Part 2 of my retirement habits series covers habits 5-10: keep learning, be useful daily, get outside, loosen your calendar, protect your mind from garbage, and practice gratitude. Ten years in, these daily actions matter more than any account balance.
In 2026 I hit a milestone that seemed like a distant, foggy dream back in my corporate days: the ten-year anniversary of my retirement.
If you want to go to the beginning and get the details on that blessed event, check out I Retired! There are some fond memories for me in that post!
Anyway, my plan to celebrate this momentous occasion is to write several “10 Things” posts about retirement.
So far, here are the articles in this series:
This is part two of 10 Daily Habits that Make Retirement Great. If you missed the first post, click on the link to read it as it lists habits 1-4.
As for today’s post, let’s begin with habit 5…
Retirement should not be a mental shutdown.
One of the strangest cultural assumptions is that after decades of developing skills, building knowledge, solving problems, and growing in competence, the ideal endgame is to stop stretching your mind.
I don’t mean every retiree needs to enroll in a graduate program or become a historian of medieval trade routes. I mean your mind needs ongoing input and challenge.
This habit matters because learning does several things at once. It keeps you curious. It prevents stagnation. It gives you new conversation material. It makes you more useful. It often opens doors to new friendships and activities. And it preserves that sense that life is still expanding rather than contracting.
The FIRE community is full of curious people. That’s part of why many of them become financially independent in the first place. They question defaults. They run the numbers. They read. They experiment. They build systems. That curiosity should not end at retirement. If anything, retirement gives it room.
I’ve noticed that mentally engaged retirees tend to be more interesting, more energized, and more adaptive. They’re not just replaying old stories. They are still adding chapters.
There’s also a hidden benefit here: learning helps with identity transition. If your old identity was too tied to career success, new learning gives you a way to keep growing without needing a business card to justify yourself.
The daily habit can be very modest. Thirty minutes of reading. A chapter a day. Notes on what you’re learning. An hour each morning with a meaningful book instead of a meaningless feed.
Do it for ten years and see what happens.
Retirement feels better when you are useful.
This is related to purpose, but it is more concrete.
Every day, do one thing that produces value outside yourself. This is where Earn takes on a broader meaning.
A lot of people hear “earn” and think paycheck. Fair enough during working years. But at a deeper level, earning is about creating value. It is about contribution. It is about doing something that matters enough that someone benefits from it.
In retirement, useful people tend to be happier people.
That doesn’t mean exhausted people. There’s a difference. You don’t need to become everybody’s unpaid errand service. You don’t need to say yes to every request. Boundaries still matter. Freedom still matters.
One reason is that usefulness fights self-absorption. Left unchecked, retirement can become very self-referential. My schedule, my hobbies, my comfort, my portfolio, my travel, my convenience. None of those are bad. All of them become smaller than they seem if they are all the day contains.
It’s also one of the best antidotes to the “Now what?” question that shows up for some retirees after the novelty wears off.
I’ve seen this repeatedly in the FIRE world. People who build some form of contribution into retirement generally do better than people who build only consumption. The contribution may be paid or unpaid, formal or informal, public or private. That part matters less. The important thing is that the retiree knows he or she still has something to give.
This sounds simple because it is simple.
Walk the neighborhood. Sit on the porch. Work in the yard. Drink coffee outside. Take the dog out. Watch the weather. Look at the trees. Listen to birds. Notice the season.
The reason this habit matters is not just physical activity, though it helps with that. It’s that being outside reconnects you to the actual texture of life. Retirement is supposed to give you more room to notice things. Many people use that room to stare at screens indoors.
The CDC notes that even a single session of physical activity can bring immediate benefits for adults 65 and older, including better sleep and reduced anxiety. And brisk walking is specifically recognized as moderate-intensity activity that counts toward weekly recommendations.
There’s also a psychological dimension here. Time outside slows you down in a healthy way. It gives you space to think. It lowers the noise. It changes the pace of the day. Many retirees discover that some of their best thoughts, prayers, conversations, and decisions happen while walking rather than while sitting in front of another device.
