#1722 Why I Won't Retire - Harps

a Saturday. I sat this morning with a lady that I've been mentoring and coaching for in some way, shape or form actually for over thirty years, and these days I still see her once a week and her and I sit down and chat. And anyway, she asked me today if I'm going to retire. She didn't mean it in the next ten minutes, but she go she said to me, are you going to retire? So I assume she was talking about sometime in the next five to ten years. And the truth is, I'm not going to retire.

The truth is, well, let me restate that I have no intention to retire. Who knows what the future brings, But I want to explain to you what I see as the pros and cons of retirement. I'm really fascinated. This is not an anti work or an anti retirement conversation. This is a This is like I said, it's an opinion piece. It's a personal kind of take on something

which I think there is. I think there's a lot of my information and kind of what's the word folklore, Probably not, but there's almost like this cultural belief or idea that we're all heading towards this this beautiful time of our life where life gets better, where we stop

doing this horrible thing called work. So we step out of work and works bad, and we step into this non work phase of our life called retirement and retirement as good work is bad, retirement is good, and we get excited about that and we you know, we're looking forward to the golden years where we'll kick back and we'll relax and we'll probably spend a lot of time just having fun and fucking frolicking and in the sun and traveling around Australia or wherever you live, and you know,

just living the life, just living the life of fun and joy and and look for some people that might be the case. My observation, again just my observation, my experience, my insight, that is not often the case. In fact, my anecdotal evidence seems says to me that more often than not, when people stop working, it has more of

a negative than a positive impact. Over the There might be a short bump, a short kind of positive, but more often than not, I would say, more than fifty percent of the time, there is some significant, if not minor, to significant negative consequence, be it physical, emotional, mental, psychological, sociological, some kind of negative hit. Not with everyone, Not with everyone. Some people step out of work and into this fucking amazing phase of their life where it gets better and

they get better and all of that. And that's definitely possible. But I have seen a lot of my friends and my parents of my friends retire over the years. My dad is one of those people. And again this is just observation and experience. But my dad retired I think

at sixty four or five. He was running multimillion dollar shopping centers, probably billion dollar shopping centers, these days and you know so, and when he retired, he was sharp as attack, he was fit, he was healthy, he was solving problems every day, he was having meetings every day. He had purpose, he had focus, he had responsibilities, he was creating new things. He was using his brain, and he was physically, mentally, emotionally and socially stimulated, making reasonably

good all of those things. And he was part of than part of something bigger than himself, all of those things. And then on a Friday he retired. Then on a Monday, his biggest focus was, you know, what he would do around the house. So he never went and played golf. He never, you know, became a gray nomad traversing the bloody, big brown landscape that is Australia. He didn't take up a whole bunch of hobbies. He didn't go and volunteer. And again, I love my dad, and my dad's still

God bless him, still kicking and still around. But I think that for Ron there was probably there was a decline, and I think he probably aged a few years in the first year, maybe four or five years. And I you know, that's just from the outside looking, and that was my experience because all of a sudden, he didn't need to be anywhere at any time. All of a sudden, he went from a lot of responsibilities to not many.

All of a sudden, he went from being needed and to be in certain places and solving certain kinds of problems and having high level conversations and being creative and being part of a team, and being stimulated and having a focus and using his brain in a way that kept his cognitive function at a high level, and all

of that stopped on a Friday. Because you retire, and you retire, and then life gets better, and truly for some people it does, of course, But I think that I think that's saying that retirement is arbitrarily good or for that matter, arbitrarily bad. It is like saying that drugs are good or bad. It depends. It depends on

how that works. It depends on the dose. It depends on whether or not where we're doing we're taking the right drug for the right issue, and we're taking the right dose and we're doing it in the right way. And it also depends when we come back to retirement. It depends what we're retiring from. For me, a good or a bad retirement depends on what psychological, emotional, physiological,

and social impact that retirement has on the individual. And also I guess what it is they're coming out of, Like, what is the job that you are now not doing? What is the work, what is the environment? What is the thing that you've been in the middle of for the last probably not the last forty five years, because you probably had different jobs, but in the last year or two or three or four or five of your work life, what you were in the middle of. Was it good? Was it bad? Did you enjoy it? Did

you hate it? Now, if somebody's stepping out of a job that they hated, that they didn't they they dreaded going to, or it was a bad culture or a bad environment, or they didn't feel valued or loved or needed, or it was bad on.

