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Key points
- The three-legged stool approach provides some structure for retirement.
- How we approach retirement isn’t simply dependent on age; it's also dependent on personality.
- This last life stage can be the richest and most satisfying. It’s important to do it your own way.
At some point in a long and busy life, what’s next becomes a nagging question. Maybe you’ve done what you’ve done long enough, reached a critical mass financially, or run out of energy. Maybe you’ve encountered actual health problems, or simply verified that the birthdays have piled up to the point that they might be running out before long.
Retirement may come as a relief to some whose personalities can tolerate an open-ended or curious approach to life. It takes a certain type who can relax with the idea of an unstructured future, of a day where smelling the roses, the only activity on the calendar, provides comfort and satisfaction. But that’s not going to work for many of us.
Why is that? From an early age, we learn to plan our days, weeks, seasons, semesters, and life in general. It’s all tightly choreographed until late middle age when the progression becomes a bit murky.
But there is a strategy, called the three-legged stool approach, that provides some structure around which this life stage can be more comfortably built. Originally, this concept applied to financial planning for retirement But here I am referring to life planning, even more fundamental.
In reality, a three-legged stool offers a solid foundation. If you stand on it, your weight is evenly distributed, so it can support you. Likewise, metaphorically, if you can find three supportive elements in daily life, you will experience the feeling of stability.
More importantly, the three legs need to provide these essentials: cognitive, physical, and aesthetic stimulation. This is what I discovered when I retired and this is what I preach to those who worry about the vagueness of their future.
Planning my retirement, I designed my daily support to avoid being overwhelmed by too much time and space—a three-legged stool, though I didn’t label it as such at the time. I knew that I needed a solid infrastructure to support my daily life.
Consider Your Personality
Are you an introvert or an extravert? How we approach a life stage isn’t simply dependent on our age but on our personality, too.
Introverts, who are more comfortable learning and doing things on their own, tend to gravitate to some solitary activities—maybe gardening, crossword puzzles, or memoir writing—that might make an extravert uncomfortable, and vice versa. Extraverts are more comfortable in the company of others to learn and experience life.
Keeping in mind my personality style, I created placeholders to begin my journey. I chose daily exercise, and for me, that meant a gym membership with a commitment to use it. It also meant learning to play the cello (aesthetic and cognitive stimulation), which included daily practice and weekly lessons. It also involved writing (cognitive stimulation), a practice I’d had for many years that produced several non-fiction books and many magazine articles. If my placeholders appear to be an introvert’s choice of daily activities, it is—mostly solo.
By contrast, an extraverted friend walks and takes bike rides with friends, takes a foreign language class, and participates in a watercolor painting group. These are her three legs, but her activities all include people interactions and feedback.
Volunteer activities that occur on a regular basis—like serving in a soup kitchen, giving talks as a museum docent, or taking cooking classes—can also be perfect choices for extraverts. Just hanging out with friends on a regular basis is perfectly fine, satisfying, and necessary even for introverts.
Planned Retirement is a Relatively New Idea
For a hundred years, developmental psychologists studied the human lifespan and the stages of growth and development up until decline. They observed mostly men for at least the first half of that time frame, and how men navigated their lives—the why and the wherefore.
But when the average age of mortality was less than 50 (1900) or 65 (1950) there was little point in studying the years following retirement, either retirement from work, outside of home, or within it for most women. Until the last decade or two, the years beyond 60 were left to the imagination, not to science.
But now many of us live to 80 years, and increasingly beyond. Developmental psychologists haven’t entirely caught up with this trend yet—but at least in the 21st century, some have paid attention to the final third of life for men and women.
Eric Erickson, the most famous 20th-century life-span theorist, concentrated on the years through middle age. He believed that the last two life stages were critical in rounding out a person’s life. He called this stage generativity, which is in keeping with what many of us know intuitively: that our later-in-life mission is to pass on our know-how and wisdom.
It is a time for taking stock of who you are and what you know and begin to share it with the next generation. But as you do so, the unfinished business of self-development is uncovered and unrealized hopes and wishes become apparent. Time is running out—time to take risks and develop what is necessary for fulfillment. Maybe pull out some oil paints, become a tutor, join a cycling club, or go back to school.
Regardless of your personality, a universal theme as we traverse our final years is the desire to make sense of life, pull any loose threads together, and fulfill one’s sense of destiny. And maybe metaphorically, or in fact, write life’s final chapter.
This life stage provides a sense of closure. It enables you to see, in retrospect, that you met your goals as best you could, satisfied your basic needs, and achieved humanness. It gives you the opportunity to acknowledge your own life as meaningful, worthwhile, and righteous. But how exactly do you do that?
While 21st-century developmental psychology weighs in on the late-in-life stages and longitudinal studies of adult development continue, the practical day-to-day business of forging a retirement plan is up to us individually—often an uncomfortable option because of the open-ended nature of retirement living.
This last life stage can be the richest and most satisfying. But it’s important to do it your own way: rely on your three-legged stool and pay attention to your personality. Guided by the wisdom that your years on earth have amassed, ask yourself: If not now, then when?
