Testing My Early Retirement Schedule

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A common response when hearing my early retirement plans is to ask why I don’t just insert the life I want to lead in retirement into NOW. I’ve explored how that doesn’t work for me from a work perspective, but I’d like to explain how it doesn’t work at its core.

The career I’ve had (and all other six figure, white-collar jobs I’ve heard of) revolve around screens and being almost constantly reachable. I awaken, stare at a screen all day and if I take a few minutes for myself, to run an errand for example, I am tied to my phone.

At the end of the day I have little energy – even if it wasn’t a particularly trying day. All the creativity and curiosity I had when I awakened has been sapped away. The sensational book Your Money Or Your Life described this feeling best:

“How many people have you seen who are more alive at the end of the work day than they were at the beginning? Do we come home from our ‘making a living’ activity full of more life? … Where’s all the life we supposedly made at work? For many of us, isn’t the truth of it closer to ‘making a dying?’”

I have all these things I want to do in my life and working a full-time job saps all the energy I have for those things. After work instead of watching the sunset, cooking delicious fresh food and taking long walks to photograph the beauty of the world I usually just read some mindless fiction (often that I’ve read before…) or watch a show.

The extent of me using my remaining hours to pursue my actual passions is the time I take to write this blog (usually on the weekend though after I’ve recharged a little…) and the few times a month I practice my calligraphy and watercolor (and that’s rare let me tell you).

So instead of my current situation I have this idyllic idea of what I want my early retirement life to be like. I also have an idea of how I will use my days. I recently took a vacation to Costa Rica and decided to use that time to test out this early retirement schedule.

This schedule also includes guidelines for how I use my time. Overall I want to be more in tune with the world around me. I want to awaken with the sun, watch the sunrise and generally go to bed a few hours after the sunset.

I want to respond to a sunny day with a trip to the beach and a rainy one with a full day curled up on the couch with a good book.

I want to limit my screen time to those few hours after the sun has set and use the time when it’s high in the sky to explore this beautiful world of ours. I want to be fully present in the day and the moment with the people I love.

So my guidelines for Costa Rica included:

  1. Watch every sunset and then contemplate the stars (we saw Mars and Venus as well!)
  2. Watch many sunrises (Yes ‘many’, not ‘every’. They were at 5am – I can’t promise to get up that early every day of vacation!)
  3. Limit screen time to after sunset
  4. Be fully present in the moment

I’m excited to announce that I was able to stick to all of these guidelines and it was an amazing feeling!

Outside of a few random 5 minute check-ins, while waiting for a bus for example, I kept screen time and general internet time to a few hours at night and sometimes not at all if I was sleepy right after sunset. I must admit I did miss my internet friends, but it was good to be fully there with my friends and family.

I realized that those pings to my phone really do detract from those interactions. I thought I had a good balance, but fully switching off my phone notifications filled me with a weird kind of freedom. In fact sometimes I didn’t even know where my phone was, which was a strange new feeling let me tell you!

People often respond to my early retirement plans with “But what will you do all day?” Just doing the above with a little social time, exploration and curiosity for the world around me (which led to fun research!) was more than enough to fill my days. In fact, I didn’t even get to everything I wanted to do! I ended up writing my blog post for last week two days before it was due, which is very unlike me. Busy busy!

So there you have it. The schedule of a full-time job and its demands on my energy and curiosity make it incompatible with my ideal life. I wasn’t sure if my ideal was possible or would make me a happier version of myself, but I can now report it definitely does. I’m looking forward to this schedule being my every day life. Only 1.5 years to go!

What would your ideal schedule be? Does your job allow you to follow it?

41 thoughts on “Testing My Early Retirement Schedule

  1. I recently (2017/18) took a year off as a “trial run” for early retirement. I spent a month travelling in South East Asia. I spent a lot of time relaxing, talking long walks in the country, and learning and working on side projects. It was bliss.

    One of the most common questions I was asked is “Don’t you get bored?”. I have to confess that is a question that I can never quite understand. I guess many peoples lives are so tied up with work that they cannot imagine life without it. Not me!

    I have been somewhat lucky in that contract work is a very real option. One of the reasons I have not already retired is that I’ve spent quite a bit of time working contract – and the time off between contracts has been invaluable. I took my last sabbatical for example when a contract I’d been working on finished. Being frugal helped here – I could work for three months and then live on the income for a year or more…

    I have come to the conclusion that most working environments today are toxic to mental and physical health. The quicker you can get out or go part-time the better…

    1. That sounds so amazing!! I don’t understand the “don’t you get bored?” question either personally. I could spend my entire lifetime learning and exploring (without a job…) and still wouldn’t have enough time.

