by Mary Lloyd,  CEO Mining Silver

As we count down the last hours of 2008, let’s look at how well WE did, rather than just lamenting the horrid year it’s been in general.    That action is particularly important if you’re not currently in the workforce.  One of the things we lose when we leave work behind is the regular assessment of our own performance that comes as part of any job.

It may not be an official “performance appraisal,” but the work environment has ways of letting you know whether you are doing well or not.  Maybe it’s the difficult customer who will only work with you (oh, joy!).  Maybe it’s the stack of papers graded or the sleeping toddlers in the nap room.  Maybe it’s the bottom line.  Maybe it’s the novel you’ve gotten far enough to leave in the bottom drawer to “steep.”  Maybe it’s the bottom of the pot you just scrubbed.

Maybe it’s billable hours, projects completed, tons of fish processed, or total sales.  Whatever it is, cherish it if you have it and look for a way to replicate it if you don’t.  Work gives us vital information about how well we are doing.  It has a lot of room for built-in feedback.  And that’s precious stuff .

Those little everyday review processes give you something you really can’t thrive without–a sense of your own competence.  So you really DO want some kind of evaluation process in your life, even if paid employment isn’t currently part of the picture.

If we were doing this right from infancy, we’d be using clearly defined personal benchmarks that go beyond the current work setting as we measure our own merit.  This is rare though and hard to maintain.  My younger son used to do it via goal setting, at least before he got sucked into corporate America.  Each January, he’d rework his life goals and commit to what he wanted to make happen that year.  He’d work on making those things happen throughout the year.  Then each December, he’d do his “final reckoning” for that year’s goals and start the process all over.  Goal setting works well for young lions.

It’s a little harder to buy in on once you end up the non-rational depths of personal reality.  What good is a goal if your best strategy for the situation is to surrender to the Divine and accept life as it unfolds?  Goals serve as beacons, but they can lead you onto the rocks if they tilt because of a poor foundation.

We need something to tell us how well we are doing.  That’s why we love games and those little tests in the Sunday paper.  We need information to confirm our own value.  We seek it even if it’s in some lame game show assessment of what you know.

Sometimes, we don’t even reach for that.  In retirement, we end up leaning on what we used to do to give ourselves validation.   Between jobs, it’s even harder not to rely on the past accomplishments to feel good about yourself.  But history is a weak second as raw material for personal worth.  Authenticity demands you stand tall on what you’re doing NOW.  How do you do that without a title?  Without the regular paycheck? Without the business cards and the company car?

This is the perfect time of year to create something better to take your cues from.  It’s a simple but powerful two step evaluation.  Assess your life with the following two questions.   They are unquenchable signal fires for your personal worth, regardless of the situation.

1.  WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO ME?

2.  WHAT AM I DOING ABOUT IT?

Your answers pretty much sum up the quality of your life.  If family is important to you, but the vast majority of your time is spent at a job you hate so you can buy stuff you don’t need, you lose,.  Even if your bonus was six figures  If you value learning and growth, but haven’t explored a new idea in six months, you lose. Even if you already hold a PhD in astrophysics and are working on the space shuttle.

To make life worthwhile, regardless of what the economy, the culture, and your favorite sports team are doing, there must be a strong link between what you believe is important and how you spend your time.

If you’re coming from your own truth, what’s important doesn’t stay behind when you leave work.  You take that commitment with you, no matter what the circumstance.  Lay off… botched bailout..organizational implosion–all are temporary obstacles if you keep your focus on doing something about what you think is important.

There is stength in doing the difficult, but only if it’s grounded in your belief that it’s important to get done.

By Mary Lloyd, CEO Mining SIlver

When we are yearning for the brass ring called “retirement” nothing about what’s going on at work seems like it will be hard to relinquish.  The stress level?  You can have it.  The people who aren’t pulling their weight?  What bliss to see them in the rear-view  mirror.

But there are a few things you are going to miss.  One of them is access.  Typically, you’ve spent decades doing this work all week, every week–except for vacation.  You’ve learned a lot about that work.  You’ve solved a lot of problems to get it done.  It’s a content area, where, much as you probably don’t want to believe me, you are going to continue to have interest.  You might even be thinking of “doing some consulting” in that arena.

