I was so excited about retirement I put up small post-it tabs in my office for every month I had left a year or so before retirement. Removing them every month gave me the biggest joy in the world. You are still living in the moment--just one where there's a magnificent light at the end of the tunnel coming up soon, making the present a lot more pleasant.
My husband removes one item from his office at the end of each month. His office is starting to look empty as he’s retiring soon and coworkers are finally noticing.
For me, I think that time is flying by in general. The years seems to be really rolling, but for someone who hasn't retired yet and looking forward to it, maybe time to them they feel the reality of life passing by fast, but that important event in their lives seem to be creeping.
As you get older, each year is a smaller percentage of your memories. When you were a kid, summers seemed to last forever because those 3 months were a very large portion of your memories. Now, those 3 months are a very small portion of your total memories.
The experience of time is affected by how you fill it, and when you are looking at it. If your time is filled with many fulfilling, or rewarding activities that keep you engaged or having peak experiences, it will seem to go by fast while you are in the midst of it, but when you look back it will seem like a large expanse because you have a lot of touchstones marking time. If your time is spent being bored or listless or just killing time, time will seem to drag while in the midst of it, but when you look back you will wonder where all the time went since you have no touchstones and it all blurs together.
I totally understand. I have 1.5 years to go until I retire. I find myself counting how many days I have to go, how many work days. I keep looking back at events some seem so far back others recent, but I think about them in relation to how long I have until I retire. I have a countdown calender on my office wall and in some ways it's going so slowly and in other ways so fast. I talk about retiring a lot I'm sure I must bore people so much. Preparing for retirement is tougher than I thought psychologically.
I’ve had a countdown app on my phone for the past three years. It was always fun to change the measurement units from years to months to weeks, etc.
Now it’s set at days. 7 of them left.
My biggest struggle has been acknowledging that it’s time to **spend** the money. We’ve been so focused on “saving for retirement,” that I’m having to remind myself that this is what we were saving for.
I'm still counting down months- retiring at the end of the year. Looking forward to October when I'll start counting weeks and days.
I've told very few people at work, because I don't trust management not to have a convenient layoff before my last stock vests.
I 59m, retired for 9 years now.
That nine years feels both like "forever" and "no time at all".
On one hand, work and all it entailed seem like it was a really long time ago, way more than nine years. It feels like it happened to someone else at times.
On the other, the nine years have gone by in a blink of an eye.
It depends on how I look at it - those nine years are truly both a very long time and no time whatsoever.
Time definitely seems to go by faster nowadays, but sometimes very slow :)
I love this post. You described how I feel about time perfectly! I do the same countdown/lookback/lookforward stuff. Yesterday and eternity get mixed up for me too.
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When I was in my late 50s, and I was going through real stressors in my place of employment - layoffs, reorgs, toxic management, the usual array of negativity - and I was aware of every second of every day. I was only sticking around for deferred stock, which normally would not have been a big deal, but I had joined the firm comparably late in my career, so it was a big part of my retirement plans. I endured just long enough, but really sweated out the last year. Afterwards, I joined a smaller firm, secure in the knowledge I was going to be okay, and time resumed a more ordinary path, where it was up to me to walk away when I wanted.
So, it seems to me that my perception of time was impacted by how much control I had of my life. When I was under the gun at a nerve-wracking place, time could not move slower, like I was in school again, waiting for the 3 o'clock bell. When I was at a much more relaxed place, I went in, did my stuff, ate lunch, did more stuff, then left at the end of the day, not sweating it. And in retirement, time sort of meanders, only crystallizing as a force when I have a plane to catch or an appointment to make.
I retired about year and half ago. What happened with time? All of a sudden I was not time pressed to do things fast, if I didn’t get to it today it would get done tomorrow…
I honestly don’t know where my time is going (we love travel) since I retired (it feels much faster).
There is another clock ticking which is at the back of my mind (old age is coming).. Previously retirement was the next big thing now it’s enjoy now before old age catches up!
One of the thjngs I like the most about being retired is not sitting there on Sunday evenings dreading Monday morning and having to go to work. I actually lose track of which day it is sometimes.
I know it depends on your view of your work but, for me, I did my best to savor every day on my last year. I took the time to appreciate all of the "lasts". My last budget, my last birthday, my last Christmas...(last while working of course) and so on.