      I can sympathize with being so focused on work making you forget what you like to do. That happens sometimes after a long stretch of late nights. When I finally have one off I do have a quick moment of “now what?” since I’m so used to working constantly, but my passions pretty quickly come back and then it’s hard to work late nights again because there’s so much I want to do 🙂 .

      That’s awesome contract work is an option! And working for 3 months to fund a year of living is amazing!! And yeah my entire career I’ve told my Mom what the environment was like and she’s been consistently shocked. I guess it wasn’t this way a few decades ago. Thank you for stopping by!

  2. ” Be more in tune with the world around me”. That’s a great, succinct way to sum up how I feel as well. I made things extra complicated by picking a side hustle that is also in front of a computer, my graphic arts designs. I do love it, but it adds to my computer time. I need an outdoor side hustle!

    1. Haha – an outdoor side hustle sounds nice. Or maybe you could find a screen cover or something with eReader type capabilities (not sure if that works in color though…) so you can work on graphic designs outside? I’m just spitballing here (and I just realized how weird that phrase is).

  3. Mine includes a lot more sleep but that lack is a combination of my kid / dogs / work. As witness, a gentle dry dog nose snuffing me this morning at 6 am before I was ready to get up.
    Otherwise, though I do work work full time, I have a lot more flexibility than ever before and I can walk the dogs and cook dinner in the same day as that full time job. I can’t do ALL the things that would be part of my ideal day like reading for three hours and gardening for another hour, and I absolutely rush through my working lunch, but what I’ve got makes sense for now. It gives me a foothold into the foundation of where I’d want to go with this life, a bit.

    1. Ahhh yes more sleep! I should add that in – naps specifically. I took a nap on Sunday and it was AH MAY ZING! And aww cute dog noses! I’m sorry they woke you up though.

      Yay flexibility! So glad you could get closer to your ideal day even though it’s not fully there yet (reading and gardening sounds lovely)!

  4. Thanks for your great thoughts, Å Purple Life! I can’t wait to get out of the rat race myself!
    Good luck with your last 1 1/2 years! 😃

    1. Thank you for reading! And yes I must admit I’m a little impatient about it. Working on that. And thank you!!

  5. I loved everything you wrote on here. One of my sister’s friends once asked me, “what are you going to do? you’re not even 30 yet.”
    and I was thinking, what am I NOT going to do? I want to spend my days working out for 1-2 hours (with not feeling rushed on time), watching the sunset, being more present, learning how to make beer, blogging more consistently (like you said, work drains me too so I spend my weekends mostly writing), spending more time with family. And I hope by the time I reach FI, me and my boo thang will be either traveling for a year in the US to as many National Parks as we can, or living in Hawaii (that’s our ultimate goal). So if we are in Hawaii, then work out, explore, spend some days being beach bums and learning how to surf, and making beer. And gardening! I’ve also wanted to get into water coloring too, but I don’t want to buy it without the commitment of being able to do it. Sometimes I get excited about things by what others are doing and convince myself I want to do them too, ha. But anyways, before I go into too long of a tangent, I love everything you wrote and all your topics! Thanks, APL! 🙂

    1. Sounds like you’ve got an awesome and long list there! It sounds like a wonderful life. National Parks and hanging in Hawaii are on my list too. And if you need a taste tester for that beer I graciously offer my services 🙂 . So glad you liked the post and are enjoying my topics!! Thanks so much for stopping by!

  6. That quote from Your Money or Your life is so powerful. I love how you were able to use your time in Costa Rica to test out this early retirement schedule. It sounds like a wonderful rhythm and I totally get how it made you a happier version of yourself! Good on you for following those guidelines :). You are getting to close! Almost there :D.

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about taking more sabbaticals on the way to FI. We had already planned on taking entire summers off once the kids are in school (starting 2021) but I am realizing a lot of activities we want to do with the kids when they are this young is simply not achievable with all the time and energy being sucked into work. 4 non-consecutive weeks of vacation per year just won’t cut it for 2019 and 2020 so we need to plan for some changes. This would also give us a bit of time to gradually try-out our early retirement schedule :).

    1. Right?! I felt like I got slapped in the face when I read it the first time. I still remember where I was sitting at that moment. And yes eeek almost there!

      And yes sabbaticals sound wonderful! Keep me posted on what you decide. I had a hard time deciding if I should take sabbaticals myself. You get FOUR weeks of vacation?! I’m jealous lol….and also maybe need to move to Canada…

      1. We arrived in Costa Rica in January and my daughter and I quickly fell into a sunrise rhythm here too. Having my 2 year old call out for me when she wakes up asking to watch the sunrise together feels pretty special! “Daddy sunrise”. 🙂

        1. Oh my goodness that’s so wonderful!!! Thank you for sharing. It sounds like y’all are having a lovely time.

  7. I’ve had this same line of thinking. Most of the things I enjoy doing I just simply don’t have the time/energy to do before or after work. Being able to completely unplug and just live is so appealing, yet so tough to implement when not on vacation!

