Time Management and Retirement.

I have been retired now for over 10 years, I officially stopped drawing my monthly salary in June 2010. It was a major change in my normal day to day life. 

I started work soon after leaving school at the age of 16; for the next 35+ years I worked the normal Monday to Friday work life style with the exception of doing shift work for a few years in my early 20's. 

Working shift work taught me a lot of things actually, I had to adapt my life to my shift patterns. 

My pattern was based on a five week repeating shift pattern of 7 nights, four days off, 7 days, 4 days off, 7 evenings followed by up to 7 days off and then start again on nights. I say 7 days off, there was two short days to make up your hours in that 7 days off, I would often book those as annual leave to get the full 7 days off, before recommencing nights on the Monday night.  

On night shifts I had to move my sleeping pattern to during the day, have a semi normal evening before going to work for 23:00. Evening shifts shifted my going to sleep time to later than normal because I wouldn't get home until about 23:30, but I could sleep in the following morning and have the day to myself. I used to hate day shifts! It was the one week when I was travelling to and from work with everyone else, and the rest of the day staff were around including the bosses! The evening and night shifts we much more relaxed. 

I used to keep my shift pattern on a wall calendar, so I could plan holidays and other social occasions, I guess these days there are apps for plotting shift patterns. If I was working shifts now, I would no doubt use some form of monthly diary insert to plot my shift pattern as a quick reference planner. 

For quite a few years I used to work 'Flexi-time' this might be different company to company. Generally, there is normally a 'core-time' when you are expected to be 'at work' Core times are hours in the morning and afternoon, and generally apply Monday to Friday. But you are free to decide your start and finish time and your lunch time break outside of the core hours but with a requirement that you take at least a 30 minute break for lunch. 

With Flexi-time you were allowed to build up a credit or debit of hours every 28 days and either take that time off without booking annual leave, or in the case of excess credit book it as overtime. I mastered this scheme, working slightly longer hours each day to avoid the rush hour on the roads and then taking the time off in conjunction with annual leave to maximise the time we could spend at our house here in France. My colleagues always wondered how I managed to take so much time off, I left it until my last week to tell them the secret!!! 

I was using a simple spreadsheet to record my start and finish times each day, this would then calculate the credit or debit hours for me for each 28 day period. I was able to micro-manage my work hours to maximise the time I could take off! Without realising it I was planning for time off and making the most of work/life balance

When I retired I thought that would be the end of regimented time keeping and managing my time, how wrong was I. In some ways it has continued, but in a much more flexible pattern than before. There are elements of shift work with a huge amount of flexitime to go with it. Almost the best of both worlds I guess. 

There are regular things I do each week, so they form the sort of 'shift pattern', these tasks can be ones I do for Philofaxy, some of the domestic tasks (bins, clothes washing, shopping etc). 

The flexible tasks I include fitting in tasks for my other voluntary job with the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) these can consume full days some weeks, other times it can be just a few minutes in the day, but I need to keep on top of the admin on that 'job', otherwise I suddenly find I have a backlog of applications to deal with!. 

One thing I don't have to do now that I did do during my working life is record my actual work day tasks. Previously I would have to record in 15 minute intervals what project I was working on against an accounting code. 

I didn't stop work every 15 minutes, it was something I would do at the end of each day, looking back through my notebook and recording my time on as a note at the end of the day with a time sheet being filled out at the end of each week. 

Should what you spend your time on each day in retirement be as important as managing that time and planning my week? 

I think planning and managing my time is as important now as it was when I was working. Retirement has loosened the shackles a lot, I no longer have to worry about core time or credit and debit hours. I get to choose when to move away from the computer and when I can lounge around and read or when to relax etc. 

One thing I always tell people who are still of working age is to plan for your retirement. The change from a regular working week to not having a regular week in retirement can be quite a mental shock. 

I never intended to be a person who worked until they were 65 or older, I aimed to stop by the time I was 55/56 I beat that self-imposed limit by nearly 5 years! 

Try to think about what you will be doing in retirement. The first few weeks are just like a holiday, but there is no end to it! 

Philofaxy and my work for RSGB has given me some things to focus on each week, which is essential. The last thing you want to do is just sit around every day wondering what to do. There is a big difference between what I do for RSGB and Philofaxy and that helps balance things out. 

My planning requirements changed I've gone from needing to plan meeting appointments to planning medical appointments! Such is progress!! I'm more task focused now than before. Some of them are time dependent, but a lot of them are a lot more flexible. I am noting them down so I don't forget about them. 

Back in 2010/11 it took me a while to realise this change and being able to find a diary insert that worked for me. Along came Ray Blake to the rescue with his own diary inserts and the method you are now used to seeing with all of our diary inserts. I worked for a few weeks to perfect a diary insert for myself and I've been using it more or less since then. It has slowly evolved over the years, but essentially the current version is very similar to version 1.0 

Retirement isn't the only reason to review your planning methods, any change in your life can bring about the need to change. 

Doing a review of your planning needs when ever there is a change I now think is essential. The changes you make might be small, just a slightly different layout of insert might be enough. It is important to evolve your planning style, one step at a time. 

Have you ever faced a major change in the way you plan? How did you change?