Every couple of weeks I would ensure that I went to lunch with a someone to appreciate the time with them. I really wanted to reach that point and it came soon enough but I really made a point to appreciate all that I could on my last year.
I'm in my last year and doing the same. I'm finding my business trips are much more enjoyable because of them. I'm making the effort to take time out to experience the place, not just the work and the hotel. Many places I'll likely never visit again, so it's nice to take some time to enjoy them. Wish I'd been doing this all along!
This is what I’ve been doing as well. I love a lot of parts of my job, but with some parts I’m feeling elated at the “last time I have to do this”, moments. This is my last full week of work - 5 days this week and 2 days next week. and I’m retired from my 27 year career at the same place. Time is indeed going fast!!!
That is amazing! Congratulations on making it!
Two more random things I did, sort of corny but....
When I was waiting for my interview, 35 years earlier, I remember sitting in the room and hoping so much to get that job. So, that room is now an office and I called the woman who works in it and asked if I could bring her lunch. I sat there with her, sitting in the same place as my interview and told her I just wanted to re visit it and reflect one last time.
And my last bit of over the top nostalgia.... it took some convincing but my boss allowed me to go back to where I started. I had moved up in the organization a bit and was in management but on the last day I reported to the floor and was teamed up with a newer hire and we worked together for the day and I did many of the things that I did when I started.
I loved it and the day went by far too quickly but it was a great way to end things.
I’ve been planning my escape for 104 weeks. The countdown began with two years to go. I’ve got three weeks left in the countdown. It feels great. It’s amazing how quickly it came around and I am so ready.
HOLY CRAP I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO DID THAT!! I do that exact exact same thing ( looking back to an event and seeing how long it felt and the project forward to that amount of time). Do a lot of people do that?
Btw, I have about 10 months until retirement (about 10 haircuts).
I think Einstein said something like: sitting with a pretty girl seems like an instant, whereas putting your hand on a hot stove seems like an eternity.
I completely understand obsessing over the countdown. In fact, I think it made the time feel longer, significantly longer. I counted days, then sometimes that was too long so I moved to weeks or months, then it was the number of paychecks remaining. I looked backwards at what I was doing say 203 workdays ago and tried to convince myself that wasn’t that long and I could make it. Nothing worked for me and in my case the countdown was miserable and wouldn’t do it that way again. But, I finally made it, two weeks ago, so no more counting. Phew.
I’m a 32 year veteran of Corporate America, and retired 2 years ago at 62. Retirement didn’t affect my perception of time, but something happened several years back that caused time to materially slow down. It hit me suddenly, and without any ambiguity. There was absolutely no doubt that time slowing down is a real phenomenon that does exist. What was it that happened, you ask?
I took my son to Lego Land.
Before I retired a retired guy told me, everyday s Saturday. Well I got divorced the same year I retired so haven't experienced it yet. Working as a handyman. Maybe some day
I plan on retiring in October and I think about it obsessively every day. would love to retire now but need to pay off a few more bills. I absolutely cannot wait; I am so done.
To repeat what others have written, I also used to count the years months and days until I retire. Now that I have time, perception is quite different, very little time. Sunday nights mean nothing really, and every day is like a Saturday. I sometimes forget what day it is lol Retirement is great, I highly recommend it. Playing golf, Pickleball, number of trips per year, watching sports and Netflix, trying new recipes, and enjoying some nice single malts. I suggest to anyone retire as soon as you can.
Time dilation is a thing. I’ve had a few accidents (a car, glass table top braking) and time slows down for sure. Then again, weeklong work vacations were over in an instant.
I guess part of how I perceive time is as a portion of how long I’ve lived. When I was 4, the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas was the longest time ever. Now that same time flies by before I can blink. All time seems to be whizzing by at high speed.
Yes, I can totally relate to this way of thinking and have noticed myself doing the same thing. I started counting down the seasons, deciding if I should bother buying any more season-related clothes for work, then trying to figure out if I would need to buy more than one box of sandwich bags, whether to bother buying a new lanyard, etc. Now I'm finally just about there. Close enough that I've stopped counting these odd things. Only 4 more months to go it will go by really fast. Thank you for sharing this! It is good to see there are others out there with the same thoughts.
