The Good Part and the Bad Part
About the Author: Rebecca Dutton is a former occupational therapist and stroke survivor. Her blog Home After a Stroke was rated as the world’s top 10 stroke related blogs by the Medical News Today. You can find the original post and other blog posts by Rebecca at http://homeafterstroke.blogspot.com/ Find the original post at: {{original_post_url}}
The good part about retirement is that you can do a task tomorrow. The bad part about retirement is that you can do a task tomorrow. When you are at work, the demands of the job often dictate what you should do when. You walk in the door and may not have to think about what to do next until you go home. The biggest challenge of retirement for me was having to make decisions about what to do all day long.
One part of the solution for me is having a morning routine – make coffee, do a crossword puzzle, go on the internet, fix breakfast, brush my teeth. This means I do not have to think until I am awake. My 2nd strategy was to make To-Do lists. However, they made me feel guilty because I did so few tasks on the list. Next I tried doing what ever I FEEL like doing. Unless I have a planned outing, I realized it does not matter if I do laundry in the morning, afternoon, or evening. Using emotions instead of logic to guide my choices works better for me. It does not matter why I want to do something. Doing what makes me happy helps maintain my momentum.
Some days I am busy until dinner time. Some days I have a 2 to 3 hour gap with nothing to do. But every day is not a mind-numbing chore from morning to night.