I Recorded Everything I Did Every Hour For A Year: Here’s What Retirees Do All Day!

As y’all know, I’m a super nerd. And part of being super-nerdy involves being curious about what in the world I would get up to in retirement with 24/7/365 freedom. I also knew that weeks and even months can seem to pass so fast that it’s difficult to recall what I actually did with all those hours.

So with that knowledge, I decided to record everything I did in retirement in hourly increments. Originally, this was going to be a month-long experiment, but it took so little time and was so fascinating to me that I kept going…and before I knew it, a year had passed 🙂 . So now I have an actual record of what I did every hour for my first year of retirement and I wanted to share that with y’all today.

Looking back at all this information, I was able to discover patterns and answers to questions, such as “Why am I tired?”…”Oh – I spent 60% of my awake hours last week socializing – that’s much more than usual. I guess my feelings have merit 😉 – it’s time for a nap and then some hardcore introversion!”

That’s been an unexpected benefit of this kind of tracking. I’ve been able to better understand why I might be feeling certain ways physically (e.g. “I hiked or ran EVERY DAY last week?!? Time for more #SlugLife“) or mentally and it helps me adjust my activities accordingly to maintain a balance that works for me.

So what did I get up to in my first year of retirement? I’ve broken activities into categories and listed them from most to least time spent. Obviously this does not include “Sleep” because technically that’s what takes the most amount of solid time – 8 hours a day if I can help it. But, besides that, here is what I did in retirement in order of most time spent:

1. Reading
2. Listening (Music, Podcasts)
3. Socializing
4. Being Outside (Birdwatching, Exploring Nature)
5. Walking
6. Writing
7. Traveling
8. Napping

End of post 🙂 …just kidding. That’s what I spent time doing in broad strokes – now let’s get into the specifics!

Reading

This is no real surprise because I love reading. It was most of what I did before I went to a school that gave homework 😉 and then a college with all of its studying and homework requirements. I always had my nose in a book growing up and I’m so happy that now that I have the time, I’ve reverted to my natural, happier bookworm state 🙂 .

Reading was also one of my biggest things I loved doing outside of work when I had a job, but I often found myself too mentally tired after a long day to dive into a new fictional world or learn something new from a non-fiction book. So I’m happy that I now have the time and energy to learn from my beloved written word and luckily that love is reflected in what I’ve been doing this past year.

I’m currently on track to read 52 non-fiction books in the 52 weeks of 2021 and that is wild to me. I could usually barely scrape by with one non-fiction book a month while working. I not only now have the brain space to read, but also the attention span.

Sometimes while working, I could only watch YouTube or a show I’d seen a million times before, and that’s all I could handle. Now I can read fiction and even (the big kahuna) non-fiction easily and often! I’m so happy that my love of reading has taken over my retirement.

Books are one of my favorite things about our world, and I am glad my freedom has been surrounded by them 🙂 . If you’re curious what I’m reading, I track and rate everything on Goodreads here.

Listening

One of the challenges of this list was deciding how to tackle activities that I do simultaneously – and listening is one of them. I am constantly listening to music. I listen while I read, run, walk and even birdwatch. This year I also added podcasts and audiobooks to my listening rotation, but they still only make up maybe 10% of my listening time.

Music is a constant in my brain – it lifts my spirits and helps me regulate my emotions. That’s one of the reasons I was excited to pay for Spotify Premium this last year and get all the perks it provides. Their Discover Weekly curated playlists that drop every Monday, have been something I look forward to every week. I usually find at least one new banger from their playlist and have learned about so many new artists and albums as a result.

Similar to my lack of attention span I mentioned above, while working, I often didn’t have the energy required to look into new music. I would just listen to my same playlist over and over until I knew every single one of the 500 songs on there. It was comforting to listen to ‘my playlist’ and I didn’t have the mental space to explore. Well, no longer! I look at Spotify’s year in review annually and I suspect that this year it will tell me that I have listened to and discovered more new artists than ever before.

Socializing

I’m surprised this snuck into third place after the pandemic year and a half we’ve had. My partner and I stayed holed up in rural Georgia until we were both fully vaccinated this spring and only really started seeing our fully vaxxed friends after that, but in retrospect, I guess this being high on the list makes sense because I forgot about one important factor: Our Georgia Commune!

After cancelling our international retirement plans for 2020 and 2021, we moved into a tiny house on my partner’s brother’s property and got to explore commune-living with him, his wife and their toddler son. It was the first time in years that we’d lived in that kind of proximity to other people and it was a fun experience.

We had separate houses so alone time was abundant, but it was also easier than ever to cross the yard and enjoy “coffee and contemplation” as the dappled sunlight flitted through the kitchen windows. We enjoyed movie nights, bonfires and nature walks while staying away from the rest of the world – and that still counts as social time 🙂 .