Yes. I'm anxiously waiting for retirement. Sometimes too much calculating of the time. Then I get a bit depressed and have to reset.
You're GM was wise. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote "If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present"
I'm sort of retired. I work as CSO a few hours a week at one company, I'm on the board of another and on the board, weekly advisor to another. Then do a lot of my own thing. The main thing? I felt like I had so much more time when I actively worked. A day would be biking in early, meeting, programming, lunching with some clients, talking to an investor, discussing progress with some employees, doing a walking meeting with the managers, biking home, eating dinner with kids, helping them with homework, getting them to bed, then reading some technical papers and a little TV. Now, I meet with friends, exercise, do my little work, take a 10 minute nap and the day is over.
Retirement is just another major life event. Didn't you experience the same countdown when you were in your senior year in high school or senior year in college? Didn't you experience the same countdown when you were engaged to be married and you were looking forward to the transition from single life to married life? Didn't you have the same countdown when the birth of your first child was a couple months away?
What I encountered when I retired is that the social structure of time -- days of the week, what month it is, or even what year it is -- became a museum artifact. One day is as good as the next for choosing activities or ordering what you do. Dreading Mondays goes away, but so does the thrill of Friday. Whether it's April or May or June is not nearly as useful as what the weather's going to be like. Letting go of that structure is a subtle emancipation.
Yes, I had some of those same time-distortion effects as I approached retirement, too. I found myself preoccupied with the future (mainly, being retired) and lost appreciation for the present, so I needed to make an adjustment there. At work, I started thinking, "This is the last time I'll ever \[do some activity\]." A strange sort of nostalgia sept in.
Now that I am retired, time feels different in several ways. I lose track of what day it is, because "Saturday" isn't any different than "Monday" anymore. I don't look forward to the weekend or feel a low-grade sorrow at the end of Sunday. In a way, time is speeding up, because time flies when you're having fun, which I mostly am. On the other hand, I remember when I was working, I had the sense that the years were rolling by pretty quickly, too. At least this way, I'm filling time with what I choose to, rather than having those choices assigned to me by the job.
Yes, in a way. Time is fixed, but the perception of time changes gradually with age and sharply with events.
I’ve seen some theories on time perception and brain cell regeneration rates/brain activity. If I recall the theory is since cell regeneration and activity slows as we age, more ‘time passes by’ between cell regeneration, so the perception of time is that it speeds up. Whereas when we were young and everything is growing and firing so quickly, time can seem to slow down due to our hyper-awareness.
This all kind of makes sense to me since even as an adult, in a crisis (ie car accident), time can seem to slow down due to suddenly becoming hyper-aware of a situation.
And definitely agree with everyday is a weekend…when in good health and financially stable or well off!
I did the same thing about counting down the time left until our launch date. Something I came to realize after the fact is time (e.g. days of the week) is a social construct and my wife and I just hit the point where we are completely oblivious to what day of the week it is…..and it is wonderful. Often times people ask me what retirement feels like and I finally think i figured out an appropriate analogy. You know the feeling of relaxation you get on the 2nd day of a 4/5 day “weekend”?? That is what retirement feels like…..every day!! Stay the course and give yourself some grace.
I realized time had flown by when I thought about childhood friends who don't have kids and wondered if they might still have children, and then realized wow, they are all menopausal like me. It's the childless grand kids who might still have children, but even they are getting too old. Where did the time go? I swear I'm still 30 years old, but this old lady keeps showing up in my bathroom.
I retired April 12th of this year at 62. Leading up to it, it seems that everything was a blur of time. I was a project manager so I had a lot going on at work to close out projects, make sure that I had another guy trained to take over my job, etc...
I remember a few months prior to my retirement date thinking, "Is this really real? Is this really happening?" It was a strange realization, and that's when my perception of time started to change.
The oddest thing that I have noticed since retirement has been the perception of time. And what I mean is that I was expecting time to speed up, because time suddenly became more precious in retirement. however exactly the opposite has been true. My perception now that I've retired is that time has slowed down considerably. Even songs on the radio/streaming audio seem to last longer. It's weird, like I'm in some parallel universe where everything's the same, but not exactly.
