Early Retirement and the Efficient Time Frontier

The Efficient Time Frontier

Early Retirement and the Efficient Time Frontier

I was trying to make plans with a friend to meet up for coffee the other day.  He has been early retired for a few years and seems to be basking in the glow of unfettered freedom.  My schedule was fairly open, so I threw out a number of possible dates.  Email after email, he seemed to find fault with every possible meeting time.  There was always something else.  Seven am was too early because his body doesn’t wake up naturally till eight.  Two in the afternoon was bad because the baby would still be napping.  If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that he was trying to avoid me.  I never had this problem when he was CEO of a burgeoning internet company.  It seemed that even with young kids, a sky rocketing business, and an active social life, that he always had an abundance of time.  What had changed with early retirement to knock him so far off the efficient time frontier?

I’ve asked this question multiple times in the last year while dealing with retirees.  Are they just extremely protective of their free time?  Or does something change when we let go of our 9 to 5?

Adaption and Molding

Our minds, our habits are not set in stone.  They are adaptable.  Look no farther than our internet juiced society to see how we have been molded to a reality quite different than a few decades ago.  Our brains have changed to accommodate newer and faster input.  We can stare at our phones, answer calls, respond in short spurts to text messages, all while riding our bike.

This ability to sort through multiple stimuli simultaneously, respond efficiently, and still perform physical tasks is a perfect example of the efficient time frontier.  We have become skilled at fitting as much as imaginable into as little time and space as possible.

There simply is too much to see, too many social media posts to respond to, and too many places to go to and snap selfies.

Work Life Imbalance

Technology has allowed life and work to continuously encroach on each other.  In fact, these previously separate spheres have begun to meld in such a way that it is often hard to tell the difference.  How many of us field texts about work while sitting at the dinner table or watching a movie at the theater?

The upside is that there is always time to fit in a cup of coffee with a friend or cut out of the office in the middle of the day.  You don’t have to worry about missing work, you just bring it with you.

You don’t have to worry about missing life, you just bring it with you!

The efficient time frontier allows you to have it all.

The Efficient Time FrontierEarly Retirement

It falls apart with retirement.  The work half of the equation is extirpated from the balance.  There no longer needs to be equity.  So there is a reversal of the efficient time frontier.  The phone becomes less of a leash.  There are no urgent messages that take you away from your child’s school yard before parent teacher conferences.

The retiree expands to fill the open space and becomes rather inefficient.  Instead of finding ways to use technology to carry it all with, there is a reliance on an abundance of time.  Such that, the idea of waking up a few minutes early for coffee, or scheduling two events back to back becomes anathema.

The mind has rewired the neural pathways that have been jumbled by all the rushing and multitasking so common in our uber social media work based society.

Final Thoughts

In some ways I am a big supporter of the efficient time frontier.  I built economic and achievement oriented success based on my ability to do multiple things at once.  In the midst of a busy career, I have always felt there was extra time to fit in anything social or otherwise.

I wonder if moving towards retirement will undo the years of programming of my neural networks that have adapted to this stimuli rich environment.

And then I will be the one who struggles to find a free moment to make off the cuff plans.

I wouldn’t want to over schedule.

Would I?

Doc G

A doctor who discovered the FI community but still struggling with RE.

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13 Responses

  1. Dr. MB says:

    It’s probably an issue he has DocG. I have literally always been able to meet up with a friend even when I was super busy and when I was not busy.

    Friends and I have even swung it so we can meet at airports during layovers. You simply make it work. Come to think of it, many of our get togethers would happen last minute, odd times, etc. I am always game for a friend meet up.

    If it takes that much planning with this dude, go meet up with another friend instead. Just saying. 🙂

  2. Although I would never claim to have achieved work-life balance, one advantage of the chaos is that you appreciate downtime more. A 10 minute cup of coffee at the kitchen table means more when it’s your only moment of mental peace. The 7 minute drive to your kids school is a nice reprieve.

    Like a nice hot shower after shoveling snow, the downtime is enhanced by the work that preceded it.

  3. I noticed my grandmother could only schedule one thing a day. If she had more than that on her plate, she was overwhelmed. I didn’t get it until I retired. That was when I learn the state of caught up doesn’t exist. I also learned that time is like an empty closet. There is no amount of closet space that cannot be filled. The day would get used up, but not nearly as much got done. When you have all day to do something, you don’t need to be efficient with your time to get it done. If you don’t need to be efficient, you won’t be. I found to combat this, you must make deadlines. When you have to meet a deadline, you become more efficient.

    Dr. Cory S Fawcett
    Prescription for Financial Success

  4. Gasem says:

    I drove by my old shop on Wed for an ophthalmology apt down the street. I was there last March when my Mom needed a procedure done. In March I realized I could just step back in! I would be brought up to speed in a day, 2 days tops. Then day 3 would happen and the excitement of re-engagement would fade into the niggles of annoyance. As I drove by I realized I live a different life, a new life, a life that bears little in common with my old life. It’s not so much falling off the efficient frontier as it is entering another dimension. I realized how little I share in common with my previous 40 years of past. The fact the: “drug order wasn’t delivered and we don’t have any anesthetics and we have 14 cases on the schedule!” doesn’t cross my mind anymore. I’m not part of that drama. Reminiscing is a pain in the ass. It’s reliving a static past with bromides of youbetcha dem were da days!! As a retired you are no less engaged and your neural circuits work just fine you just lose commonality of purpose and commonality of struggle with those still engaged in their drama, which is no longer your drama. Frankly their drama becomes boring. The experience is variable, your friend is a good candidate to explore new avenues. There likely is the energy barrier of “change” to overcome to make that happen however.

    I like the concept of time efficient frontier. An efficient frontier lives on a plane. A retired’s efficient frontier lives on an orthogonal plane to an un-retired. Viewed from the first plane the second plane that describes the timeline of a second life, appears merely as an edge, a single line.

  5. Xrayvsn says:

    It is amazing how quickly your body/mind adapts.

    I used to be able to go gung ho through residency and do all nighters etc. Granted I have gotten older as well but I could not ever go back to that lifestyle once I adapted to the current one.

    I have shifted to a 4 day work week. If something happens to my coverage and I have to work all 5 days, it really does take a toll because I already adapted to my decreased clinical time. Luckily in retirement there should not be any shocks to the system such as when someone can’t cover you because you never need coverage.

  6. I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately, so this was an interesting post to read. One thing I’ve slowly changed over to in the past few years is schedule social time (actually, pretty much schedule most things) on Friday, so it doesn’t interfere with my Monday-Thursday of real work and fake work (the later being my writing, lol). So maybe shoot for Friday socializing? It’s a thought…

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