Back to Index

How Should I Think About the Deep Life in Retirement?


Chapters

0:0 Cal's intro
0:10 Cal's reads a question about how his views on Deep Life will change in retirement
0:45 Cal talks about the framework for a Deep Life
1:0 Intention to things
1:16 Retirement changes the Craft Bucket after retirement
2:0 Cal's summary

Transcript

All right. We have a question here from Jenny. Jenny says, how do you suspect that you're thinking about living a deep life will change in retirement? Well, I don't think it will change at all. And what I mean by that is I don't think my general framework for thinking about the deep life has to change in any substantial way as you shift from full-time work to retirement.

The decisions and activities that this framework generates will, of course, change as you shift from full-time work to retirement. So just as a reminder, my framework for the deep life says you identify the buckets that are important to you and your life and your vision of a life well-lived, and you give each of these buckets independent attention.

You start with keystone habits, and then you overhaul that part of your life. And so you make sure that you're seeing holistically all the elements of your life that are important and that you're giving intention to each of those and making sure that they have a expression in your life and they're an important part of your life.

So what happens when you retire? It just changes what you're doing in some of those buckets. In particular, you have what I call the craft bucket, the bucket that's dedicated to work. That's going to look a lot different after retirement. Craft is still important, producing things of value, skill is still important, but you'll probably then be pushing that part of your life towards more non-professional type craft.

And the other buckets of your life remain unchanged, just as important as they ever were before. Probably most of the stuff you were doing the day before you retired in those other buckets you'll be doing the day after. Your constitution bucket for your health and well-being, that's still important, obviously.

Community, what you're doing with your friends and family and those who live around you, going to be just as important. It doesn't change when you retire. Contemplation, thinking through philosophical or theological issues is just as important before and after. So I think if you're living with this bucket-based approach to the deep life, it will be a seamless transition to retirement.

When you do your normal introspection on each of those buckets, your craft bucket will change, the other ones won't, and you keep going, you keep living deeply. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)