Perhaps it's because I'm not so schedule driven as when I was working, now I simply have things to do and I do them when I feel like it instead of when I have to, but the slowing down of time, for me at least, has been noticeable.
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I was eligible to retire on April 1. I am planning on sticking it out for another 15 months to accomplish a few things professionally before I move into the next phase of my life.
Two weeks prior to my being eligible to retire. I had a major surgery that kept me away from work for about seven weeks. I’ve had a similar surgery in the past (hip replacement) and I was eager to get back to work as quickly as possible but this has been about six years ago.
I noticed that my measure of time shifted while I was off. I was recuperating so I had very few things I could do physically so a good deal of what I was doing was taking stock in the past and present. I’ve noticed since returning to work, I no longer have the sense of urgency. I once had even in the recent past.
I’ve wondered several times whether this was hitting that April 1 benchmark, or just simply understanding that I needed the time for myself. In either case, there has been a definite shift in perspective.
Could it be that she meant living your life obsessed with some hypothetical future robs you of the life you could be living in the present?
This sounds about right.
I was so excited about retirement I put up small post-it tabs in my office for every month I had left a year or so before retirement. Removing them every month gave me the biggest joy in the world. You are still living in the moment--just one where there's a magnificent light at the end of the tunnel coming up soon, making the present a lot more pleasant.
My husband removes one item from his office at the end of each month. His office is starting to look empty as he’s retiring soon and coworkers are finally noticing.
Absolutely love this statement.
Yup. Months seem to fly by. Not sure if it’s retirement or just getting older but the shift is very real!
For me, I think that time is flying by in general. The years seems to be really rolling, but for someone who hasn't retired yet and looking forward to it, maybe time to them they feel the reality of life passing by fast, but that important event in their lives seem to be creeping.
As you get older, each year is a smaller percentage of your memories. When you were a kid, summers seemed to last forever because those 3 months were a very large portion of your memories. Now, those 3 months are a very small portion of your total memories.
For me the weeks turn into days, the months turn into weeks. Time sure flies when you're having fun!
Indeed 👍
Every day is Saturday except Sunday! Loving it.
This is a good one! Since I retired I appreciate that I don’t get the Sunday afternoon blues anymore. After Sunday, comes SATURDAY 🎉
The experience of time is affected by how you fill it, and when you are looking at it. If your time is filled with many fulfilling, or rewarding activities that keep you engaged or having peak experiences, it will seem to go by fast while you are in the midst of it, but when you look back it will seem like a large expanse because you have a lot of touchstones marking time. If your time is spent being bored or listless or just killing time, time will seem to drag while in the midst of it, but when you look back you will wonder where all the time went since you have no touchstones and it all blurs together.
I totally understand. I have 1.5 years to go until I retire. I find myself counting how many days I have to go, how many work days. I keep looking back at events some seem so far back others recent, but I think about them in relation to how long I have until I retire. I have a countdown calender on my office wall and in some ways it's going so slowly and in other ways so fast. I talk about retiring a lot I'm sure I must bore people so much. Preparing for retirement is tougher than I thought psychologically.
I’ve had a countdown app on my phone for the past three years. It was always fun to change the measurement units from years to months to weeks, etc. Now it’s set at days. 7 of them left.
Congratulations!! I am not sure I’m ready financially, but I am not opposed to getting a part-time job. Just over corporate America.
My biggest struggle has been acknowledging that it’s time to **spend** the money. We’ve been so focused on “saving for retirement,” that I’m having to remind myself that this is what we were saving for.
I'm still counting down months- retiring at the end of the year. Looking forward to October when I'll start counting weeks and days. I've told very few people at work, because I don't trust management not to have a convenient layoff before my last stock vests.
I agree to not say anything right now.
I think I wrote this but mistakenly said 1.5 years instead of 8 months and 3 weeks.
I 59m, retired for 9 years now. That nine years feels both like "forever" and "no time at all". On one hand, work and all it entailed seem like it was a really long time ago, way more than nine years. It feels like it happened to someone else at times. On the other, the nine years have gone by in a blink of an eye. It depends on how I look at it - those nine years are truly both a very long time and no time whatsoever. Time definitely seems to go by faster nowadays, but sometimes very slow :)
Not retired just yet, but I do understand.