    1. Glad I’m not the only one! It’s definitely a little difficult to implement and I’ll probably have to tweak it if I’m not just sitting on a beach all day, but figuring out my ideal rhythm will be half the fun 🙂 . For example I’m thinking one day ‘on’ (exploring a new location, getting out of my comfort zone) and one day ‘off’ (relaxing, reading etc) or maybe half days including both? Not sure yet 🙂 . Thank you for stopping by!

  8. When I was still gainfully employed but my hubby was already retired, he was worried about me being bored in retirement. I didn’t give it much thought until I happened to be out on disability for 6 months. In between dealing with all the life threatening health issue (triple negative breast cancer) treatments (chemo, surgery and recovery) there were various week long occasions where I experienced what retirement could be like. I remember thinking, “I could get used to this” and “I will have NO problem being retired!”. And I haven’t! After 5 years of retired life, I have yet to encounter boredom, AND have yet to accomplish any of the “productive” retirement projects I had envisioned for myself pre-retirement. I’ve been too busy with other things. LOL

    1. WOW – thank you so much for sharing. Congratulations on your recovery! That’s great to hear you haven’t felt boredom in retirement even after 5 years and haven’t done anything ‘productive.’ Just curious: what productive things were on your list? Despite adding this blog to my (short) list of hobbies I doubt it could be called productive so maybe I’ll follow in your footsteps and be busy doing ‘non-productive’ things in retirement! The dream!

  9. I agree with you. We have reached a stage in our culture where slowing down or even choosing to not run the rat race is often looked at as slacking!

    It is beyond people’s comprehension how someone can fill their day with meaningful stuff like meditation or enjoying a sunrise or _____ your favorite activity as worthwhile. It’s just unacceptable!

    We used to be like that once up on a time and I feel this situation we are trying to get away from is our own making. We’ve got to own it and only then do we see the pointlessness of this rat race. Till then we will behave like headless chickens.

    Good stuff!

    1. Glad you liked it! And yeah that whole ‘idle hands are the devil’s workshop’ type thought is really prevalent. I’m happy to take on the label of ‘slacker’ if that’s what people want to call the activities I enjoy, but I don’t want others to face any sort of stigma. I guess we need to change the world 🙂 . Let’s do it!

  10. My FIRE day looks like this (when I wouldn’t be traveling).

    7:00: Coffee & Walk
    8:30: Blog & Breakfast
    10:00 Video Games
    11:00 Side Hustles / Checking Finances / Planning / Etc
    12:00 Lunch
    12:30 Work Out (biking too and from the gym)
    2:00 Outdoor activities
    3:00 shopping at some type of fresh market
    4:00 making dinner for bae 🙂

    Anything after that would be spending time with friends/family, reading, napping! I am always trying to map out my ideal day!

    1. That sounds absolutely amazing. I’m also impressed you can keep video games to an hour a day. They’re a rabbit hole for me – I look up and 6 hours have passed so I try to keep them to the evening (when I don’t have anything social going on) so I don’t mess up the rest of my day lol.

  11. A great way to try to improve your life in the now! Sadly for us, it’s not so much the energy that work saps from us (though it also takes its toll), but time. Precious daylight hours to explore the world gone. Precious time that we have to spend at a desk, instead of being in transit between – and at – amazing destinations. We see tantalising glimpses of retirement though, and that drives us on!

    Cheers,
    Alex

    1. Hi Alex! It was a nice way to see how I could improve my life. That’s awesome that work doesn’t sap your energy in the way I see it though I do understand the time restraints – especially time of day restraints. If it’s gorgeous out why I can’t I just do my work for today at night 😉 but sadly that doesn’t seem to be how it works in my field. That’s a great perspective (tantalizing glimpses). I’ll try to cherish those more. Thanks so much for stopping by and teaching me new Aussie phrases 😉 !

  12. I think one of the things I am most looking forward to in early retirement is doings things to my own schedule. No rushing around on a morning to get out of the door on time, eating rubbish breakfasts because they’re quick and easy. Taking the time to do the things I love to do, not what I have to do.

    Unfortunately my 9-5 job doesn’t allow this at the moment. One day, I will manage!

    1. Yes! So excited about that too. And not knowing what time it is or what day it is (this happened on vacation actually…) I’m excited for your ‘one day’!! Thanks so much for stopping by.

