I have come to formulate what I call the Early Retirement Time Slip Hypothesis.  Early retirement allows us all the time in the world to do what we want to do. Yet time has a tendency to slip when we have an abundance of it. My bride and I have on many occasions been perplexed by how fast the week had passed. This is usually triggered when watching the Friday evening news. It happens when there is mention that the weekend is upon us.

What? How did that happen? How did we get to Friday night so quickly? Early Retirement Time Slip, that’s how.

My Early Retirement Time Slip Observations

Many people believe that every day will be a weekend in early retirement. A construct  belief based on years of rat race existence and only having weekend freedom. That may be true at first in early retirement but it only lasts for a short period of time.

Unfortunately the “every day is a weekend” has been proven a false assumption for us and most early retirees I have talked with. It ends once settling into early retirement life. That is primarily because the 7-day weekend is unsustainable in early retirement. What we loved to cram into a 2 day binge of freedom activity isn’t what we do day-to-day in early retirement.

Am I surprised? No. Mostly because it is a gradual retirement lifestyle shift. It sneaks up on us. It becomes the new normal. Early retirement time slip realization comes after being fully engulfed.

Do I like it? No. That is the reason for this post. My own coming to terms with what happens in early retirement to all of this cherished free time. That and my attempt to better stay anchored in time and hold on to it by managing time slip.

I do believe that early retirement time slip isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However it must be controlled. If I don’t then before I know it I will have allowed time slipped weeks to become months, years, and decades.

In my thinking about this I also find that the old adage, “Time Flies When You’re Having Fun” to be true. However I believe it is far different from Time Slip. Every vacation I go on seems to meet the adage but in no way did I ever wonder how it was now over. That observation has led me to conclude how to manage our early retirement time slip.

Managing Early Retirement Time Slip

My early retirement time slip hypothesis is based on the following facts gained from our (my bride and myself) own experience.

• We now have all the time to do what we want and need to do. When we want to do it is also part of early retirement. Yet we do experience time slip.
• When we were working-stiffs, time on the job usually felt as if standing still. Our careers consisted of routine duties but no day was the same. There was always something unexpected because of putting out work fires or something brought by customer and co-worker interaction. We wished there had been more time slip.
• When working, our weekends were usually full of memorable and productive activities, even when our weekend’s priority was focused on rest. It seemed to pass quickly but time slip was not realized. I surmise that is due to no consecutive weekends being alike.
• Our vacations while we were working and our travels now in retirement go by fast. But they are memorable and without what I consider time slip.

From this I conclude the following:

Routine is What Triggers Early Retirement Time Slip

We are far busier in early retirement than I ever dreamed. We have never experienced boredom. There are things we love doing and even though we try; we still can’t always get to everything. In order to do what we want to do we fall for the oldest trick in the working world’s book. That is doing things efficiently and productively. It is ingrained after decades of this drilled-in mindset.

We are doing what we want to do but it falls into a daily routine designed to get as much done as we can. For example, we love to go on a hike every week-day. But we have done what many do. We take the path of comfort and familiarity. We mostly hike the trails convenient to our home. It’s beautiful and well-known to us. We know how long it will take and we accomplish our love for nature and getting exercise. But because of that routine, each day runs into the next.

Our days are full of other convenient, efficient, and productive routines doing what we want to do and need to do. All of which makes days run into days with little variance causing time slip.

Think about playing golf. If you play the same course day after day you will get real good playing that course. But once the thrill of better scores peak and flatten, each day feels like the last and it is routine.

Although our day may have different periods of needed chores, they are also routine maintenance activity. They are not normally time stopping memorable activities.

Variety and Spontaneity Can Control Early Retirement Time Slip

I have concluded that we need more variety and spontaneity in our early retirement lifestyle. I came to this thinking based on weekend and vacation experiences. We usually stepped outside of routine and comfort zones when we had limited time to accomplish something we wanted to do. That led to our time flying but still being in the moment and memorable.

Variety and spontaneity adds enough interruption to routine and time slip. For us, doing things like simply jumping in the car to hike a different and unfamiliar nearby trail would break our routine.

Setting aside scheduled activity for doing something spontaneous should not only be welcome but actively sought.

Using Scheduling as a Tool

We have always used a loose schedule for our daily routines. But I can’t blame scheduling for time slip. Vacations usually come with a schedule of daily activities for some of the time. The problem comes when the schedule is routine enough that we operate out of habit.

I believe the fix for our early retirement time slip is scheduling some variety during the week for our hiking, etc. Along with making time for spontaneity to do something we enjoy doing. Even just one day mid-week would go a long ways to push us out of our comfort zone. Push us away from a schedule full of enjoyable but only routine efficient and productive activity.

We also must not over schedule our days. That causes us to squeeze more in by falling into convenient, efficient and productive focused behaviors of work-life past. It is now time to take advantage of our hard-won freedom to take control of our lifestyle time by taking our time.

In Closing

The 7 day weekend may be unsustainable in early retirement life. But we can use the best attribute of weekends and vacations to our advantage for managing early retirement time slip. Making sure we introduce variety and spontaneity into our early retirement lifestyle schedule.

This is all just another non-financial aspect  of early retirement. One that can be managed once realized or planned for in advance. I hope my wife and I don’t look at each other on another Friday evening wondering what happened to the week and how did we get here.