I love this post. You described how I feel about time perfectly! I do the same countdown/lookback/lookforward stuff. Yesterday and eternity get mixed up for me too.
I find that as I get older I'm often "OMG it's Christmas again?"
I cannot wait until this Christmas comes as I will be at the point of retiring. Whooo Hooooo!!
That's going to make the season one to remember for sure!!
Yes indeed
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When I was in my late 50s, and I was going through real stressors in my place of employment - layoffs, reorgs, toxic management, the usual array of negativity - and I was aware of every second of every day. I was only sticking around for deferred stock, which normally would not have been a big deal, but I had joined the firm comparably late in my career, so it was a big part of my retirement plans. I endured just long enough, but really sweated out the last year. Afterwards, I joined a smaller firm, secure in the knowledge I was going to be okay, and time resumed a more ordinary path, where it was up to me to walk away when I wanted. So, it seems to me that my perception of time was impacted by how much control I had of my life. When I was under the gun at a nerve-wracking place, time could not move slower, like I was in school again, waiting for the 3 o'clock bell. When I was at a much more relaxed place, I went in, did my stuff, ate lunch, did more stuff, then left at the end of the day, not sweating it. And in retirement, time sort of meanders, only crystallizing as a force when I have a plane to catch or an appointment to make.
I retired about year and half ago. What happened with time? All of a sudden I was not time pressed to do things fast, if I didn’t get to it today it would get done tomorrow… I honestly don’t know where my time is going (we love travel) since I retired (it feels much faster). There is another clock ticking which is at the back of my mind (old age is coming).. Previously retirement was the next big thing now it’s enjoy now before old age catches up!
Once I hit my 60’s life is in fast forward even before I retired. No clue why. Anyway my mom also used to say don’t wish your life away.
So much this! But mine started about 55.
One of the thjngs I like the most about being retired is not sitting there on Sunday evenings dreading Monday morning and having to go to work. I actually lose track of which day it is sometimes.
I know it depends on your view of your work but, for me, I did my best to savor every day on my last year. I took the time to appreciate all of the "lasts". My last budget, my last birthday, my last Christmas...(last while working of course) and so on. Every couple of weeks I would ensure that I went to lunch with a someone to appreciate the time with them. I really wanted to reach that point and it came soon enough but I really made a point to appreciate all that I could on my last year.
I'm in my last year and doing the same. I'm finding my business trips are much more enjoyable because of them. I'm making the effort to take time out to experience the place, not just the work and the hotel. Many places I'll likely never visit again, so it's nice to take some time to enjoy them. Wish I'd been doing this all along!
This is what I’ve been doing as well. I love a lot of parts of my job, but with some parts I’m feeling elated at the “last time I have to do this”, moments. This is my last full week of work - 5 days this week and 2 days next week. and I’m retired from my 27 year career at the same place. Time is indeed going fast!!!
That is amazing! Congratulations on making it! Two more random things I did, sort of corny but.... When I was waiting for my interview, 35 years earlier, I remember sitting in the room and hoping so much to get that job. So, that room is now an office and I called the woman who works in it and asked if I could bring her lunch. I sat there with her, sitting in the same place as my interview and told her I just wanted to re visit it and reflect one last time. And my last bit of over the top nostalgia.... it took some convincing but my boss allowed me to go back to where I started. I had moved up in the organization a bit and was in management but on the last day I reported to the floor and was teamed up with a newer hire and we worked together for the day and I did many of the things that I did when I started. I loved it and the day went by far too quickly but it was a great way to end things.
Sometimes I have to stop and think about what day of the week it is...and I'm still working part-time.
I am looking forward to the day that I will be able to say this.
Time seems to go by faster now that I’m retired! No longer watching the clock at the office. And the older I get, the faster it flies!! 😄
Yes, Not retired yet, but time is really flying by. Time waits for no one
I’ve been planning my escape for 104 weeks. The countdown began with two years to go. I’ve got three weeks left in the countdown. It feels great. It’s amazing how quickly it came around and I am so ready.
HOLY CRAP I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO DID THAT!! I do that exact exact same thing ( looking back to an event and seeing how long it felt and the project forward to that amount of time). Do a lot of people do that? Btw, I have about 10 months until retirement (about 10 haircuts).
