Put your Eggs in More than One Basket

I used to say when I retire I’ll take up quilting and I did. What I never imagined was all the other things I would take up too. Birding, photography, quilting, walking, gardening, reading, writing, volunteering, the list goes on. Who’d have thought I would have my eggs in so many different baskets. Not me!

Now it’s a case of doing whatever I want whenever I want. You see in retirement I am no longer constrained by the clock or other people. The only things that impose a limit to what I can do is my imagination, motivation and my own ideas on what is worthwhile to me.

When I was working I could not imagine myself doing anything else but work. Back then my days consisted of mostly work, then jobs for other people like cooking and cleaning and generally getting things done around the house. Even when I had holidays it took the best part of a week to finally relax enough to do anything other than work related activities.

I had limited my imagination and motivation to such a short time outside of work that most of the spare time I had I would just sleep because I was exhausted by working. I had invested all my eggs into one basket and never thought about spreading my eggs between several baskets. Sure I had other things I could do but I never allowed myself the time to do them.

Some people have very good work life balance, I was not one of them. I didn’t play enough, relax enough and rest enough. In other words I had limited my time to the only thing I thought was worthwhile and that was work. Amazingly I didn’t flounder around in retirement not knowing what to do with myself.  I did take some time to discover non work related activities though so it was a slow transition into retirement.

I think that some people put off retiring because they can’t imagine themselves doing anything other than work. They worry they’ll be struggling to find things to do so they end up doing nothing. Suddenly they are free to choose but can’t choose anything, they become depressed because work was all they had done. Work was their life! Luckily for me this wasn’t the case. I slowly realised I could have fun and do things for myself.

Ask yourself what will you do when you retire, then get out there and do them before you retire. Bring back some balance to your life. Don’t let your life be only about work because there is so much more to do. You are only limited by your imagination and motivation.