Have You Started Thinking About Retirement? | Women at Work | Podcast

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Amy G, how do you think you'll introduce yourself when you're no longer a writer and contributing editor to HBR and you're no longer a co-host of this podcast and all the other things you do? I know you'll always be an author, but how else do you think you'll describe yourself?

Um, [laughs] is it bad that that question makes me wanna cry? Because [laughs]

[laughs]

I, I, I don't, I don't have an answer. I mean, I don't, I don't know. And I know I'll have to do a lot of work between now and that moment, whenever it is, to actually figure out what is my identity as a person post all of these work identities.

Yeah.

How about you? How do you think about it?

Well, God, it kinda sends a chill through me.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm a lot closer to that moment than you are. And, you know, I've thought about what I would do. I, I so love what I do now, the idea of not doing it kinda scares me.

Right.

And then, you know, and then I, I sort of, I tantalize myself in quiet moments with what I could do, you know?

Mm.

I could volunteer at a, at the animal shelter where we got one of my dogs.

Right.

I could teach, as if, you know, somehow anyone could go teach.

You could. I'll take that course.

All right. Well, you're very generous. I could always continue to edit. But yeah, it feels like I've, I've got a lot of puzzle pieces, but I'm not sure they're all from the same puzzle.

Right.

I don't know.

That image of the puzzle pieces and some hunches, right? Like, "Oh, I could do this or I could do this," but not a plan. That makes sense to me. I'm, I'm not even at the puzzle piece yet. I'm tightly gripping to my current identity and can't really imagine it going away.

Yeah. And neither can I, and I, I probably, given my age-

[laughs]

... should start imagining it going away. [laughs]

[laughs]

You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Bernstein.

I'm Amy Gallo. And clearly, we haven't thought enough about what comes after we stop working, or come to grips with how we'll think of ourselves. Because retirement, even semi-retirement, changes us.

Maybe you're in the same boat, in your early 60s or late 40s, either avoiding the subject or feeling uneasy about it. The experts say we should actually be thinking about