i love my job then no reason to retire.
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      Good luck keeping a job in technology into old age.
  - lutorm 7y ago
    Except that if you retire early you can still "work". It's just that you can work on whatever you want, not just on what someone will pay you for.
    - spurdoman77 7y ago
      But is it work if no one is willing to pay for it? I would consider that to be hobby.
      - ht_th 7y ago
        For me, the separation between hobby and work is more of a matter of responsibility than pay. If I feel responsible for some activity/task/project I would classify it as work. It does not matter if it is taking care of kids, growing a garden, being a board member of some charitable organization, or one of my free software projects: I do not get paid, and I like doing it, but I think of it as work rather than a hobby. Building some software prototypes for ideas I have, that I count as a hobby. Reading all the books I do, however more time I spend on it than some work activities, I still think of as a hobby.
hombre_fatal 7y ago
Also, I realized slowly over the last six years how important it is to develop hobbies beyond just writing software. Sucks to have all your eggs in that basket and then burn out or decide it's a waste of time (which I consider every time I take acid or as my social life expands): now what? Learning a new language was my gateway drug into trying different things for a change.
throwaway5d097 7y ago
It's very hard with depression, but work is also hard with depression, though getting some stuff done is much easier with an actual job. Tried some woodworking stuff but it requires a lot of learning and patience. But I guess a lot of hobbies don't require that sort of effort, ie hiking. But you sort of need some sort of social contacts to encourage activity. It seems very easy to just stagnate in loneliness while consuming media these days.
hanniabu 7y ago
So many projects....
yourapostasy 7y ago
Not simply hobbies or interests. Sheer curiosity in the reality enveloping us all would drive me to keep the same hours I work today, but with none of the work-related stress I experience at work. Retirement for me is merely a financial milestone abstraction. The point where monetary wealth throws off sufficient income to meet opex and reasonable capex requirements for the foreseeable future. The Banksian phrase "money is a sign of poverty" operates here though, so that milestone is just a temporary, necessary means to an end. Like many others in this thread, retirement enables me to go tinker my interests, fueled by an >10K line Emacs Org Mode "curiuoser-and-curiuoser" list. A lot of it is redneck tinkering to be sure ("What would happen if I attached heat sinks to Tesla solar roof tiles that ran a non-corrosive, thermally-efficient carrier liquid through the body of the heat sinks into a heat exchanger in my hot water supply? Damifino, fire up the CAD/CAM-linked CNC and let's go find out!"). Some is of a more serious philosophical/research bent ("What precise factors move the Coasean Boundary of an organization?"). Some of it is of more pedestrian ambitions (learn blue water sailing and open source my findings to extend boat design along Steve Dashew's philosophies). Some is for pure utility (build a bi-fold door shipping container that is a giant toolbox that extends with another into a climate-controlled workshop). Nearly all of it requires finding allies and co-conspirators if only to share and compare notes with, so they are intrinsically highly social activities. That list goes fractal, too. Every time I tinker around adding to my notes to scratch my itch for one curiosity, I find other avenues I hadn't initially considered, and yet more curiosities are added. Makes me want to upload my mind into a computing substrate with physical world manipulators and clone myself. I'm never going to approach even a tiny fraction of my curiosities, but fellow co-conspirators and I are going to have a hell of a lot of fun along the way!
Grustaf 7y ago
Alternatively it's an argument not to retire. Ideally you should be working with something you actually enjoy doing, though I suppose it's rare.

maroonblazer 7y ago

I had the same reaction but then wondered whether the thing that makes work 'work' might help stave off cognitive decline. I.e. At least a few times a week I don't feel like working but, because my livelihood depends on it, I have no choice but to force myself to. On the contrary, if I don't happen to feel like engaging in any one of my numerous hobbies it's easy for me to veg out instead and thus risk cognitive decline. Perhaps there's some threshold of 'vegging' that isn't obtained if one has enough hobbies.