privileged to do that. I'm still at the gym seven days a week, and nearly every time i'm at the gym, there's somebody there that needs help that I'm working with or and I'm not saying any this to sound good, but I'm busy as fuck right and a lot of people go, you're a workholicord. A lot of people would say, oh, you've got no balance and all of these things. And I understand looking through their window. No criticism on my part here, but looking through their window, I understand why

they think that. I understand why they feel that. I think so for me, when I do the things that I do, I literally feel like even right now, so I'm sitting here talking about something that I find interesting and curious and something I want to unpack. I've never done this topic before as a standalone podcast, but I

wanted to share it with you. And I find this particular pattern of thought or this idea or this kind of you know, me just sitting here in the moment, trying to unpack what I'm thinking in a way that's going to resonate with you. But to me, like, technically, right now, I'm working because I'm doing a podcast, and I'm partnered with Nova on the Nova Network, and I've got to produce seven shows a week. This is one of the seven, and in essence, I'm being paid to

do this. But right now, in the moment, nothing, nothing feels like work to me. Right now, I'm just in the middle of this curious, interesting thought bubble that I'm clumsily trying to unpack with you and for you to give you some insight into, for better or worse, the inner workings of my fucking mind. Who wants to know? But right now, I'm doing my job, or part of my job. When I do a radio interview, which I

do quite a few, I'm doing my job. I'm not being paid for that, but that's part of what I do. When I go and do a corporate gig, when I do a keynote gig, a keynote presentation, whether i'm when I do a half day workshop, when I do a full day program with a company, I don't think, oh fuck, I've got to go and work with you know, like this week, I've got to do a some record this Saturday night and Wednesday, I've got to do a two hour I think it is a two hour workshop with AGL.

And my feeling about that, my emotion around that is excitement. I'm like, Awesome, I get to hang out with a room full of people. I get to talk about the shit that I'm excited about. I want to inspire and educate and inform people. I'll probably meet one or two really cool people. I'll get paid pretty well to do that. And I'm literally doing something that gives me energy. It gives me energy. It's part of my purpose, it's part

of my focus. There's nothing about what I do that feels like, oh God, I'm going to work because there seems to be some unwritten kind of understanding that works. A thing. We've got to tolerate. We've got to tolerate work. One day we can retire. We've got to tolerate work so that we can get to the weekend. We've got to tolerate work so we can have four weeks holiday a year. But ah, fuck, we just grind through it.

Imagine if we shifted that. Imagine if we could find a way to do something that is just something that we want to do, or something we're excited about or passionate about, or something that we're good at. Right, something that doesn't feel like in inverted comma is going to work. That's my life. And yes, I did lots of things that felt like work. And by the way, I'm not saying I'm great, I've figured it all out. I'm saying we don't need to go to work like this fucking

heavy psychological and emotional anchor just weighing us down. And no, most of us can't just switch out of the thing we don't want to do into the thing that we do want to do in five minutes. It's a process. But the idea of doing something that doesn't feel like work, because I fucking love it, because I'm meeting people, I'm connecting, I'm learning new things, Like even on this podcast, I get to meet people that in their fields are fucking incredible.

They're thought leaders, they're scientific leaders, they're creatives and other people that nobody's ever heard of who are just as fucking impressive. You know, the other day, I spoke to DeAndre, who spent four and a bit years in prison for selling coke. And while he was in prison, he did three quarters of a business degree or something else degree he told me on the show. I forget, but similar maybe it was building a construction degree. And then he came out and then he did a degree in excise

science and he duckst his course. And he's got three kids and a missus I would say wife, but not wife yet a lovely fiance, I should say, and he's building his own business. And he's like, what great dude. I loved meeting him. Yesterday as I'm recording this. Yesterday, I spoke to Heston Russell, the guy that got fucking

savaged by the ABC. You know, this unbelievable human who spent over ten thousand hours in combat, combat hours more than ten thousand, This fucking leader, this mind blowing, courageous, fucking interesting dude that I get to. I would never talk to him, but I get to talk to him because I created this job. By the way, nobody gave me this job, So don't go yeah, but you're lucky. No, I remember, you know the story. I created this job. I started a podcast. I had no listeners. I got

a few listeners. That show didn't work. I started another show that didn't work. I started another show that didn't work. And this was the was it the fourth or third? I think it was the fourth version the You Project. And I hate to bang on and be repetitious, but yeah, the first six on episodes, I lost money, right, But yeah, sometimes you've got to do the thing that's hard to

get to the thing that's good. But even though those times when I wasn't making money and it was hard, I was still enjoying it because I was learning and growing and evolving. But nobody said to me, hey, Craig, we've got an opportunity for you to become a corporate speaker. We've got an opportunity for you to start a podcast.