In addition to commune life, I’ve kept up the weekly virtual events I started or maintained as a result of the pandemic, such as weekly virtual TV watching with my Mom, weekly video chats with my ex-roommate who lives in Argentina, weekly virtual movie nights with my college suitemates and bi-weekly video calls with my ex-colleague. Just listing all that out made me tired 🙂 . Maybe it’s time to scale some of that back…

In addition to pandemic-friendly hangouts, I mentioned that once we were vaxxed, we set sail to conquer the world (just kidding…). We left our awesome commune and started the nomad part of my nomad retirement. The way we chose our first destinations was around the people we knew in the area since we hadn’t seen them in two or three years at that point. That is how we chose to move to:

• Portland, ME
• New Hampshire
• Massachusetts
• Connecticut
• NY State
• NYC
• Austin, TX
• ABQ, NM
• Phoenix, AZ

Finally seeing our loved ones in those locations was absolutely amazing and more similar to how I envisioned a pandemic-free retirement. As I mentioned in my post about what’s changed in my first year of retirement, I’ve been surprised and happy to discover that I’m a lot more present and calm while hanging out with people in retirement. I’m not thinking about the next presentation, deliverable or client call – I’m just in the moment and spending it with people I love and that’s wonderful 🙂 .

Being Outside

The amount of time I spend outside has increased exponentially. I think that’s for a combination of reasons including the fact that I’m now free while the sun is out 🙂 . While working, I would often leave my apartment while it was dark and return home after the sun had set. All the time that the sun was supposedly in the sky would be spent running around inside, staring at my computer or on conference calls.

Another reason I’ve spent so much more time outside is that we’ve only been traveling to places that are around 75 degrees fahrenheit. We’re snowbirds now 🙂 and as a result, it’s always pleasant outside – not too cold, not too hot, just pretty perfect Goldilocks temperature – one that’s perfect for outdoor adventures.

One more reason is that I had to find new ways to enjoy my retirement since my original plan of friends, family and international travel were all corona-cancelled. This led me to discover my latest obsessions of birdwatching and plant identification that I have been detailing in every monthly retirement update. I now have a better understanding of the world around me and have a fun bird-style Pokémon game to play every time we move somewhere new!

Before retirement I never noticed birds unless I wanted them to shut up early in the morning. I didn’t realize that one bird has different calls or that birds look different depending on their age, sex and even the time of the year. And now I’m fascinated by it – I see and hear birds and want to know what they are and where they come from (for example, some birds we’ve seen recently are visitors from the Arctic or Mexico).

Now I see trees I don’t recognize and want to know what they’re called and where they’re from. I see a bright star and wonder how many lightyears away it is and what constellation it’s a part of. I see the world in a completely new way.

I used to look at things humans created (buildings, shops, etc) and make decisions about a location based on what human-made things I could see, but now when I look at a new place, I see a whole different world to explore with different flora and fauna that can teach me something new every day. The world’s not just about human-made things for me now 🙂 .

Walking

As I’ve mentioned before, I love walking. And since I choose to not own a car, it’s my main method of transportation. It’s also my preferred way to explore the new cities and states we move to every month. When in a new place, it’s not unusual for me to walk around for 4 hours a day exploring everything there is to see.

Now that I’ve also started running, I’ve lumped that time in here as well. I’ve decided to separate this from “Being Outside” since that’s more of a sitting activity while walking and running are active. When I’m around my Mom, we like to pick a new place and walk there every other day at least. During our recent Southwest adventures, we hiked, ran or both every day for 10 days…no wonder I always felt like taking a nap 🙂 .

Writing

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been writing quite a bit in retirement 😉 . And after my latest assessment, it looks like that will continue to be the case. I’m planning to tackle NaNoWriMo again in November and write 50,000 words of basically my life story while I was working, so that writing streak will continue!

This amount of upfront writing should allow me to do PurpleMas for the second December ever and post twice a week during that month, but I can’t make any promises on that yet…we’ll have to see how NaNoWriMo goes 🙂 .

It feels like fucking Pinterest in here🤣. #Retirement pic.twitter.com/nA4xlqNoO8

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) July 14, 2021

Traveling

As full-time nomads, traveling is a fairly big part of our lives. We currently try to stay in a location for a month before moving on and long-term, we plan to slow down even more and spend three months in each city, though we’ll probably still try out three different monthly Airbnbs during that time to get the feel for multiple neighborhoods within that city.

Traveling during a pandemic originally involved only cars, then a sleeper train and (after we were vaccinated) planes. And in addition to the actual travel planning and travel days, I also spend a fair amount of my time doing research on the new places we were moving to.

I like to read the entire Wikipedia article of a city before we move there and also do research on any natural wonders or attractions we plan to visit. Planning travel, actually traveling and then learning about where we’re going and what we’re seeing is a to-do list item for me now 🙂 .

Napping

I feel like this is self-explanatory 🙂 . My napping schedule, like many other activities above, has finally returned to how it was when I was a child, before I had responsibilities 😉 . If I’m tired during the day for any reason – I take a nap. It usually lasts from 30 minutes to 2 hours and it feels absolutely wonderful 🙂 .

Conclusion

So that’s what I did my first year of retirement! Not every day or week is the same. Some are filled with social interactions and some are lovely hermit days, but overall, this is what I spend my time doing. I’m happy that I was able to easily keep a record of this stuff to see how I actually use my freedom and (if I continue doing this) I’m curious to see how my use of time will evolve as the years go by. Anyway, that’s it for now. Thank you for being here 🙂 !

What activities did you do most in the last year?