I don’t think this needs to be romanticized. You don’t have to become a wilderness sage. You just need enough daily contact with the outside world that your life doesn’t shrink to the dimensions of your house and your phone.
I had this option nailed in Colorado as the gym was walking distance and I was outside for at least two hours almost every day (I would walk to the gym then walk the long way home afterwards for one hour, then walk in the afternoon/evening for an hour with my wife) with beautiful views of the mountains. Of course my dermatologist wasn’t a fan of this as the sun there is pretty damaging. But I can’t please everyone – and I bought a hat with a huge brim.
It’s a bit tougher here but still good. Here are some of the ways I get outside in North Carolina:
I hope to add some bigger seasonal outside activities – like a trip to the beach and another to the mountains here in North Carolina.
Retirement is a season where many people finally have time to enjoy mornings, seasons, neighborhoods, and ordinary beauty. That’s a gift. Use it.
A packed retirement calendar is not necessarily a successful retirement calendar. Neither is an empty one.
This is another place where balance matters. The goal is not maximum activity. The goal is the right amount of structure.
One reason retirees often struggle early on is that work once supplied the skeleton of the week. Monday looked different from Saturday. There were deadlines, cycles, meetings, routines, and clear anchors. When those disappear, some people feel liberated. Others feel unmoored. Many feel both.
So build recurring anchors into your days and weeks.
Money solves one class of problem. Structure solves another.
This habit is especially important because time in retirement can become strangely slippery. Without anchors, whole weeks vanish. You intended to do things, but nothing quite happened. You were “busy,” but not in a satisfying way. A loose but intentional calendar helps prevent that.
I like the phrase “planned spontaneity” for retirement. It sounds contradictory, but it works. Put enough on the calendar that your life has shape. Leave enough off that your freedom still feels like freedom.
BTW, when I say “put it on the calendar” it doesn’t mean you have to do that literally. As I’ve shared, I work out every day. But I don’t put “working out” on my calendar, as that would just be an annoyance.
That said, if listing things on your calendar helps you to make them happen, then go for it, of course.
This may be the most underrated retirement habit on the list.
What you let into your mind every day will shape your retirement more than you think.
Too much cable news, doomscrolling, outrage content, envy content, political addiction, consumer temptation, or internet nonsense will corrode your peace. It doesn’t matter how healthy your portfolio is if your mind is being trained toward agitation.
Gallup reported in 2024 that mental health concerns are significant for older adults too, with more adults 65 and older saying their mental health had worsened over the prior three years than improved.
I’m not saying retirees should ignore current events or become disconnected from reality. I’m saying there is a difference between being informed and being inflamed.
Retirement offers something most working people desperately want more of: attention. The question is where that attention goes.
If you pour it daily into triviality, outrage, and fear, don’t be surprised when those become the dominant colors of your retirement.
This is where skepticism toward mainstream “wisdom” helps (and you know I have a lot of this.) A lot of media exists to monetize your attention, not improve your life. The retirement advice world has the same problem. There is always another fear headline, another hot market take, another “must-do” strategy, another thing that supposedly demands immediate concern.
A better daily habit is to curate your inputs.
I have personally dramatically dropped the amount of news I consume as well as the number of social media sites I use. News is maybe a half an hour a day to catch the highlights (as long as you don’t count financial news – I still need to be on top of that for ESI and MMM). For social media I have eliminated Facebook, and barely get on X and LinkedIn. I’ve cut down on Instagram as well.
If you count YouTube as social media, then I’m up big on that. But I count it more as TV than anything else – much of what I watch is entertainment and educational.
A peaceful retirement is not accidental. It is built, in part, by guarding the doors of the mind.
I’ll close with one habit that sounds soft but is actually deeply practical: end each day by remembering what is good and reinforcing what is enough.
Retirement can expose discontent just as easily as it can expose joy.
More time to think about what others are doing.
More time to notice what hurts, what changed, what you miss, what you can’t do, or what did not turn out exactly as planned.
