A great retirement takes work – and learning. In her seventh year in retirement, Judith Nadratowski joins us to share her lessons learned so far in her retirement journey – lessons that can help you plan better for yours.

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Judith Nadratowski is her seventh year of retirement after a 40-year career at Cleary Gottlieb, a top international law firm based in New York where she was most recently Manager, Partnership Resources & Executive Committee Matters. You can read more of Judith’s insights, ideas and reflections on retirement on her blog Retirement Commentaries.

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For More on Judith Nadratowski

Judith Nadratowki’s Retirement Commentaries

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Life After Work – Brian Feutz

Retirement Rookies – Stephen & Karen Kreider Yoder

Strategic Quitting – Julia Keller

The Vintage Years – Dr. Francine Toder

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About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

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Mentioned in This Episode

Yes Man – Jim Carrey

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Do Your Homework

Explore summaries of the Best Books on Retirement

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Wise Quotes

On Being a Beginner

“…being a beginner and learning to build things from scratch. I really went into my retirement thinking I would just really easily slip into my life. And now I could do all the things I never had the time to do. And that was exactly the reason I chose to retire. I wanted to take advantage of time. I was still in my early 60s and wanted to do new things and things I had done during a very demanding career. And I also wanted to search for a new focus. I knew I needed –  I dread using the purpose word, but that sense of purpose is something that I definitely felt I needed. And I knew that I wanted to search for something that would fill that, that I could really sink into…Retirement life takes some work and it’s not going to just happen and you have to be the catalyst. You have to figure out the gaps and start filling them in…you can really seriously think that you could try something new. So what I meant by being a beginner was I had to shed all of my sense of knowing everything and really strip down to get things that would bubble up, that would be of interest to me and to really that start from scratch. Design from the bottom up. And that wasn’t so easy when you’re used to mastering your job for quite some time.”

On the Transition to Retirement

“But the hardest thing for me, the challenge really was that my life wasn’t just that change in schedule. But it was [when] I realized how many intangibles my job gave me that I missed. And I wasn’t even able to articulate them at first. But as I started to think more deeply about them, I realized that my job really shaped so many things about me and was always in the background. It was how I saw myself, it was how I even chose to spend my free time. It was based around my job and how much time I would spend and even sometimes how I viewed other people. It was just so much a part of me that I never realized it was so entrenched so that when I started thinking about it, I knew that I was choosing my retirement. I was enthusiastic about it, but I felt lost. I couldn’t really figure out what those things were. And when you, if anyone were to ask me, well, what do you want to do? I couldn’t really come up with good ideas. I was really pretty lost that way. So I guess I would say how I met the challenge was one baby step at a time. I really just regained perspective. I felt that first I was kind of anxious and upset about it, but I just realized how fortunate I am to be in that position. And that helped a lot. It controls your emotions. And then I just took it in baby steps. I knew what I didn’t want to do. So I could start there, even if I didn’t know exactly what I did want to do.”

On Saying No

“When I stepped into retirement, my default was going to be yes. And that worked. That was good in the beginning, but it’s not necessarily the approach you can follow for a long time. And so what I’ve learned is that saying no isn’t a bad attitude and it isn’t it’s not necessarily that you’re being ungrateful or…being lazy about it. It’s really you saying on track, and for me, especially when I was in more kind of emotional or feeling like if I was unoccupied or a little frustrated and not getting where I wanted to be quick enough, if I had opportunities that really didn’t work or even ones I tried that I knew they weren’t working, I would almost default to yes, because I would think, Well, I don’t know, maybe it’ll be better. But deep down , really, I knew these were not working. So what I’ve learned is that having that kind of mission statement of what your values and goals are – and I mean goals in a very broad way – just what matters, how you want to spend your time – and if you have that as sort of your benchmark, it helps you,. It’s your framework, and it’ll help you make decisions. So saying no is a very positive thing is what I’ve learned.”

On a Weekday Mindset

“I think they would say it’s flexible within its structure and well-balanced and I think the part they would probably notice the most is that I’d like to keep a Weekday Mindset. I found what worked for me when I retired was I didn’t like that notion of every day is Saturday – that was like Oh my gosh! That was dreadful to me and I needed to put myself back on a weekday schedule. I’m certainly not strict but what I mean is that I use the mindset of the Monday through Friday rhythm and I like that. My work – and I put it in quotes ‘my work’ – which would be like my projects, my writing scheduling, meetings and things like that I do on a weekday schedule. Saturdays and Sundays, the weekends, are my time for leisure and fun activities and even desserts. So it works for me.”

On Advice to Friends on Planning for Retirement

“I know a friend who has said to me my retirement is just going to be sitting on the beach with a book. That might be what you think, but it really won’t be. I just want them to think about it as a lifetime and so I’d recommend reading to them. Think about why they wanted to retire. It’s not just about taking a vacation or stopping work, but what is beyond that? What does it mean to you? Think about what they think they might miss about their job. There will be some gaps to fill and there’s ways to do it, but you need to know what they are before you can start to do that.  I think also that there are retirement coaches and career coaches who are very helpful and can help you even a year out, I would say even more, but a year out would be a nice time…Even if you don’t know exactly how you’re going to do,  just build some awareness because I think that was something I lacked was that awareness. It’s very important to me and why my blog was born is to build some awareness. And the other thing I would tell them though is not to get too caught up in thinking you have to have all the answers. Because you want to,really be in the time and get to know who you are and what matters to you.”