HBR Guide to Designing Your Retirement
Various Contributors
Harvard Business Review Press (July 2023)

How to explore your options, reimagine your identity, and create a fulfilling life

As you probably know already, most of the volumes in the “HBR Guide to” series are anthologies of articles previously published in Harvard Business Review in which various contributors share their insights concerning a major business subject such as Better Business Writing, Getting the Right Work Done, and Project Management. In this instance, the focus is on designing retirement.

As is also true of volumes in other such series, notably HBR Essentials, HBR Must Reads, and HBR Management Tips, HBR Guides offer substantial value in cutting-edge thinking from 21-20 sources in a single volume at a price (each at about $20-25 from Amazon in the paperbound version) for a fraction of what article reprints would cost. What we have in this paperbound edition are 29 articles previously published by Harvard Business Review. If purchased separately as reprints, the total cost would be about $180. Amazon US currently sells this volume in a paperbound edition for only $21.95. That’s not a bargain; it’s a steal.

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Here’s a suggestion: View any of the anthologies as if it were a single source for information, insights, and counsel for the given subject, material that you would have received if the authors of the articles had been retained as consultants. However, it would be a fool’s errand to attempt to apply all of the material provided. Absorb and digest it, then decide which of it is most relevant to your and/or your organization’s needs and interests, especially strategic objectives.

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According to the HBRP executors, “Retirement is perhaps the greatest and most deeply personal career transition you ever make. Will you switch gears, slow down, or stop working entirely? Will you have the money, the good health, and the companionship you need to enjoy it?” The answers to these and other key questions are presented within the information, insights, and counsel provided in six Sections.

For example, in Section One, “What Is Retirement Now?:

o The approach needed for next-gen retirement
o Two processes to adjust to major changes in identity and circumstances

Then in Section Two, “Define Retirement for Yourself”:

o Designing a plan which accommodates a range oƒ exciting opportunities
o Completing a three-part cycle of major life changes
o How to “start small and experiment”
o How and why to cultivate new sources of meaning and purpose
o How to reduce the stress while completing various transitions, both large and small

The information, insights, and counsel provided in Sections Three-Six are also invaluable. Here are four exemplary “snapshots.”

First, from Gorick Ng in “How to Figure Out What You Want to Do When You Grow Up'” in Section Three: During your “career journey,” how to prepare for retirement? Ng suggests a four-step process:

1. Reflect regularly
2. Plan deliberately
3. Pack strategically
4. Steer flexibly

“Asking yourself, ‘What matters more: the journey or the destination?’ is’t just a road-trip question; it’s also a career and life question.”

Next, from Cheryl Strauss Einhorn in “Emotions Aren’t the Enemy of Good Decision-Making” in Section Four: She offers a four-step process that allows our thinking, or “wizard brain,” to check and channel our emotional, or “lizard” brain,” so that we don’t make reactive choices. Here’s how it works:

1. Identify the decision you need to make
2. Identify how you feel about the decision you have to make
3. Visualize your success and how it feels
4. Apply the emotional bookends

And then, from Teresa M. Amabile in “Relationships and Your Retirement” in Section Five: “Many asspects of your life will change with retirement, including the structure of your days, the ways you use your time, the groups you belong to, and your relationships. Of all these, relationships may be the most important; according to past research, relationships are a key contributor to people’s well-being in retirement, influencing emotional health, cognitive functioning, and evenn physical health. And, according to new research that my team and I have been doing, maintaining certain existing relationships and developing new ones can help ease your transition to retirement, bringing joy and support to the later years of your life.”

Finally, from Clayton Christensen in “”How Will You Measure Your Life?” in Section Six: One of the most valuable lessons lessons he earned  “is that it is easier toi hold to your principles 100% than it isgto hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to ‘just this once,’ based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates  have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.”

Here are two other suggestions while you are reading HBR Guide to Designing Your Retirement: Highlight key passages, and, record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), and page references as well as your responses to questions posed and to lessons you have learned. Pay close attention to the key reminders in Dorie Clark’s two mini-commentaries, Tables,  annotated Notes,  introductory head notes, and end-of-chapter reviews as well as multi-step sequences for high-impact action. These two simple tactics — highlight and document — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.