alex-mohr 7y ago
Choose. What you happen to be feeling at the moment can control you, or not. See e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=discipline+is+freedom https://www.google.com/search?q=discipline+is+freedom

q5jwB6bD 7y ago

I totally agree. I have so many interests and so little time. I can't wait until I can retire so that I can focus on the things that really interest me. I'm hoping to form groups of like minded people with similar hobbies. I envision my future as one of those old dudes playing chess in the park, except chess would be replaced with one of my many interests.

hunta2097 7y ago
I also have this intention. I am about 15-20 years from retirement but I have palpable fears that I will forsake my dreams of doing something creative, falling into the rut that I've seen my older relatives and friends follow. You do meet the odd creative and intelligent senior but they are the minority. I hope I fall into that category when I retire!
- stevesimmons 7y ago
  I hope to emulate my father. He worked til 70. Then went back to university to study a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. After a few months off, he got bored, and has just started back doing a Masters in Aeronautical Engineering. He will be 77 when he finishes.
  - rdevsrex 7y ago
    Damn, that is inspiring. Here I am whining about how late it is in my life to go back to school to get a Bachelor's and your Dad is racking up masters :) I wonder if there are age limits for PhD programs? Also, I will say, I wish the US was more like Europe in giving people the ability to full-time type work but part-time. I think a lot of older people would jump at the chance to work 40-60% and make full time hourly pay.
- clarry 7y ago
  > I also have this intention. I am about 15-20 years from retirement but I have palpable fears that I will forsake my dreams of doing something creative, falling into the rut that I've seen my older relatives and friends follow. I really hope to shift down from 5 days / 40 hours a week to something that allows me to start pursuing my dreams long before I retire. It should help me develop the habit instead of being paralyzed by the sudden shock at an older age. Actually the thought of having to wait to retire & be an old fart before you can get really started on the things you always wanted to do sounds very very depressing. (Unless you're making FU money and retire early, which I'm not)
  - distances 7y ago
    If it's not too private, what kind of dreams are these?
    - clarry 7y ago
      I want a plot of land. I want to plant trees and see them grow. I want to grow my own apples; Finnish apples are second to none and you can't buy them in a grocery store. I want to grow berries, vegetables, flowers, birds, butterflies. I'd like to have a piece of forest too, though mainly for sake of preservation and relaxation. Maybe as a source of firewood for sauna. I also want to make music, and possibly do other arts.
electronWizard 7y ago
Retiree robot wars
itronitron 7y ago
Make sure your hobbies are far removed from your previous day job or you will probably lose interest very quickly in them after retiring.
cko 7y ago
> Ask a wage slave what he'd like to accomplish. Chances are the response will be something like "I'd start every day at the gym and work out for two hours until I was as buff as Brad Pitt. Then I'd practice the piano for three hours. I'd become fluent in Mandarin so that I could be prepared to understand the largest transformation of our time. I'd really learn how to handle a polo pony. I'd learn to fly a helicopter. I'd finish the screenplay that I've been writing and direct a production of it in HDTV." Why hasn't he accomplished all of those things? "Because I'm chained to this desk 50 hours per week at this horrible [insurance|programming|government|administrative|whatever] job. > So he has no doubt that he would get all these things done if he didn't have to work? "Absolutely none. If I didn't have the job, I would be out there living the dream." Suppose that the guy cashes in his investments and does retire. What do we find? He is waking up at 9:30 am, surfing the Web, sorting out the cable TV bill, watching DVDs, talking about going to the gym, eating Doritos, and maybe accomplishing one of his stated goals. > Retirement forces you to stop thinking that it is your job that holds you back. For most people the depressing truth is that they aren't that organized, disciplined, or motivated. https://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ https://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ This was so true for me, anyway. I've always had beer tastes on a decent income, so I was financially free five years into working. Now I have all the free time in the world and it's killing me. I do have so many interests but no motivation or discipline to do them.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

