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A Sixty and Me contributor says reviewing a real week can help people identify which activities feel joyful and what is taking time away from them. The advice comes from the writer’s personal experience, not a reported study: she found that placing activities she valued before coaching tasks helped keep work in proportion.
A Sixty and Me contributor is encouraging people approaching or living in retirement to review how they spent the previous week as a practical way to identify activities that bring them joy and commitments that crowd them out. The suggestion draws on her own experience: after noticing that coaching work was taking over her schedule, she found that doing valued personal activities earlier in the day helped keep work in proportion.
The writer said she had listed friends, art, nature, writing, family and health as priorities for retirement, then compared that list with her calendar. She had retired from a university the previous year and had chosen to include coaching women through retirement in her plans. She said she enjoyed coaching, but found that related tasks—such as repeatedly editing a newsletter, revising blog posts and adjusting her website—were taking more time than she intended.
To understand what made a day feel satisfying, she wrote down the sequence of one day she enjoyed. It included coffee with her husband and cat, a walk and breakfast with a friend, knitting, art, one newsletter task, gardening, a bath, television, errands and dinner. She said that putting recreation and time with other people before her coaching work made a difference: the activities were familiar, but their order had changed.
Her suggested exercise is to list five to seven activities from the previous week, including both chosen activities and obligations, and score each from minus 5 to plus 5. She describes plus 5 as energizing and joyful, and minus 5 as draining or tense. Readers can then look for patterns among their highest scores and consider whether particular tasks took more time than they wanted to give them.
Using a Week to Spot Retirement Priorities
The exercise offers a way to turn a broad question—what would make retirement fulfilling?—into observations about how time is actually being spent. For people still working, looking at a full week, including time outside work, may help them notice activities they would like to preserve or add after retirement. For people already retired, the writer says even small events, such as a phone call or a short walk, can be included.
The article also distinguishes between knowing what matters and making room for it. In the writer’s account, coaching itself was meaningful, but the extra work around it expanded until it crowded out art and social plans. Her experience suggests that the order of tasks and the boundaries around work can affect whether valued activities happen. That is a personal account, not evidence that the same scheduling approach will work for everyone.
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From a Retirement List to a Real Day
The writer says she began reflecting in early September, after making a list of what she wanted her retirement to be built around. She noticed that her calendar did not match it, despite her professional work coaching women through retirement-related changes. The mismatch prompted her to examine a day she had particularly enjoyed and write down what it contained.
She also refers to researcher and author Brené Brown’s description of joy as “an intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation.” That wording is presented as a reference point in the article; the source does not cite a study testing the weekly scoring exercise. The main advice is based on the writer’s own reflection and experience with clients, which she mentions without providing data or detailed examples from them.
“An intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation.”
— Brené Brown, as quoted by the Sixty and Me contributor
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What the Personal Exercise Cannot Show
The source is a personal essay, not a research report. It does not provide evidence that scoring a week reliably predicts satisfaction in retirement, nor does it compare the exercise with other planning methods. The contributor’s observation that task order helped her is specific to her schedule and preferences.
It is also unclear how the exercise would apply to people whose routines are shaped by caregiving, disability, financial pressure, health needs or limited access to social and recreational activities. The article offers no tested guidance on how long to track activities or how to interpret mixed scores. Readers may find the reflection useful, but the source does not establish that it will change their retirement experience.
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The Writer Plans Calendar Changes
The contributor says she plans to block time in her calendar after returning from vacation for art lessons, hiking, the gym, a women’s group and time with friends, alongside her client sessions. She may also make a short checklist for the next day when she feels her schedule is losing the balance she wants. The article does not announce a formal program or report results from those planned changes.
For readers interested in trying the idea, the next step described in the essay is to record five to seven activities from the past week, score them, and review both the patterns and the order in which commitments occurred. Whether the writer’s own calendar changes preserve that balance is not yet reported.
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Key Questions
What does the article suggest people do to find activities that bring them joy?
List five to seven things from the previous week, including obligations, and score each from minus 5 to plus 5 based on how energizing or draining it felt. Then look for common features among the highest-scoring activities.
Is the weekly scoring exercise backed by a study?
The supplied article does not cite a study evaluating the exercise. It presents the method as the contributor’s personal suggestion, informed by her own experience.
Does the advice apply only to people who have retired?
No. The contributor suggests that people who are still working can review their whole week, including non-work activities, to notice what they may want more of in retirement. She also says people already retired can include small activities in their review.
What did the contributor change in her own schedule?
She said she planned to reserve calendar time for art, hiking, exercise, a women’s group and friends, while continuing client sessions. She also found that doing valued activities before a coaching task helped keep work from taking over a day.
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