The Model That Doesn’t Exist
Nobody tells you this before you retire: the day you stop working, you’ll probably have no idea what you’re actually supposed to do next.
Not in a panicked way — just a quiet, unsettling “now what?” that nobody warned you about.
Our culture does not provide a single model for retirement.
Some think it’s non-stop travel; others, volunteering; others, time with grandchildren; and others, relaxation or hobbies.
As Dan Haylett wrote in The Retirement Fix of March 8, 2026,
“There’s no consensus, which means you’re left trying to piece together what you’re supposed to be doing by watching what everyone else is doing.”
Even academics can’t settle on what a fulfilling retirement looks like. A recent study showed no consensus among academic studies on what gives meaning in retirement.
With no model, we have to figure it out for ourselves. We look at others’ retirements to see if ours is right. But they don’t know what a good retirement looks like either.
Watching other people is the only metric we have in the absence of any cultural consensus. And what a good retirement is for them isn’t necessarily a good retirement for us.
You Can’t Plan for a Person You Haven’t Met Yet
Some think you can determine what a good retirement will look like by making a detailed plan in advance and sticking to that plan. The problem is you don’t know who you will be in retirement before you retire.
A few people seem to be able to construct a retirement plan and follow it, but often they are doing the same type of work they did when they were working. But most people find that when they retire, what they thought they’d want to do doesn’t fit who they now are.
Dan Haylett is a retirement coach and writer who has observed how people deal with the transition to retirement. He wrote,
“The people who thrive aren’t the ones with the most detailed plans — they’re the ones ‘genuinely comfortable saying, “I don’t know yet, and that’s okay,”‘ willing to start imperfectly and figure it out as they go.” The Retirement Fix, March 22, 2026.
Experiment First, Settle Later
The only effective approach is to wait until after you’re retired and then experiment to find what actually fits.
Retirement coaches Roberta Taylor and Dorian Mintzer wrote in The Couples Retirement Puzzle that to find your best retirement fit,
“It is more about exploring the possibilities for living and working differently, whether that means full-time or part-time work or consulting, volunteering, developing an encore career, pursuing interests and hobbies, or something entirely different.”
You want a retirement that fits you, not someone else. You don’t want a template that society or someone else hands you.
You’ve got to experiment with a number of things, find out what fits and keep that, and get rid of the rest.
The Upside of Not Having All the Answers
Some people might see this inability to know in advance what you’ll want to do as a negative; however, that’s not necessarily true.
I’m a planner, and I typically like having things mapped out in advance. However, life has taught me that in some circumstances, it’s better not to have everything planned, but to be open to how I feel and think in the moment.
As Anne-Laure Le Cunff writes in Tiny Experiments,
“There’s something liberating about acknowledging that you don’t know what you’ll want in the future. It opens you up to possibilities you might otherwise dismiss.”
You Can Only Discover It By Living It
Here’s what I’ve found in my own retirement: the things I was most certain I’d love turned out to be not what I really wanted to do, and the things I stumbled into unexpectedly became the best parts of my days.
You can’t know that in advance. You can only discover it by living it.
So give yourself permission to not have it figured out yet.
Stay curious. Keep experimenting.
The retirement that fits you is out there; you just haven’t finished finding it yet.
Note: I wrote this blog post myself using my own words and thoughts for the initial draft. I used AI only to suggest headlines, section headings, images and text improvements.
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