Neither of those possibilities is a bad thing.  But be ready for one of those little surprises that come with  retirement–your access to information changes.   When you retire, you exit the loop, whether you want to or not.  You aren’t part of trying to get the problem solved so you won’t be privy to new information, be it a new product coming out from a key supplier or the exciting stuff on the horizon that’s laid out in the ten year plan.

Congratulations on your retirement!  Please wait for the press release about what we are doing now.

You don’t think it will be that way for you, right?  You have good friends there.  They will keep you up to date about what the company is doing.  You are part of the key industry associations.  They will keep you abreast of whatever’s going  Maybe.  At least for a little while.

But as your status as “retired” becomes more accepted,  your access to key information becomes more restricted.  You have become….”one of them”–one of all the people who are NOT a part of getting the current work done.

If you did a good job of building alliances and maintaining business relationships, you may still be able to tap into the information channel.  But two things will be different.  First, the information you get will not be cutting edge.  Your friends can’t afford to tell you until things are pretty far along–because you are now an outsider.

Second, the farther you get from your work days, the less you will be perceived as a resource or sounding board.   Even if what you know and can do is better than anything they currently have on board, the tendency is to use the people on site to solve the problem.  You hear less and less and your friends who as still at work turn to the people in the cubicles near them for advice and help you used to give.

There’s nothing wrong with you or them, although there’s plenty wrong with the system.  The assumption that we lose our knowledge of the content area and ability to solve a complex problem within months of when we retire is robbing us of a huge amount of talent we desperately need to be competitive as nation.  There is so much we could be doing without committing to the shackles of a full time, all-the-time job.

Eventually, the lunacy of kissing off the last thirty years of people’s lives as “unproductive” is going to change.  But it’s going to take time.  So what can you do to maintain your access to the important information about what’s going on in the meantime?

• Be gracious about sharing what you know. If those who are trying to learn what you did so well know they can ask you questions and get good answers, your image as a resource will remain strong.
• When you do help, learn all you can about what’s changing. Your value as a mentor depends on knowing how to handle CURRENT situations.   Ask clarifying questions to be sure you understand the nuances of the new problem.
• Whenever someone calls for information from you, get some from them, too.  Don’t be shy about asking about what’s happening and what’s new.
• Solve the problem in the here and now. Telling someone  facing the problem for the first time “Hell, we solved that by doing ___ back in 1978.” is asking for the door.  The current solution may well be the same as what you came up with then, but referencing it just reminds people that you are not part of the current effort–and not entitled to all the information those in the loop get.
• Be a mentor. If the company has a formal mentor program, check it out.   Often these programs provide access to information that would otherwise be at your own expense or not available to you as a retiree at all.

Keeping active in the parts of your work you enjoy is a key part of a satisfying retirement  Find a way to keep doing what you love.

By Mary Lloyd, CEO, Mining Silver

When you retire, you have more time–unless you’ve stuffed your days full of whatever comes along so that you can reclaim that all-too-familiar feeling of being too busy to breathe.  What other people expect of all your “extra” time, especially friends and family, can get dicey though.  And the disappointments that come from loved ones not spending time we thought they’d want to spend with us can also be pretty painful.  So let’s take a look at another piece of how retirement changes things:  time with others.

Finding time when you’re retired and your loved ones aren’t is just plain difficult.  The extremes of not dealing with this issue are feeling like a doormat because you’re spending all your time doing what these other people need done or feeling like an orphan because they’re all away doing something else.  They’re among the most unhappy experiences of this stage of life.  Both are avoidable.  They develop when we aren’t paying attention, either to who we really are, what we really need, or both.  So pay attention–to yourself.

We all want to help. especially when it makes difference to someone you love.  But you don’t want to be taken for granted or taken advantage of.  Yes, most of us thrive on being needed.  But that’s different than being expected to carry a load that really isn’t yours.  Taking care of grandkids full-time without pay is being taken advantage of (unless you have a place to live by doing it).  Carrying a heavy volunteer load at church because “You have more time,” is being taken for granted.

Maybe you do and maybe you don’t have “more time.”  Maybe you’re spending every waking moment learning how to build kites–or Not So Big Houses.  Others don’t know what you are really doing with your time–they just assume since you aren’t working, you aren’t doing anything.  And that doing what they need is better than doing nothing.  Don’t agree with them by default.  Speak your truth.  If you want to spend your time that way, say “Yes.”  If not, there’s another word.

“No.”

