The real retirement is when you don’t sacrifice today for tomorrow.

Naval Ravikant

Bear with me as I attempt to scratch the surface of this topic as I know many readers of this site are retired, but this quote struck me particularly hard today.

The whole dream of planning for retirement typically revolves around three pillars:

Enough money to do what you want
A life without a schedule
Doing nothing

Now, anybody who is retired will laugh at the last two on the list as many retirees are actually busier than ever. Life has become less about the pursuit of that “end date” and more about what creates meaning every day. Sure, all three of those come into play, but not in the way they (or others) might expect.

I’ve had the good fortune of tasting a variety of flavours of life and know what it feels like to have busy days that never feel like work. For instance, of the thousands of hours of time I spent practicing magic, not a single minute felt like a burden. It was fun!

Same goes with the writing.

Colleagues often ask if teaching will be my last career and to be honest, I’m still unsure. Probably, as I seem to like it more every year and I get the joy of being in a profession that encourages you to constantly learn new things.

However, the idea of waiting until we can do ‘nothing’ or ‘live without a schedule’ sinks us into a mindset of just grinding out life. It’s not possible to be happy with that state of mind.

And given the way the world turned on a dime close to one year ago, even the best laid plans can be destroyed in an instant. Tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone.

We’re better served if we can learn to ‘retire’ today.