  13. I often fill my holidays with lots of activities and need another ‘holiday’ when I return. Have to learn to slow down …. and let go of the pressure to utilise every minute. Retirement can’t come soon enough.

    1. Haha yeah I know what you mean. I actively try to do less on vacation and ideally do ‘nothing’ (read and watch the world). It’s hard though. And yes – retirement here we come!

  14. great idea to take a few trial runs at this not-working thing. we tried last year to take a trial week at a cabin but it didn’t really mimic a typical day to day as it wasn’t at home with our setup. i think this year i might try a vacation week at home for a test. i don’t have high hopes for anything grand as the day to day during my work week leaves me plenty of time and energy, which is odd. i’m almost always unplugged at home as i don’t have a cell phone and am unreachable. my job is low impact and pretty low stress and allows me to run a few miles at my work gym every single work day. my mrs. has been semi-retired for a couple of years, only working part-time. the only thing somewhat lacking is maybe wanting to leave buffalo for warmer climate but i’m not going to pull up stakes unless i know i have a social life to retire to.

    if you had a lower impact job like mine that didn’t leave you dead at the end of the day and paid pretty well wouldn’t you consider just staying that course?

    1. “The day to day during my work week leaves me plenty of time and energy, which is odd” – that is odd…and AWESOME! I’m jealous of you being unreachable at home. Let me know how the staycation trial run goes – maybe it will be different than every day life. As for a warmer climate, any interest in snowbirding (instead of completely pulling up the stakes)?

      As for your question about this hypothetical low impact job – I doubt I would do be honest (though I’m not sure since I’ve never had a job like that). Really any job that requires me to be in a certain city or available at a certain time isn’t how I want to live my ideal life.

  15. I am also one of those screen all day guys for my job. I also love computer gaming and coding my own programs, so screen time will be part of my retirement. I grew up in the shadow of several state parks, and love hiking and the outdoors in general. Ticks do have a say in my plans as Lyme is a problem in the Eastern woods. Still, adjustments can be made.

    I have a lot of hobbies and interests so the problem I have now would remain, I’d have trouble focusing one one fun thing to do among many

    1. Sounds like a good problem to have (“trouble focusing one one fun thing to do among many”)! I’m not anti-screen – I just want to be more intune with the world around me and use screens when exploring the world isn’t an option (at night). Thanks so much for stopping by and good luck with those ticks!

  16. “I have all these things I want to do in my life and working a full-time job saps all the energy I have for those things.”

    Exactly! When I get home from work, I have enough motivation to get to the sofa. It’s a crazy cycle.

    I find myself constantly torn between these two ideas:

    ( 1 ) Don’t just quit because you hate it. You need to run TO something, instead of AWAY from something.
    ( 2 ) How do you find yourself until you quit?

    An intentional break might be the answer. I am thinking about that right now.

    1. It really is a crazy cycle. I’m trying to come up with ways to combat it on the road to retirement, but currently have come up with nothing. I feel you on wanting to know what you’ll retire to and not actually knowing what you’ll enjoy until you try it. A break sounds like an awesome solution! Keep me posted on what you decide. I’m super curious if you’re able to find yourself and your rhythm during a break like that. Thanks so much for stopping by!

  17. I love a good FIRE trial run. We’ve been doing this more and more as I ease into the flames. 5 months to go and I’ll be done with my anesthesia job.

    I’ll be honest, though. The way I run the blog demands a lot more screen time than it should. I’ll have to slow down with the online presence to feel truly retired.

    Cheers!
    -PoF

    1. “Ease into the flames” – I see what you did there 😉 . That’s awesome you’re doing trial runs as you approach the finish line. 5 months woohoo!! As for the blog, I think I heard you say in an interview that you have a staff to help you – any way they could take on more (or most…) of your responsibilities? I hope you find that balance! Thanks so much for stopping by.

  18. My fifth grader would say you applied the scientific method quite nicely – hypothesis, testing, conclusion.

    I would say you have the important things in life figured out a solid decade and a half before I got my bearings on these items, which means you get that much more lead time on a higher quality of life.

    Kudos on your focus and discipline. I look forward to celebrating the victories with you, large and small, on your road to act two.

    And as I sit here watching rose bleed into a pale sky over the Pacific, I’ll warn you that the days will get so unexpectedly compelling to wake up to that you’ll be surprised how many more sunsets you’ll make than you used to.

    Fondly,

    CD

    1. Love the scientific method! And thank you! I’m incredibly lucky that I had the opportunity to reflect enough to come to these conclusions and a family that could show me the way. That sounds like a wonderful evening – I look forward to discovering the same! Thanks so much for stopping by.

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