Dear LPG,

I strongly believe that we retired people are regarded as the ones with lots of time on our hands by the younger members of our families.  They often don’t say it directly but you can tell. 

In my experience, retirement comes in phases.  There is the stage that we all anticipate the most as we make plans a year or two before the big day arrives.   We look forward to that holiday we planned and could never spare the time for while working; a really long rest with nothing to rush for and doing some of the things that we never succeeded in doing because work always got in the way.  I know that I had a plan for being able to go back to being in complete control of my time, but it never quite works out that way.

Before you know it your children, nieces and nephews are getting their Amazon parcels delivered to your house because they know you will be there, or they start asking you to babysit or pick the children up from school if you live close enough.  Or you might get involved with a charity or club and take on more than you planned to and, before you know it you are as busy as you ever were.

I always think that the advantage for a pensioner is that they can choose what to do and what not to do because the consequences are not as extreme when something is missed.   Not doing something results in fewer people enforcing ultimatums.  

But the next question still remains. When it all gets too much, how do you work out what needs to be given up so that what is left gets done better.

I heard someone suggest the following solution.   Firstly, you need to categorise your tasks into three groups; the things you have to do, the things you have chosen to do to help others and the things you want to do.  Then look at each task individually and ask a few questions about why you really see it as your responsibility to do them.

Start with, ‘will doing it result in a good outcome for you or someone else?’   Then comes a harder one, ‘Are you looking for any recognition or prestige that will result having done the task?’  Next work out the honest answer to, ‘Could someone else do this particular thing as well as you even though they might approach it differently?’   Then finally you should be able to deduce that answer to the ultimate question, ‘Does it have to be you that does it?’

As we leave an era where Covid-19 restrictions have also been restrictions on every other aspect of our lives, many of us have been separated from many of those tasks that made life so busy but that time is coming to an end now.  As we return to life as we knew it, and before we find ourselves overdoing it again, checking how much we do might be the way forward and the time to stand back and take a good look at what we do and why we do it is now.

Some pensioners have too much time on their hands while many others cannot keep up with their schedules.   Making time to do what you have to do and what you want to do is so important.  Striking the happy medium needs to be the way forward…

WB, Lewisham