After Retirement, Stop Forcing Workplace Ties: Give Your Life to Those Who Matter

Reader's letter:

Dear teacher,

I hope you don't mind me asking you a question that leans more toward life planning.

As my financial situation gradually approaches my retirement target, I've started to seriously think about what life after retirement will look like.

Recently a family member raised a point with me: after you retire, most of your former colleagues and clients are still in the workforce, so the topics you share may grow fewer and fewer; once you've been away from work for a long time, your professional sharpness may gradually fade, your ties to the workplace will keep thinning out, and life could even become a bit boring.

After hearing that, I thought about it for a long time.

But in my view, retirement is not about doing nothing. It's about pouring your time into the things you genuinely love — learning new skills, cultivating hobbies, continuing to invest and manage your money, taking care of your health, building an exercise habit, and getting to know like-minded friends from different fields — so that life opens up a whole new chapter.

So I've always been curious: when you first retired, how did you complete that shift in mindset? Did your life after retirement — your relationships and your circle of friends — turn out the way you had imagined? Did it really happen the way so many people say, slowly drifting away from the working world with your circle of friends shrinking? Or did it instead open up a completely different, far richer life?

If you'd be willing to share your experience, I believe it would be a great source of inspiration for the many people who are about to retire or are currently planning their retirement.

Thank you, teacher, and I wish you all the best!

James's Reply

Why would you keep too much overlap with people from work? They aren't necessarily real friends. Socializing every day just for the sake of socializing — don't you feel that's a waste of time and a waste of life?

After I left the workplace, I rarely met with suppliers or industry people again. Once there's no longer any mutual interest at stake, naturally neither side reaches out much anymore. That's perfectly normal, and there's nothing to feel sad about.

The only ones I still keep in touch with are a few former colleagues, and we have dinner together maybe once every year or two — that's all.

There are only a handful of friends I truly click with. Among my old classmates, there are two couples I meet up with every now and then! And there are three former Acer colleagues I've stayed in touch with all along — we eat and chat together, because we share common topics. You don't need to share the same company or the same profession; we talk about investing, we talk about our latest reflections on life — that's what a friend is. If every time you meet all you do is talk about the company and the industry, doesn't that feel boring?

These days, some people in our CLEC community spontaneously organize get-togethers. No fixed dates, no fixed places, no appointments made in advance — sometimes in Taichung, sometimes in Tainan, sometimes in Kaohsiung, sometimes in Taipei, someone will start a CLEC flash meetup. If you want good conversation, this is a group of people who are probably on a similar wavelength and share the same values.

On top of that, some CLEC friends organize their own travel groups and go on trips together.

Retirement is about sitting with your spouse over tea and conversation, eating well, sleeping well, breathing well, living in the present. Spend time with your spouse, with your parents, with your children; listen to what your kids have to say, chat with your family, take the whole family traveling, treat your parents to good food and trips abroad, and give your time to the people who truly matter. That is doing the most important things for the most important people.

In Taiwan people love to enjoy good food. Get a gourmet dining card at the Grand Hyatt, take your wife out to eat at half price — it's a great place to sit and talk with friends, and the Grand Hyatt has plenty of nice restaurants, very convenient. Of course I'm not advertising for the Grand Hyatt; plenty of hotels and five-star establishments in Taiwan offer this kind of membership, so you can spend a little to enjoy yourself without traveling far. If you'd like to learn more about the Grand Hyatt gourmet dining card, I can provide the relevant contact information for your reference.

In short, spending money to enjoy life beats spending your life going to work.

I love good food, and I also love cooking it myself — that is one of life's greatest pleasures.

In truth, the last thing we need to worry about in retirement is our relationships. After retiring, I've actually come to feel that the simpler your relationships, the better. Wherever there's a connection, there's a relationship; and wherever there's a relationship, there's the possibility of trouble and worry. Why manufacture worry for yourself? Unless a relationship is a lasting one, a bond with someone who truly matters to you, it isn't worth cherishing.

To me, a true friend is someone you could entrust your children to. What does that mean? It means you could hand over your underage children to this person, and without a moment's hesitation they would take care of them for you — that's what it means to entrust your children. Do you have a friend like that? Only that kind of person deserves to be called a friend; on everyone else, there's really no need to waste too much time.

Then there's this: do you have a friend who, when you suddenly need the emergency room in the middle of the night, will come at a single phone call to take you to see a doctor — willing to go with you to the hospital, sign the papers for you, and look after you? Do you have a friend willing to put themselves on the line for you like that? In my view, that kind of friend is very rare in the workplace, because those are all relationships built on self-interest — and in that world you really don't have any friends at all.

Have the courage to chase your dreams, and don't worry about having nothing to do after you retire. On the contrary, once you retire there are plenty of things worth doing. There's more than enough to keep you busy — busier than when you were working. That's the state most of the people I've met find themselves in after retirement, and those who retire early are even busier. For those who wait until 65 or 70 to retire, because their bodies and physical strength have already declined, rebuilding a new life is actually harder. Their physical condition no longer allows them to take on new changes in life. But people who retire early still have flexibility in their stamina, their thinking, and their ability to adapt. Their capacity, their thinking, and their relationships are all still flexible enough to change, to take in new information, and to embrace new activities and new learning.

So you absolutely should retire early. Don't wait until the mandatory retirement age — by then it really is much harder to settle into a new way of life.

You can find the 662 group on LINE. If you meet the criteria for joining, you can add yourself in, and then you can take part in their flash meetups. Of course, this is not an official CLEC organization — it's just a grassroots group. Through it you'll get to know many like-minded friends.

My own retirement was actually very simple. I just knew that I no longer wanted to work. As for what I would do after retiring, at first I didn't know either. But I believe that as long as you first leave behind the things you don't want to do, you will naturally find the things you truly want to do. Put the other way around: if you keep staying in a job you dislike, you'll never have the chance to find the meaningful life that truly belongs to you.

Retirement is not about leaving work behind; it's about reallocating your limited life to the people who are truly worth it, the things truly worth doing, and the life truly worth cherishing.