Retirement Funk-Busting

You are humming along, actively pursuing things that interest you and enjoying your hobbies, feeling engaged and making what feels like ‘progress’ most days. Maybe you have some occasional unsatisfying days, but you can attribute those to some temporary issue, like “I didn’t sleep well last night” or “my development tools failed me today”. No problem, things will pick up again tomorrow.

But sometimes, you just can’t find the motivation to do anything ‘constructive’. None of your projects or hobbies seem very compelling. Even if you force yourself to spend time on them, you find you aren’t making any progress, you are maybe even going backwards, and you are not enjoying yourself. The frustration feeds the demotivation. You are in a funk.

When I’m in a funk, I find myself defaulting to a set of time-wasting behaviors during the day, like surfing the web, shopping for things that I don’t need on Amazon, watching funny animal YouTube videos, maybe taking a nap or playing some video games.

I realize that what I just described as my funk behaviors could very well be someone else’s idea of an ideal retirement. Which leads me to my first suggestion for how to beat a funk:

1. Embrace it. Lean into it. Treat it like a vacation from your ‘job’, where your ‘job’ is being productive (in some sense) during your retirement. I would caution against taking the ‘vacation’ angle all the way to day-drinking, though. Do absolutely nothing, if you can, and don’t feel bad about it. In fact, challenge yourself to do absolutely nothing constructive for a day - you literally can’t lose: either you succeed in doing nothing or you’ve done something constructive.

Here are some additional suggestions that have helped me break out of funks. These may or may not work for you, much depends on your disposition.

2. Be sure to maintain or even increase your level of physical activity. Go on a long walk, go swimming if you can. At least sit down or stand on your exercise equipment. For me, sometimes the ensuing “well, I feel silly just sitting here” feeling is enough to get me started with exercising, and sometimes that even turns into a reasonable workout. There is no shortage of research (some of it even rigorous) that shows how physical activity improves your attitude and mental health.

3. The previous suggestion might seem unhelpful or even nonsensical because if you feel unmotivated to do enjoyable things that interest you, you certainly feel unmotivated to do things that you consider chores, perhaps like exercising. But that is just it: doing chores takes a different mindset than doing things that you normally enjoy. You don’t have the expectation of enjoying yourself when doing chores. So double down on doing chores when you feel unmotivated to do more enjoyable things. Clean your house, back up your files, clean up your journal entries, gather up household things to donate. If you are learning a musical instrument, practice your scales. Do things that will make you more efficient and better at doing the enjoyable things once your motivation returns. While it doesn’t seem right to force yourself to do things that you enjoy, it seems legitimate and even normal to force yourself to do chores.

4. As mentioned above, one of my time-wasters when I’m feeling unmotivated is to surf the web (looking at you, Reddit). Some of this is fine, you might stumble across something that piques your interest and busts your funk. But be careful: it is all too easy to doom-scroll your way to an even deeper funk. Actively police yourself here - if you catch yourself going in bad directions, just get off the web for a while.

5. Break your normal routine to try different things. Try doing the things that you normally enjoy, but doing them in a different setting or in a different way. Take your laptop outside (weather permitting), or to a Starbucks. Try listening to a different genre of music. If you normally only read at night, try reading a book in the middle of the day.

6. Invest the time to re-enjoy something that you know you’ve enjoyed in the past, but have moved away from over time. Rewatch a favorite movie, or reread a favorite book. Put on headphones, lie down, close your eyes, dial up an old album that you liked, and listen to it in its entirety. Some folks may say that this falls under the category of ’time-wasters’, but if you don’t go to this particular well too often, I find that it can be a ‘reset button’ for your mood.

7. For me, watching new, unknown movies or TV series is somewhat of a ‘risky’ entertainment option because I can be very hard to please in this regard. I have a hard time committing to a TV series or even a 2 hour movie unless it really grabs and holds my interest. I usually feel like there are other things I could spend that time doing that are likely to pay me more enjoyment dividends. But if your normal time investments aren’t paying off and satisfying your interest requirements, give riskier entertainment options another chance. If you pick a winner and happen to find a great movie or TV series (or book or album or video game) that resonates with you, it can completely cure a funk. Greater risk can provide greater potential returns.

8. Sometimes what caused a funk is obvious, perhaps life dealt you a setback of some kind. But other times it is not clear what if anything caused the funk. In those cases it may be worthwhile to do some self-reflection for a few minutes. Ask yourself, is there something that may be behind the funk? Is something perhaps bothering you at a subconscious level? Maybe a minor disagreement you had went deeper than you thought? Maybe that news item you skimmed about a musician that you admired passing away affected you more deeply than you thought? While a few minutes of self-psychoanalysis might be beneficial, be sure not to take this too far.

9. Ask AI what you can do to increase your motivation. You may be surprised at the quality of responses you get back. And for many problems of this ilk, just discussing it with someone/something can sometimes help. If you are worried about privacy, set up a local LLM so that your conversation with AI doesn’t leave your machine. Standard disclaimer: as always, apply your common-sense filter to anything coming from AI. While I’ve not experienced this, I’ve heard tell of some AIs giving spectacularly bad advice in some situations.

10. You can find suggestions for how to bust a funk all over the web. Some of the oft-repeated suggestions seem sensible, but perhaps only apply tangentially to me personally:

    • Practice mindfulness. Get out of your head, live in the moment but don’t judge the moment. I perhaps come close to this when walking outdoors or just sitting in my backyard observing the goings-on there. This perhaps dovetails with another oft-repeated suggestion: getting back in touch with nature.

    • Cultivate a feeling of gratitude. Write a journal entry that lists things that you are grateful for. You can start with, “I made it all the way to retirement”.

    • Set some small, easily-accomplished goals and dedicate yourself to doing them. This could apply to the suggestion to do chores (#3 above) if you start out with small, easy, specific chores to get a few quick wins. E.g. ‘dust off the plants in the foyer’, not ’re-sand the floors in the foyer’ (unless re-sanding floors is your happy place, then go ahead with that).

Most of us have faced funks many times over the years, and they pass. But during retirement (or generally as we get older), funks can take on a scarier aspect: what if this funk is the new normal?¹ What if my faculties have eroded to the point where I can’t continue to do the things that I enjoy? What if the reservoir of motivation and mental energy is permanently drained?

Well, if you are still aware enough to ask yourself that, you’re probably fine. Even if otherwise, it certainly does no good to dwell on it. See suggestion #1 above. But if you still have doubts as to your faculties, and feel that there may really be an issue: Consult a professional. Getting reassurance from an objective third party is invaluable. And in case there really is an issue, you have a professional to help you with it.

Likewise, if you feel like your bout of demotivation might cross the line into depression (or elevated moods cross into mania), for heaven’s sake seek professional help!

Stepping back, this post may seem almost incomprehensible to people with a retirement mindset different from my own. I realize that what makes for ‘good’ days for me, with an emphasis on making ‘progress’ in some form or another, is the antithesis of retirement to some folks. I do have some respect for the “no pressure to do anything at all” approach to retirement. It is just not for me, at least not at my current stage in retirement. You might accuse me of not yet having properly come to grips with retirement; that I’m still hanging on to a working mindset of having progress to show at the end of the work day. I can’t totally refute that. So I reserve the right to settle into a less accomplishment-oriented retirement in the future. But for now, what makes me happy is still learning, exploring, building things, and pushing myself (at some level) to improve. If what makes you happy is watching funny cat videos on the internet, then do that, and don’t feel guilty about it at all! You’ve earned it!