We've got Even when I worked in radio, even when I wrote for the Herald Son, even when I wrote my book, I got more discouragement than encouragement about writing a book because you probably won't get it published, because you're not a writer, and I'm like, well, how many books have you written? Fuck all, Well, I'll tell you what. I'll write a book and I'll see what happens. I'll work like a motherfucker, and I'll see if I can

learn about publishing and editing and distribution. I'll see if I can learn about how the science of books and the process of book writing and publishing and branding and marketing and selling works. I'll see if I can learn that. And so, you know, so the idea that you know we are at the mercy of fate or destiny, that you know we just end up where we end up. Certainly we are influenced by things. Certainly there are things

that are out of control. And certainly you and I had no control over where we were born or who we grew up around, or what we grew up around. But you know, this idea that work has to be something that we suffer through for fucking forty five years and then we try to escape when we're forty five. There's lots of research, and if I have time, I'll share some of it with you before we wind up.

But this idea that retirement is a great thing. It's a culturally ingrained It's almost like this thought bubble that we grow up believing that that retirement is some kind of trophy or reward or thing that we get after having endured all this hardship. And the underlying thought is, the underlying thought is that work is something that we need to get out of as soon as possible. And I think when you think of work as a negative thing, or if work is a negative thing for you, it's

not a good experience. You don't like what you do, you don't like the people you work with, or you don't like the environment, or you don't like the lack of income or whatever, then I understand that. But we all have the ability to be able to make tiny changes day to day, take tiny steps forward day to day, and over time reinvent ourselves. Of course, it won't be quick, easy, funnel painless. Of course.

figured out what she figured out a way. I can tell you when she's not going to be retiring anytime soon, because she's doing what she loves and she's found her thing. Having said that, am I saying retirement is bad. I'm not saying that. I'm saying for some people. It is bad for some people, depending on what you're coming out of. This is my big asterisk, depending on what you were coming out of and what you were going into. To assume that once you stop work your life gets better

and you're happier is probably not the best assumption. I was going to say something harsher than that. We humans working or not, we need to be occupied. We need some kind of focus, some kind of purpose. We need stimulation. We weren't built to sit on the couch. We can sit on the couch, but it is self destruction. One oh one. We were built to have a purpose bigger than us. We were built to have connection. We were built to use our brain and our mind and our body.

We were used. We were built to interact. Like there's this underlying and prevalent idea in our culture that if you love to work, there's something wrong with you, or like you have some kind of unhealthy addiction or problem. And I get criticized as a percentage. It's a very small percentage, but I interact with a lot of people, so it still adds up to be in quite a

few people. And they don't attack me, but it's like they're critical of how much I work and basically tell me that I don't have work life balance, Like there's no you don't have any balance. I'm like, well, okay, so let's say i'm there's one hundred and sixty eight hours in a week. So let's say i'm working. Now, I'm working forty hours like regular for let's go thirty five hours, thirty five hours, and thirty five hours I'm working. There's one hundred and sixty odd hours in a week.

One hundred and sixty eight minus thirty five is one thirty three. That means I'd be working for thirty five and not working for one thirty three. Of course, there's sleep in there and all of that. And people would go, yep, that's good, that's good, and they're saying that's a good model based on the number of hours that I just rolled out. Thirty five. That's good, that's sensible. That gives you an opportunity for work life balance. I'm like, okay,

what about this? What about sixty hours? No, that's ridiculous, that's too much, that's bad for you. Is it based on what? Well, well, it's a lot of hours. Cool, So is it about the well, even at sixty I'm still not working one hundred and eight hours a week. I'm not suggesting you work sixty. By the way, there's a point coming. Okay, Well, what if I'm working thirty

five hours but I don't like my job. What if I'm doing thirty five hours but I don't like the culture or the environment or the company the organization that I work for, or the people that I work around. What if that place and that job and those people

are toxic for me? What if they stress me? What if I wake up on Monday morning, and even though I only work seven hours a day, five days a week, but I wake up on Monday morning exhausted because I couldn't fucking sleep Sunday night, because I'm so anxious and I'm so dreading this place that I've got to go to because I can only work thirty five hours a week because I need work life balance because everyone told me so. Now I'm spending thirty five hours a week.

Is there a chance? Is there a chance that that is more destructive and toxic and stupid than doing sixty hours a week of something that gives me joy, of something that fulfills me, of something that energizes me of, something that helps me grow and learn and evolve, and something that gives me connection, something that helps me develop skill and keep my brain working and operating at an ideal level. Something that puts me in the middle of

helping other people and inspiration and fun. Thing that allows me to travel into state and to more than twenty countries, which I've done, to talk to people all around the world. Something that allows me to share my passion and interest and curiosity. Oh no, you should work thirty five It's a fucking stupid argument, and it's based on arbitrary numbers with no consideration of the impact of the work, the

impact of what the person's doing. Let me tell you unequivocally that ten hours of something that you hate is worse for your health than fifty hours of something you love. You are better to do something that you love, even if it's by the way. I would rather do something that I love for one tenth of the money, as long as I can live, I'd much rather that. As many of you know, and I don't say this to sound good bad, this is just the truth of my life.