Daynil 7y ago

I don't understand how so many people can anchor their lives to work. If you do that, when you retire, you've lost your meaning of life. I have a list of things a mile long that I just can't get to because 40 hours a week is already spoken for. Early retirement speeds cognitive decline? Maybe if you sit on the beach and/or watch TV all day long, but that sounds kind of miserable if done for more than a few weeks.

um_ya 7y ago
Some of us see work as the meaning of life. Traveling and doing things just for the experience alone seems kind of meaningless. Great for vacation, but not great for long term goals. Perhaps if you're at a dead end job, then work might feel meaningless, I agree.
- markus_zhang 7y ago
  totally agree with you. if i love my job then no reason to retire.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Good luck keeping a job in technology into old age.
- lutorm 7y ago
  Except that if you retire early you can still "work". It's just that you can work on whatever you want, not just on what someone will pay you for.
  - spurdoman77 7y ago
    But is it work if no one is willing to pay for it? I would consider that to be hobby.
    - ht_th 7y ago
      For me, the separation between hobby and work is more of a matter of responsibility than pay. If I feel responsible for some activity/task/project I would classify it as work. It does not matter if it is taking care of kids, growing a garden, being a board member of some charitable organization, or one of my free software projects: I do not get paid, and I like doing it, but I think of it as work rather than a hobby. Building some software prototypes for ideas I have, that I count as a hobby. Reading all the books I do, however more time I spend on it than some work activities, I still think of as a hobby.

hombre_fatal 7y ago

Also, I realized slowly over the last six years how important it is to develop hobbies beyond just writing software. Sucks to have all your eggs in that basket and then burn out or decide it's a waste of time (which I consider every time I take acid or as my social life expands): now what? Learning a new language was my gateway drug into trying different things for a change.

throwaway5d097 7y ago

It's very hard with depression, but work is also hard with depression, though getting some stuff done is much easier with an actual job. Tried some woodworking stuff but it requires a lot of learning and patience. But I guess a lot of hobbies don't require that sort of effort, ie hiking. But you sort of need some sort of social contacts to encourage activity. It seems very easy to just stagnate in loneliness while consuming media these days.

hanniabu 7y ago

So many projects....

yourapostasy 7y ago

Not simply hobbies or interests. Sheer curiosity in the reality enveloping us all would drive me to keep the same hours I work today, but with none of the work-related stress I experience at work. Retirement for me is merely a financial milestone abstraction. The point where monetary wealth throws off sufficient income to meet opex and reasonable capex requirements for the foreseeable future. The Banksian phrase "money is a sign of poverty" operates here though, so that milestone is just a temporary, necessary means to an end. Like many others in this thread, retirement enables me to go tinker my interests, fueled by an >10K line Emacs Org Mode "curiuoser-and-curiuoser" list. A lot of it is redneck tinkering to be sure ("What would happen if I attached heat sinks to Tesla solar roof tiles that ran a non-corrosive, thermally-efficient carrier liquid through the body of the heat sinks into a heat exchanger in my hot water supply? Damifino, fire up the CAD/CAM-linked CNC and let's go find out!"). Some is of a more serious philosophical/research bent ("What precise factors move the Coasean Boundary of an organization?"). Some of it is of more pedestrian ambitions (learn blue water sailing and open source my findings to extend boat design along Steve Dashew's philosophies). Some is for pure utility (build a bi-fold door shipping container that is a giant toolbox that extends with another into a climate-controlled workshop). Nearly all of it requires finding allies and co-conspirators if only to share and compare notes with, so they are intrinsically highly social activities. That list goes fractal, too. Every time I tinker around adding to my notes to scratch my itch for one curiosity, I find other avenues I hadn't initially considered, and yet more curiosities are added. Makes me want to upload my mind into a computing substrate with physical world manipulators and clone myself. I'm never going to approach even a tiny fraction of my curiosities, but fellow co-conspirators and I are going to have a hell of a lot of fun along the way!

Grustaf 7y ago

Alternatively it's an argument not to retire. Ideally you should be working with something you actually enjoy doing, though I suppose it's rare.