“No.  I don’t have time for that.”  Or maybe “No, I have other things that are higher priority for me to work on right now.”  In truth, there’s only one word you need to do this well… “No.”  A sweet smile.  A shrug.  And you’ve re-declared your freedom.

It’s harder with aging parents who need a significant amount of help.  Yep.  Those tasks have to be done.  And you might need to be the one to do them.  But don’t do it all if there are others who can share the load.  And don’t buy the guilt trip if anyone suggests that you should do it all because “you aren’t working.”

The bottom line on this challenge is WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO DO?  Be honest.  And then be ready to stand firm while others try to convince you otherwise.  Harriet Lerner does a great job of laying out how to do this in her book The Dance of Connection if you need some pointers.

The other end of the spectrum–when loved ones don’t have time for you–involves dealing more effectively with yourself.  What you are telling yourself about what should be happening?  We retire to “spend more time with the family.”  Too often, “family” is off doing other things and doesn’t have time to spend with us.  What do you do then?

For starters, don’t take it personally.  Young lives are complex and hectic.  Important relationships that aren’t part of the everyday scene can get ignored without any intention of doing so.   When you are available anytime, “tomorrow” seems like a a better day to plan something.

Take a careful look at the possibility this is the case if you are thinking of moving to “be near the kids.”  You move…they don’t have time…you don’t have your old circle of friends.  Pretty soon, the high point of your day is Seinfeld reruns.  If you still want to do it, please start with a trial run.  Find a furnished apartment and spend three or more months where they live.  Then be honest about what you experienced.   Does how it went match what you need?  As a bonus, you can start making friends in the new locale, which will make the transition easier if you do decide to move.

What other people think of your time once you retire can be pretty wrong-headed.  They think they know and they don’t.  Tell them the truth about what you have time for and are interested in.  About what you really want to do with them.  And if they don’t have the time you want to spend with them, no moping!  There are great people who do.  Go out and find them.

One of the biggest pluses of retirement–at least before we get there–is that we have 100% control over what we do with our time.  But once we have that control, what happens?

All too often, it translates into stuffing anything that comes along into our days and calendars to make sure we are “busy.”  The very thing that we yearned to get away from becomes the modus operandi all over again.  I cringe when people brag “I’m so busy now that I’m retired that I don’t know how I ever had time to work.”  Is that what you retired to do?  Be “busy?”

Going from “not enough time” to “all the time in the world” is one of the big changes that comes with retirement.  As we move through our career years, that eventuality becomes more and more exciting.  But once we get to actually make the transition, an interesting thing happens.  We start to recreate the “crazy busy” of work life with all kinds of commitments and involvement.

Understanding why we do this might be good.  I think it’s a case of seeking the familiar.  We know how to be busy.  We’re not so good at relaxing.  We might also be subconsciously resisting the assignment of “doing nothing” that the current cultural mindset assumes for this stage of life.  (I personally detest that role.)

The first weeks of retirement are easy.  You sleep as long as you want.  You linger over your coffee and actually notice how wonderful it smells and tastes.   You go out in your yard and really see what’s there.  You putter with a plant that needs help or a errant brick at the edge of the patio.  You start to look at travel brochures or check out websites.  But after a while, all this time becomes unnerving.  Then comes the  “I have to fill it with something!” reaction.  That’s when we start saying “yes” to everything that comes along.

“Do you want to join my book club?”  Sure!

“My health club is running a special promotion.  Do you want to join?”  Yeah, that might be fun.

“The volunteer fire department needs volunteers, are you interested?”  I’d love to.

Never mind that you are dyslexic, loathe being a gym rat, and faint at the sight of flames.

So is there a better way?  Yep.

The first thing is to know what you really like to do and where you truly want to put your time. So if you haven’t done that part already, some of that newfound time needs to be spent on learning more about yourself.  Really.

This kind of discovery appears selfish to many, but it’s the kindest thing you can do for yourself, your family, and your community.  When you know what you like and want to do, you end up doing that instead of “anything that comes along.”  People who are doing what they love are happier and healthier.  Plus the community gets the benefit of that focus if you decide to work in some way, either as a volunteer or for pay.

The second piece of a good time management strategy for retirement is to leave room for the unexpected. We need to learn to leave gaps on the calendar for starters.  That, in and of itself, can be scary to many of us.  A blank space is so….empty!  Taking an hour or two might be relatively easy.  But how about a day?  A week?