At least twenty percent of the work that I do I do for free because I can, because my paid work is quite well paid. And I'm constantly being this is not an invitation to reach out with respect, because I get in on data with shit. But there are some people that and some not for profits and some you know, some organizations that I make a decision and I go, you know what, it's this is going to take this much energy and time and focus, and this

is a good investment of me. And I think me investing my time and energy and skill and knowledge and love and emotion into this person or this group or this organization. I think it's a good investment and I might be able to help them. That's why I do it right. But when I'm doing that stuff, which is unpaid, I am I am getting just as much joy, just as much joy. And so if you are coming out out of work and into retirement, again not a bad thing.

It depends what you're going to. If you're coming out of work and then you're coming in something where you have connection and you have purpose and you can still learn and grow and evolve and you have joy, and you can stay physically and mentally emotionally in shape or maybe even improve, then retirement could be fucking spectacular for you. But we need to think about what it is we're

going to. Don't just buy into this ideology of work is bad retirement is good because it just doesn't stack up. I did a little bit of research before I'm going to whip through some of this. So the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, which is quite a big journal, found that retirement was associated with a twenty to forty

percent deeps increase in physical activity for many people. In other words, when they retire, up to four in ten people move less or the implications of that well, reduced activity increases the risk of cardiovascular disease diabetes OBC, and all of the issues surrounding that or potential issues surrounding that. Another study published in Health Economics in twenty seventeen showed that people who retire earlier than normal have a thirteen

percent higher chance of dying. Cognitive decline. The Journal of Economic Perspectives demonstrated that individuals who retire show faster to cognitive decline compared with those who keep working. Okay, so if we've got people the same age, one group keeps working, one group's retires, then there's in other words, their brain stops working as well. And that makes sense, doesn't it.

Now that's not to say everyone who retires is going to have more cognitive decline than everyone who keeps working. Of course, like I said, if you're going to retire, cool, retire, but retire well, retire with a plan, Retire with some intention, with some process, so that you don't wake up a

year after retirement and you're fucked. What about depression? The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry discover that retirement can lead to an increase in depression, particularly for people who come out of a job where their identity was really intertwined with the work that they did, and also specifically for people who go from an environment and a situation where there was a lot of socializing or socialization to a new paradigm where the socialization has disappeared, if not diminished.

Let's talk about social health. So research in Social Science and Medicine, which is another journal, found that retirees report twenty five percent less social interactions. So this of itself is not necessarily terrible, but there can be consequences to that disconnection, isolation, loneliness, and so on. What about longevity. This is interesting workers who this is the National Bureau

of Economic Research. Workers who retire at seventy live significantly longer than those retiring earlier than seventy, largely due to continued engagement and purposeful activities. Again, like I'm saying, doesn't mean you've got to keep working. It means either keep working doing something where you're stimulated and using your brain and socializing and having connection and having a purpose and

focus and moving your body. Either that that's my suggestion, or retire into something similar where you've still got all of those factors that impact your level of wellness. There's a whole lot more, in fact that I don't have time to share. But look, I think I just wanted to share with you my thoughts around this because I know a lot of you. I know we have a lot of listeners around My biggest demographic is forty to fifty. In fact, I think late thirties to fifty, but we

also have quite a lot of listeners over fifty. And it's I think the question is not will I or when I retire, but if I'm going to retire, when will that be? What will that look like? Is the store that I've been told the truth? Is my life going to necessarily get better when I stop working? And I know when I pump it out like this and

I explain it like this, it seems obvious. But nonetheless there seems to be a lot of ignorance and kind of presumptuousness or assumptions around this that I'm doing this thing that I need to do because I need to make money, and this is the way that it works. And you work for this many years and then you get to this number, this arbitrary number, and the number differs from place to place, but typically it's somewhere in the sixty five or sixty and boom, Now you're going

to retire. I am going to say, just quickly, I went to a wedding, my best mate's kids wedding lovely Laura and Vin and Tony, two of my mates. We're at the wedding and we're talking to them. Are retired. Now I'm going to say, both Tony and Vinn have retired and did it great. And they did it great because they get up every day and they've got stuff

to do. They've got people to connect with, they've got they've got projects on the go, they've got habits and behaviors and an operating system, for want of a better term, that keeps them physically and mentally and emotionally and socially up and about. So retire, don't retire, retire now, retire soon, retire fucking way down the track. Whatever you do, but do it consciously and question the status quo, question the collective mindset that work is something that we need to

get out of as soon as possible. Make sure you've got yourself financially okay, and then get the fuck out of there and make sure when you retire, that you've got you know this and that in place, and all those things are good ideas and sound advice, but the underl e kind of prevalent idea that you need to get out of it as soon as possible because then you can kind of start living. When you put that under the magnifying glass, it really doesn't hold up. See you next time,