That is part of life. Retirement does not eliminate it.
But retirees who consistently enjoy retirement tend to have a strong enough “enough” muscle.
Enough money. Enough activity. Enough travel. Enough house. Enough stuff. Enough validation. Enough achievement.
This is one reason the ESI framework works so well. Done properly, it is not just a path to more money. It is a path to margin, clarity, and freedom from chasing nonsense.
The data on retiree outlook is more positive than many assume. Transamerica’s 2025 retiree survey found that 89% of retirees consider themselves generally happy, while many reported that enjoyment of life and happiness had improved since retiring.
That’s encouraging, but I don’t think it happens by accident.
That practice keeps retirement from turning into one long, vague appetite.
A person with gratitude can enjoy simple things.
A person without gratitude can be surrounded by abundance and still feel deprived.
The FIRE movement has sometimes been caricatured as a joyless exercise in deprivation. At its best, it’s the opposite. It’s the disciplined pursuit of enough so that you can actually enjoy life. Retirement is where that philosophy gets tested. If you arrive financially independent but remain emotionally trapped in “more,” the money won’t solve that.
Enough is not a compromise. It is a superpower.
You’ll notice that these habits are mostly not about the financial side of retirement.
Portfolio management matters. Withdrawal strategy matters. Taxes matter. Asset allocation matters. Insurance matters. Estate planning matters. I’m not minimizing any of that. Those decisions create the platform.
But the platform is not the performance.
What most people want from retirement is not merely survival. They want a life that is energizing, meaningful, peaceful, connected, and enjoyable. Those outcomes are driven less by occasional big decisions than by recurring small ones.
They keep you healthy enough to enjoy your freedom. They give your days shape. They protect your mind from noise. They preserve relationships. They cultivate purpose. They remind you that retirement is not an ending as much as a redesign.
You don’t figure it out once and then coast for thirty years. A great retirement, like great financial management, requires periodic adjustment. Seasons change. Health changes. Interests change. Family needs change. Energy changes. What worked in year one may not be exactly what works in year ten.
The point is not to lock yourself into a rigid formula. The point is to live intentionally enough that retirement keeps getting better instead of slowly flattening out.
If I were to summarize all of this in ESI language, I’d say it this way:
Not through one grand gesture, luxury trip, giant account balance, or endless leisure.
Daily, ordinary, compounding habits. A little bit here and a little bit there…it adds up over months, years, and decades.
My ten years of retirement have probably been the best decade of my life – not because of the size of my brokerage account, but because of the consistency of my daily actions.
The beauty of that is that you do not need to overhaul your entire life tomorrow. You can start with one or two actions. Walk in the morning. Call a friend. Write down your purpose for the day. Cut a useless expense. Read for thirty minutes. Volunteer somewhere. Step outside. Turn off the noise. End the day with gratitude.
For the first few actions you add, be sure to select things you enjoy and which are easy to replicate day after day. Then once you get those habits down, add on things one at a time until they get established.
We all know that’s how people build wealth – a bit at a time over a few decades. That’s also how people build a great retirement.
The same principles apply. Discipline still matters. Intentionality still matters. Compounding still matters. Enough still matters.
Ten years into retirement, I’d say this clearly: the best parts of retirement are not usually the flashy parts. They are the daily rhythms that make the whole life work.
Build those well, and retirement becomes more than an escape from work. It becomes a life you’re genuinely glad to wake up to every day.
If you are approaching your own retirement, or if you’re already there and feeling adrift, I encourage you to stop looking at your spreadsheets for a moment.
Look at your calendar. What are your ten habits? Because in the end, your habits will determine whether your retirement is a great one or just a long, slow fade.
I’m ten years in, and I feel like I’m just getting started. I’ve got my shorts on, my Brooks are laced up, and I’ve got work to do. That’s what makes retirement great.
What about you? For those of you who have already crossed the finish line, what are the daily habits that keep you sane and satisfied? And for those still in the “Save” and “Invest” phase, which of these habits are you starting to build now?
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