Thoughts on Retirement

Why the idea of working so you can do nothing later - doesn't work

I've been watching successful people hit their 40s and 50s, cash out, and declare victory. "I'm done," they say. "Time to enjoy life."

The pattern is always the same: within 18 months, they're climbing the walls.

Observing this has made me question the entire premise of traditional retirement. The idea that we should grind for decades just to earn the right to do nothing seems fundamentally broken. Not just economically broken (though it is), but psychologically broken at its core.

The Doing-Nothing Trap

I observe that doing nothing quickly becomes boring. It's almost mathematical in its predictability.

Productive people - the ones who built something, who solved problems, who had their brains firing on all cylinders for years - can't handle more than a couple of years of retirement (at 40+ years old) without mental stimulation. They try the travel thing, the hobby thing, the "finally reading all those books" thing. Then what? The existential boredom sets in like a slow-acting poison.

Without interesting activity, they inevitably return to business. Sometimes reluctantly, sometimes desperately, but always inevitably.

The Hedonic Treadmill Problem

Psychologists have a name for this phenomenon: the hedonic treadmill. Any happiness gained from a pleasant event - say, that long-awaited retirement, the dream vacation, the freedom from meetings and deadlines - fades away within months or a few years. We adapt. We normalize. We return to our previous level of satisfaction, or often worse.

It's like buying a new car. The initial thrill lasts maybe a week. Then it's just... your car.

The retirement dream operates on the same principle, except the stakes are higher. You're not just buying a car; you're trading decades of your most productive years for what amounts to a brief emotional spike followed by a long, slow decline into irrelevance.

That's the brutal math of it: trading decades of productivity for months of novelty.

What Actually Works

Here's what I've noticed about people who age well, who stay sharp, who seem genuinely content in their later years. Happiness in old age rests on three things:

• Intellectual stimulation - Your brain needs problems to solve, puzzles to work on, new things to master

• Social interaction - Not just small talk, but meaningful connection with people working on things that matter

• Sense of purpose - The feeling that your existence moves the needle somewhere, somehow

Remove any one of these pillars, and the whole structure starts to wobble. Remove all three - which is exactly what traditional retirement does - and you get depression, cognitive decline, and that particular brand of wealthy misery where people have everything they thought they wanted and realize it's not enough.

The Veniamin Votiakov Model

For me, the perfect example is my grandfather, Veniamin Votiakov. His trajectory shows what purposeful aging actually looks like:

60–65 years old: Director of the Soviet Union's largest epidemiology research institute. Not coasting toward retirement, but opening new laboratories, expanding the mission.

65–75: Steps away from the administrative headaches (smart move) but doesn't step away from the work. Takes over the research department, fully immerses himself in R&D. This is the sweet spot - all the intellectual challenge, none of the bureaucratic nonsense.

67: Registers his own scientific discovery. At an age when most people are complaining about their knees, he's making breakthroughs.

69–74: Becomes an academician of not one, not two, but three different academies of sciences. The recognition comes because the work is still world-class.

81–82: Receives the State Prize of Belarus for a cycle of works on biosafety. Other 81-year-olds are playing shuffleboard; he's solving problems that protect entire populations.

Until 90+: Daily at the institute. Not as a figurehead, not for ceremony, but working. Consulting expeditions, answering graduate student letters, supervising 16 doctors and 39 PhD candidates. His mind is a resource that people actively seek out.

The detail that gets me: At 70+, he independently mastered computers to digitize the institute's virus database. His reasoning? He didn't want to "distract the librarian" with constant requests. This is someone who sees technology not as an obstacle but as a tool, who learns new skills not because he has to but because it makes his work better.

And here's the kicker: my grandfather was in excellent physical shape and mostly in good spirits throughout this entire period. The work wasn't draining him; it was sustaining him.

The Buffett Principle

Warren Buffett works at 94. Charlie Munger worked until 99.

Clearly not for the money - they've had more money than they could spend for decades. They work for meaning, for mental fitness, for the intellectual stimulation that comes from analyzing businesses and making decisions that matter.

Buffett has said repeatedly that he "tap dances to work." At 94. That's not the language of obligation; that's the language of purpose.

Rethinking the Goal

So what's the real goal? Not resting. Not doing nothing. Not even "financial independence" in the traditional sense.

The real goal is choosing tasks and an environment that inspires you.

It's about building toward a life where the work is so aligned with who you are that the distinction between "work" and "life" becomes meaningless. Where Monday morning feels the same as Saturday afternoon because you're doing what you'd choose to do anyway.

This requires a fundamental shift in how we think about career progression. Instead of planning for an exit, we should be planning for evolution. Instead of building toward retirement, we should be building toward increasing autonomy and alignment.

The New Model

Here's what I think the new model looks like:

Phase 1 (20s-30s): Build skills, build wealth, build network. Take on challenges that stretch you, even if they're not perfectly aligned with your interests. This is your foundation phase.

Phase 2 (40s-50s): Leverage what you've built to gain more control over your time and energy. Start saying no to things that drain you, yes to things that energize you. This is your optimization phase.

Phase 3 (60s+): Full autonomy. You work on what matters to you, with people you respect, on problems worth solving. The economic pressure is gone, but the intellectual and social engagement remains. This is your contribution phase.

The beauty of this model? There's no cliff. No sudden transition from "productive member of society" to "retiree." Just a gradual shift toward more meaningful work with more personal control.

The Practical Reality

I realize this model isn't accessible to everyone. Not everyone has the luxury of building significant wealth in their younger years. Not everyone works in fields where this kind of evolution is possible.

But for those who do have options - particularly in knowledge work, in creative fields, in entrepreneurship - the traditional retirement model is not just suboptimal; it's actively harmful.

It trains us to think of our most experienced, most knowledgeable, most connected years as somehow less valuable than our youngest, most inexperienced years. It assumes that wisdom decreases with age, that energy is purely physical, that contribution requires traditional employment structures.

All of these assumptions are increasingly false in a knowledge economy.

The Bottom Line

The idea of working so you can eventually stop working is a 20th-century solution to a 21st-century life.

We're living longer, staying healthier longer, and working in fields where experience compounds rather than depreciates. The old model - grind until 65, then golf until you die - doesn't match the reality of modern life or modern work.

Instead of planning for retirement, plan for evolution. Instead of building toward an exit, build toward increasing control and alignment. Instead of dreaming about doing nothing, dream about doing exactly what you want, with exactly who you want, for as long as you can.

That's not just a better financial strategy. It's a better life strategy.

And if my grandfather's example is any indication, it's also the strategy most likely to keep you sharp, engaged, and genuinely happy well into your 90s.

The goal isn't to stop working. The goal is to never have to do work that doesn't inspire you.