Being Busy in retirement is not being engaged

 After 30 plus years of work, we have developed a series of skill sets that may be unique to our job, or unique to our industry. When we leave the workforce, we take those with us, and our employer and our industry lose those skills. 

In retirement, we have choices such as going back to work full time, making it easy, seeking some part-time work, volunteering, recreation, and travel. Being productive and using our skill sets as a source of meaning is not an important type of meaning in retirement. When we retire, we need to be actively engaged rather than just mindlessly engaged if we are to find meaning. 

Being busy should not be mistaken for engagement. Busyness can be a defense against the challenge to find meaning. In retirement, activities that are meaningful for both retirees and the recipients of their labour are desirable forms of engagement (e.g., coaching, teaching, mentoring of youth).   

Being busy in retirement is pretty easy to do because time loses its meaning. If I no longer have the time constraint of getting up at a certain time to go to work, I may find my morning routine changes. If my morning routine changes then my daily routine also changes. Over time I find it takes longer to complete tasks that it once did. So, as a consequence of having more time people take more time, and so seem busier. It would pay to monitor your daily routines to see if you are actually doing anything productive or if you are just wasting time being busy. 

Do you want to be engaged or do you want to be busy? There is a difference and one that is important to your understanding of self. I think many of us start out being engaged. After a few years of engagement, we draw back to re-energize and gather our bearings. As we find things to fill out time (I have a friend who take three hours to read and digest the local paper after breakfast), we find that we start to get busy, and once we get busy, we may find it hard to get engaged, because it is an easy option to stay busy. 

If we do not stay engaged, the skill sets that we worked hard to develop, and hone will start to fade. There is an old adage “use it or lose it” that is true about both mental and physical skills. Being busy is not as important as staying engaged if you want to have a long, successful retirement with a high degree  of self confidence and a deeper understanding of your self worth and self awareness.