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A Sixty and Me contributor recommends reviewing the previous week to identify activities that felt energizing and those that took more time than intended. The exercise is personal guidance, not a reported research finding, and the author says she is blocking time for art, exercise and friends alongside coaching.
A contributor to Sixty and Me is urging people approaching or living retirement to review how they spent the previous week, arguing that the record can reveal both what feels rewarding and what pushes it aside. The exercise draws on her own experience: she found that coaching work was crowding out art, time with friends and other priorities, even though coaching itself mattered to her.
The author says she retired from a university the previous year and made coaching women through retirement part of her own retirement. In early September, she listed the things she wanted her days to include: friends, art, nature, writing, family and health. When she compared that list with her calendar, she saw that coaching-related tasks occupied much of her week.
She describes those tasks as more than client conversations. Repeatedly revising newsletters and blog posts, adjusting her website and polishing a guide added work around the coaching. In her journal, she wrote: “I’m constantly finding ways to improve and it’s exhausting me.” That is her account of her own workload, not a broader finding about retired people.
A few days after making the list, she recorded a day she enjoyed. It included coffee with her husband and cat, a walk and breakfast with a friend, knitting, art, gardening, errands and dinner. She also wrote her weekly newsletter, but only after several of those other activities. She says the order mattered: personal activities came first, while the coaching task stayed limited to one part of the day.
Her suggested exercise is to list five to seven activities from the previous week, including both chosen activities and obligations, and score each from minus five to plus five. The high and low scores can help identify patterns, such as whether enjoyable activities involved company, time alone, making something, being outdoors or learning. She also suggests looking at what came first on the most satisfying days and whether any task took more time than intended.
A Practical Check on Retirement Priorities
The advice turns a broad question—what might make retirement satisfying?—into an examination of real activities from a recent week. That may be useful to people who find it difficult to name what they enjoy when asked to imagine a future without their current work routine. For those already retired, the author says even small events, such as a phone call or a short walk, can be included.
The author’s central point is not simply to add more enjoyable activities. Her experience suggests that timing and competing tasks matter: a valued responsibility can expand if it is given the first claim on the day. Her proposed scoring and calendar review offer readers a way to notice that pattern, though the article does not establish that the method will produce the same result for others.
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The report is a personal essay and practical exercise, rather than a formal study or a news announcement about new retirement research. The writer says she coaches women through retirement and was surprised to see her own work taking up more room than she intended. Her example pairs a written list of long-term priorities with a specific day’s activities, making the contrast visible.
She also invokes researcher and author Brené Brown’s description of joy as “an intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation.” The essay uses that wording to explain what the writer means by joy. It does not present Brown’s description as evidence that the weekly scoring exercise has been tested or validated.
In the closing portion, the author says she is finishing the article during a vacation and describes working on it in an Irish pub while her husband watched football. She rates that experience plus 3.5, then says she plans to block time for art lessons, hiking, the gym, a women’s group and friends when she returns home.
““An intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation.””
— Brené Brown, as quoted by the Sixty and Me contributor
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What the Exercise Cannot Establish
The report offers one person’s experience and a self-reflection activity. It does not cite a study showing that scoring a week improves retirement satisfaction, nor does it compare results among readers. The suggested scale is subjective: each person decides what feels energizing, draining or meaningful.
The essay also does not set out a fixed schedule or explain how to respond when work, caregiving, health needs or other obligations leave little choice about how time is spent. It is not clear whether the author’s planned calendar changes will persist or how she will judge their effect. The source text ends with the author saying she will keep paying attention to her days and journaling, without providing later results.
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The author says her first week home will include client sessions, alongside time she intends to reserve for art lessons, hiking, gym visits, a women’s group and friends. She may also make short checklists to structure the next day when she feels her desired balance slipping. The report does not give a date for a follow-up or say whether those plans have been completed.
For readers following the exercise, the next step described in the essay is to write down five to seven activities from last week, score them, and look for common features and patterns in their order. The author presents this as a way to notice existing sources of enjoyment and competing demands—not as a guarantee of a particular retirement outcome.
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Key Questions
What does the weekly exercise ask people to do?
List five to seven activities from the previous week, including obligations, and score each from minus five to plus five based on how energizing or draining it felt.
Who is the exercise intended for?
The contributor suggests it for people already retired and those still working who want to think about what they may want more of in retirement. She advises including the whole week, not just work hours.
Why does the author focus on the order of activities?
She says coaching tasks tended to take over when she did them first. On a day she enjoyed, she had coffee with family, walked with a friend and spent time on knitting and art before writing her newsletter.
Is the scoring method backed by research in the report?
The report does not cite research testing the exercise. It presents the method as the contributor’s practical suggestion, based on her own experience.
What changes does the contributor plan to make?
She says she plans to block time for art, hiking, exercise, a women’s group and friends alongside client sessions, and may use checklists to plan some days.
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