iRetired — An 18-Month Review
Unlike most people (I suspect), I didn’t plan to retire per se. It was more that a set of unrelated events led me to make the decision to stop working for a living and change to just living. I don’t even have a date when I retired. I was a freelance management consultant, and when my last contract ended slightly unexpectedly, the idea of not looking for another contract started to take a fairly firm shape in my mind. Previously it had been more of an amorphous blob of an idea, as I had finally become financially independent and no longer needed to draw any regular (or, for a freelancer, irregular) income, but I wasn’t completely sure I wanted to give up the 9 to 5 as it was such a rich source of material for some of my writing.
Between the end of November 2022 and the present day, I have been in this state of semi-retirement. At 61, I’m still six years away from drawing my state pension, and I don’t want to draw against my private pensions until I need to. I don’t have any income, but over the last ten years, I’ve squirrelled away enough to support myself for a good few years. But, by heck, I’m hardly sitting back on my laurels contemplating my navel.
In a previous article, I wrote about how I was planning to live my life in this hybrid state. The idea was a mixture of writing, supporting my local museum, where I was the acting chairman, keeping relatively fit, and getting out and about to visit places in Prague and the wider Czech Republic and beyond.
In my working life, with a background in software development, I was an early adopter of agile concepts, predating the publication of the Agile Manifesto. These principles guided my own life as well as my professional life. With this in mind, it was no surprise that things wouldn’t go entirely to plan. I didn’t expect how much time I would spend doing the more work-related stuff.
I certainly haven’t had time to be bored. And, although I’ve never been one to care too much about artificial schedules and deadlines, I do somewhat miss the enforced discipline of being in a corporate environment. And perhaps I miss some of the adrenaline rushes that come with the territory of having to exist in a command and control hierarchy. My workflow has become a little too fluid at times!
What I’ve noticed is that my daily schedule is now seasonally dependent. The order I do things changes in the autumn and winter compared to the spring and summer. I find it much easier to live according to my natural circadian rhythms. My alarm remains set at 6:30 every weekday morning, but I’m usually awake before it goes off. I’ve stopped using the alarm at the weekend. It was set for 8:30, but I’ve always been up and doing things by the time it goes off.
In the winter months, when it’s still dark in the mornings, I tend to stay in bed to read the paper, headlines and social media updates on my iPad, getting up around 7:15 and having breakfast. I then have a routine of administrative stuff that I deal with, and tend to jump in the shower a bit before nine. I then do a couple of hours of work before going for lunch at 11:30. This is an indication that I have gone native in Prague, especially since the pandemic. I always used to take sandwiches to the office and eat at my desk before going for a brief walk. These days I take advantage of my local restaurant and have a main course, beer and dessert off their business menu (which costs about the same price as a beer back in the UK!). After lunch, I go for my main walk of the day — usually about an hour — and stroll down to the river and climb up the hill to the park. In the afternoon, I’ll do some more work, catch up with my emails, and spend some time doing my Czech lessons on Duolingo. I’ve also set aside time for reading in the afternoon. Around four o’clock, I’ll head off for a couple of beers and then come home and have a snack supper.
In the summer, the activities remain pretty much the same, but I prefer to go for a walk in the morning after breakfast, which then gives me a couple of hours before lunch and a full afternoon to work in.
Because all my work is voluntary and I’m not financially dependent on it, I get to choose my priorities. I also get to decide that I can do nothing if I choose to (as long as nothing critical needs to be dealt with at the museum!) Interestingly, I still get a pang of guilt if I don’t achieve my expectations for the day. I set a maximum of three expectations every morning in my Diarly journal entry. That doesn’t mean I only do a maximum of three things, but it is a simple way to ensure priority stuff gets dealt with.
Weekends are still a bit weird, though. Saturday and Sunday are mostly like the other days of the week now. If it wasn’t for the fact that almost all my friends are still working, I could happily not acknowledge the need for the weekend, other than that certain social events take place on a Saturday or Sunday. For example, the big Farmer’s Market is held down by the river every Saturday (except in the depths of winter). I go most Saturdays because even if I don’t buy much, I’d still rather support the producers directly rather than the supermarkets. It also provides me with a guaranteed hour of exercise as I walk the two-mile journey each way. Saturday is obviously a better day to socialise with friends who don’t have the luxury of not being beholden to the ‘man’! Weekend meals are different as well, as the business lunch is on weekdays only. I’ll usually cook on Saturday night; most Sundays, I have a traditional roast dinner. I love cooking and experimenting, and this is when I get to use whatever I’ve picked up at the Saturday market.
Some people may be getting concerned about the amount of time I spend in the pub! It’s where I socialise the most — all the staff are friends, and I get to practise my Czech a little. Much as I love my apartment, I do need a change of scenery from time to time, and I often take my iPadPro and write quietly in the restaurant for an hour or so.
Life is rosy after my first eighteen months of this new lifestyle. I’m keeping busy with my personal projects, we are just about to turn a huge corner with the museum, but I’ll write about that another time. I’ve learnt a lot about managing Teams, SharePoint and other office systems where before, I was just a user (who do you turn to when you are IT support, though?).
I’m eating well, exercising at about the right level, not spending too much money and keeping my cash flow within the limits I set for myself. My Czech is improving, and after two years of no live music because of Covid, it’s great to be able to go out and see bands again.
I have a small group of special friends here in Prague and in other parts of the country, and I keep getting surprise visits from old friends and acquaintances when they come to Prague, either on business or as tourists. And soon, my fiancée will also be retiring, and a whole new world will potentially open up…
Bring it on!
I am a semi-retired independent management consultant specialising in organisational change management and better Ways of Working. I’m from the UK but based in Prague in the Czech Republic. I mainly write about developing better ways of working, working in the Apple ecosystem, and my adopted home in Prague. I’m still fairly new to Medium (so please be gentle with me!), but if you’ve enjoyed this, please check out some of my other articles or even follow me if you’d like to be notified when I publish new material.