Try scribbling “save for as yet to be determined adventure” over an entire day.  Then, when that day arrives, do what sounds like fun at that moment.   If you’re really gutsy, try a whole week at it.  Then watch how you actually use that time.  Do you sleep longer?  Read more?  Watch TV that you’re not really interested in because you don’t know what else to do?  If it’s this last one, go back and read the previous paragraph again.  You need to know more about yourself so you can focus on what you truly find enjoyable.

The third step is to find out how you like to structure your time. Predictability is a good thing in the right dose.  All of us need some amount of structure.  How much is your call.  Do you need a morning routine to get your day going well?  Or is it better for you to start the day a different way every day.  (I was going to say “morning” but maybe you don’t get up in the morning.)  Some of us like standing commitments, like a bridge club or golf tee time.  Some of us run from that stuff and always will.  Either way works, as long as it’s your way.

There’s one last piece to this time thing.  How to mesh yours with everybody elses that you care about.  That’s a big set of issues and we’ll save that for next time.

So much changes when we retire.  Our roles in society.  The structure of our time.  The things people ask of us.  The way we set up the week.  How we see ourselves and how society sees us.  What our families expect of us–and think of us.  And on and on and on.  Yet there is little available to get us ready for all these transitions.  As a start at remedying that,  I’m going to explore  some of them in posts from time to time over the next few months.

Before we retire, we look longingly at what is on the sometimes-way-too-distant horizon–the chance to give up all we are doing now and just STOP.  To retire.  When we are running too fast from thing to thing with too much to do and not enough time to get it done, the appeal of this “do nothing” future is unparalleled.

Don’t be fooled.  It’s a mirage.

Doing nothing is no more satisfying that doing too much.  The trick is to do enough and to do it on the right things.  This is where the real treasure of retirement lies.  But it’s not at all like the “do nothing unless I want to” fantasy that we usually leave work with.

What happens when we no longer have to get the work we’ve been paid to do for years done?  If you’ve been doing a job you hated, the loss is truly liberating.  But if there is anything about that work that gave you satisfaction, you will find yourself feeling less about yourself and wondering why.

Odd as it sounds, part of the problem is that we no longer have the authority of the job we did so well.  Yes, authority.  Even if you have been cleaning motel rooms for a living, there was value in what you did and you had the responsibility and the authority to get it done.  You had a role to play that went beyond  “whatever I feel like.”  You had things that were expected of you. And you knew how to do them and do them well.  When you give that up, you might want to put some thought into how you are going to retain your sense of relevance.  And your sense of competence.

For those of us who were in jobs that weren’t particularly satisfying, that “something else” might be a bit easier to latch onto.  My dad spent over 40 years making paper for Kimberly Clark.  What he really wanted to do was write, sketch, and paint pictures.  When he left work–a couple years early because of health problems, these interests carried him the rest of his life–another 24 years.

My grandfather was a different story.  When he retired, he sat down. And pretty much stayed there.  Whenever we went to visit grandma and grandpa, he was in that easy chair, watching television.  He retired from an office job but had owned a successful commercial fishing business earlier in his career years.  He too lived another twenty plus years after he retired.  I use the term loosely though.  What he did with his days was so uninspired that it almost seemed like he had died but forgot to stop breathing.

This is a key piece of why the “extended vacation” model isn’t going to get you what you need as retirement.  It just doesn’t work to be “on vacation” for twenty years.  You lose your sense of direction and your sense of time when you are “gone” for that long.  Remember how hard it is to figure out what day of the week it is when you don’t have things you have to do?  Well, don’t build a life out of that!

Okay, so if you are ready to leave what you are doing and have no idea what about it you are going to miss–and what you want to do instead–does that mean you need to keep working?  Not at all.  It means you need to start paying attention to yourself so that you can start to remedy that information deficiency.

We all have interests, whether we acknowledge them or not.  We all have skills and abilities that give us a leg up on doing certain things.  We have longings that allow us room to find a new source of “being an authority.”  It might be as the builder of doll houses and it might be as the builder of Habitat for Humanity houses, but if it’s you, honoring it will give you the greatest thrill of your life.

So give up the rat race if you can and it’s time.  Give up the workload that keeps you from the rest of what you enjoy.  But find things to learn and become good at that make you have that sense of authority, that feeling that “Yes, I do know a lot about this and I’d be happy to help you with it.”