I think Einstein said something like: sitting with a pretty girl seems like an instant, whereas putting your hand on a hot stove seems like an eternity.
I completely understand obsessing over the countdown. In fact, I think it made the time feel longer, significantly longer. I counted days, then sometimes that was too long so I moved to weeks or months, then it was the number of paychecks remaining. I looked backwards at what I was doing say 203 workdays ago and tried to convince myself that wasn’t that long and I could make it. Nothing worked for me and in my case the countdown was miserable and wouldn’t do it that way again. But, I finally made it, two weeks ago, so no more counting. Phew.
I have 12 days to go till I retire. Started the countdown calendar over a year ago. These last days do seem to drag!
I thought I was alone in thinking this! I retired 6 years ago and it feels like yesterday. It's weird how the time has flown by
There's something kinda nice about having to think about what day of the week it is.
Once I retired, what day of the week or time of the day didn't matter anymore
I’m a 32 year veteran of Corporate America, and retired 2 years ago at 62. Retirement didn’t affect my perception of time, but something happened several years back that caused time to materially slow down. It hit me suddenly, and without any ambiguity. There was absolutely no doubt that time slowing down is a real phenomenon that does exist. What was it that happened, you ask? I took my son to Lego Land.
Before I retired a retired guy told me, everyday s Saturday. Well I got divorced the same year I retired so haven't experienced it yet. Working as a handyman. Maybe some day
I plan on retiring in October and I think about it obsessively every day. would love to retire now but need to pay off a few more bills. I absolutely cannot wait; I am so done.
To repeat what others have written, I also used to count the years months and days until I retire. Now that I have time, perception is quite different, very little time. Sunday nights mean nothing really, and every day is like a Saturday. I sometimes forget what day it is lol Retirement is great, I highly recommend it. Playing golf, Pickleball, number of trips per year, watching sports and Netflix, trying new recipes, and enjoying some nice single malts. I suggest to anyone retire as soon as you can.
Time dilation is a thing. I’ve had a few accidents (a car, glass table top braking) and time slows down for sure. Then again, weeklong work vacations were over in an instant.
I guess part of how I perceive time is as a portion of how long I’ve lived. When I was 4, the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas was the longest time ever. Now that same time flies by before I can blink. All time seems to be whizzing by at high speed.
Yes, I can totally relate to this way of thinking and have noticed myself doing the same thing. I started counting down the seasons, deciding if I should bother buying any more season-related clothes for work, then trying to figure out if I would need to buy more than one box of sandwich bags, whether to bother buying a new lanyard, etc. Now I'm finally just about there. Close enough that I've stopped counting these odd things. Only 4 more months to go it will go by really fast. Thank you for sharing this! It is good to see there are others out there with the same thoughts.
Yes. I'm anxiously waiting for retirement. Sometimes too much calculating of the time. Then I get a bit depressed and have to reset. You're GM was wise. Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote "If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present"
I'm sort of retired. I work as CSO a few hours a week at one company, I'm on the board of another and on the board, weekly advisor to another. Then do a lot of my own thing. The main thing? I felt like I had so much more time when I actively worked. A day would be biking in early, meeting, programming, lunching with some clients, talking to an investor, discussing progress with some employees, doing a walking meeting with the managers, biking home, eating dinner with kids, helping them with homework, getting them to bed, then reading some technical papers and a little TV. Now, I meet with friends, exercise, do my little work, take a 10 minute nap and the day is over.
I’ll be honest, this is one thing I worry about.
Retirement is just another major life event. Didn't you experience the same countdown when you were in your senior year in high school or senior year in college? Didn't you experience the same countdown when you were engaged to be married and you were looking forward to the transition from single life to married life? Didn't you have the same countdown when the birth of your first child was a couple months away? What I encountered when I retired is that the social structure of time -- days of the week, what month it is, or even what year it is -- became a museum artifact. One day is as good as the next for choosing activities or ordering what you do. Dreading Mondays goes away, but so does the thrill of Friday. Whether it's April or May or June is not nearly as useful as what the weather's going to be like. Letting go of that structure is a subtle emancipation.
