Time Management: Who Needs It In Retirement?

Time management tools, strategies and even software are useful to goal-oriented managers in the corporate environment, right? If you’re in your retirement planning years, isn’t it a waste of time (no pun intended) to focus even an ounce of energy on time management skills? After all, time is the one thing you’ll have plenty of, right?

Not exactly. Even in retirement, you’ll still want to get the most out of your day. Time management happens to be one of the most valuable skills with which you’ll leave the workforce in order have a successful retirement. If you haven’t mastered it yet, there are many benefits to getting started today.

Here’s why: The fear of no longer being needed, or the sense of not accomplishing anything can be stressful in retirement. To compensate, there may be a natural tendency to 'think' of a bunch of things you’d like to do. Without good time management skills, the majority of these things will never see the light of day. You’ll tend to procrastinate thinking that there’s tomorrow…until too many tasks build up and become overwhelming. This will inevitably lead to frustration, a sense of emptiness instead of accomplishment, and even missed appointments with friends and family.

However, your personal life in retirement can be as successful as your business life if you practice time management strategies. As such, it is highly beneficial to learn how to organize your day, how to schedule your time in order to accomplish more without feeling overwhelmed.

A daily or weekly ‘To-Do’ list is still as valuable in your retirement as it was in the office environment. The reason is you don’t want to trust your memory to keep track of things that should be committed to paper and ink. Further, your to-do list will always form a profile of tasks you need to keep track of in order to see where you’re spending the majority of your time.

Above all, you need to learn the importance of time. Although it may seem to be plentiful at first, it remains even more so a precious commodity. It is important to make your list and your schedule around your own concept of time.

Your mastery of this important skill will serve to put your own life in perspective as well as help you avoid the stress associated with the feeling of accomplishing little to nothing in retirement.

Notice you will not need much in terms of tools. Sophisticated software or bulky planners are not necessary. As long as your chosen tools work for you and you are comfortable using them, you’re all set. But at the bare minimum you should have:

•an activity log to track your activities (however frequently you wish to track them – daily or weekly)

•the habit of scheduling important events in your life (especially leisure time – because contrary to popular belief, all your time will not be leisure)and,

•a sense of your priorities so you can assign a time barrier to all the tasks you want to accomplish that are important to you.

Don’t forget to stay flexible. You’re no longer doing this to climb a corporate ladder or to prove your competence.

There’s no need to plan every minute of every day of your life. But at the same time be mindful that you are playing with the most precious of all commodities you’ve got left. Make it count.

by: Windsor Augustin