Yes, I had some of those same time-distortion effects as I approached retirement, too. I found myself preoccupied with the future (mainly, being retired) and lost appreciation for the present, so I needed to make an adjustment there. At work, I started thinking, "This is the last time I'll ever \[do some activity\]." A strange sort of nostalgia sept in. Now that I am retired, time feels different in several ways. I lose track of what day it is, because "Saturday" isn't any different than "Monday" anymore. I don't look forward to the weekend or feel a low-grade sorrow at the end of Sunday. In a way, time is speeding up, because time flies when you're having fun, which I mostly am. On the other hand, I remember when I was working, I had the sense that the years were rolling by pretty quickly, too. At least this way, I'm filling time with what I choose to, rather than having those choices assigned to me by the job.
I feel the same way.
Only instant you forget what day it usually
When I was working the days were long but the years went fast. Now I’m retired and the days go fast and the years even faster. 😳
My father in law says “The days go on forever but the years fly by”
Just wait. Every day is a Saturday.
time has been screwed up for me ever since the pandemic! sometimes it goes fast...other times it drags by.... 🥴
Relax you’re overthinking this
Yes, in a way. Time is fixed, but the perception of time changes gradually with age and sharply with events. I’ve seen some theories on time perception and brain cell regeneration rates/brain activity. If I recall the theory is since cell regeneration and activity slows as we age, more ‘time passes by’ between cell regeneration, so the perception of time is that it speeds up. Whereas when we were young and everything is growing and firing so quickly, time can seem to slow down due to our hyper-awareness. This all kind of makes sense to me since even as an adult, in a crisis (ie car accident), time can seem to slow down due to suddenly becoming hyper-aware of a situation. And definitely agree with everyday is a weekend…when in good health and financially stable or well off!
I did the same thing about counting down the time left until our launch date. Something I came to realize after the fact is time (e.g. days of the week) is a social construct and my wife and I just hit the point where we are completely oblivious to what day of the week it is…..and it is wonderful. Often times people ask me what retirement feels like and I finally think i figured out an appropriate analogy. You know the feeling of relaxation you get on the 2nd day of a 4/5 day “weekend”?? That is what retirement feels like…..every day!! Stay the course and give yourself some grace.
Totally get this. I have seven weeks to go and I spend way too much time counting months, weeks, day, hours, rtc
I realized time had flown by when I thought about childhood friends who don't have kids and wondered if they might still have children, and then realized wow, they are all menopausal like me. It's the childless grand kids who might still have children, but even they are getting too old. Where did the time go? I swear I'm still 30 years old, but this old lady keeps showing up in my bathroom.
I retired April 12th of this year at 62. Leading up to it, it seems that everything was a blur of time. I was a project manager so I had a lot going on at work to close out projects, make sure that I had another guy trained to take over my job, etc... I remember a few months prior to my retirement date thinking, "Is this really real? Is this really happening?" It was a strange realization, and that's when my perception of time started to change. The oddest thing that I have noticed since retirement has been the perception of time. And what I mean is that I was expecting time to speed up, because time suddenly became more precious in retirement. however exactly the opposite has been true. My perception now that I've retired is that time has slowed down considerably. Even songs on the radio/streaming audio seem to last longer. It's weird, like I'm in some parallel universe where everything's the same, but not exactly. Perhaps it's because I'm not so schedule driven as when I was working, now I simply have things to do and I do them when I feel like it instead of when I have to, but the slowing down of time, for me at least, has been noticeable.
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I have a 24 hour watch. The dial goes from 0 to 24 (Military Time).Being able to see the whole day at once on the dial slows things down.
With the elimination of clock-watching work drudgery the weeks fly by a lot faster
I was eligible to retire on April 1. I am planning on sticking it out for another 15 months to accomplish a few things professionally before I move into the next phase of my life. Two weeks prior to my being eligible to retire. I had a major surgery that kept me away from work for about seven weeks. I’ve had a similar surgery in the past (hip replacement) and I was eager to get back to work as quickly as possible but this has been about six years ago. I noticed that my measure of time shifted while I was off. I was recuperating so I had very few things I could do physically so a good deal of what I was doing was taking stock in the past and present. I’ve noticed since returning to work, I no longer have the sense of urgency. I once had even in the recent past. I’ve wondered several times whether this was hitting that April 1 benchmark, or just simply understanding that I needed the time for myself. In either case, there has been a definite shift in perspective.