Some view retirement as an opportunity to break away from routine and find a sense of freedom they might have lacked in their working lives.

For others, routine might be exactly what they need to find fulfilment.

A routine isn’t about creating a rigid plan for the rest of your life. Nor is it about stripping you of your freedom. As a healthy framework, a routine can help you experience more from your retirement life, so you are more likely to achieve your goals.

If you’re worried about feeling rudderless in retirement, here are five tips you can use to build routines and achieve happiness in your life after work.

1. Rethink your sense of purpose

For most of your life, your work will likely have had a significant impact on your lifestyle and sense of identity.

Once this disappears, it becomes important that you find something new to help motivate you and offer a new sense of purpose. Fortunately, retirement provides you with the freedom to do just that.

This might be:

• Visiting parts of the world you haven’t yet explored
• Finding a new creative outlet, like painting or learning the piano
• Staying social by joining new clubs for hobbies you’d like to explore
• Giving back by volunteering for a cause close to your heart
• Spending more time with your loved ones.

Whether great or small, a new purpose can act as the focal point of your retirement routine and offer direction for your new lifestyle.

It can also help the process feel less daunting and inspire excitement for retirement rather than anxiety.

2. Start by setting small, achievable goals

Your ideal retirement routine does not have to materialise from thin air. It can take time, patience, and trial and error to perfect.

The best way to start could be with just one or two goals to try out regularly, on a daily or weekly basis, like:

• Waking up at 8 am

• Getting up and out of the house each morning

• Reading at least 10 pages of a book

• Meeting with friends at least once a week for a social coffee

• Starting a group-based activity, like a walking club.

Testing out a variety of goals, particularly if you are unsure about how you want to style your retirement routine, can help you unpick your options. With these, you can begin to develop your own rhythm and pace for your retirement.

3. Develop regular touchpoints to help you establish structure

Once you have begun testing what works well for your routine, you can start developing your framework by establishing touchpoints, or anchors.

They act as regular, non-negotiable elements of your retirement routine which introduce structure. Here are some examples of touchpoints that can anchor your week.

Your touchpoints can be fewer or more than the examples provided. What’s important is that you choose anchors that don’t feel overwhelming. Otherwise, they may become chores rather than elements of a healthy routine.

4. Try not to recreate a routine from your working life

It’s easy to fall into old habits and try to emulate the pace and intensity of your working life in retirement.

This might mean creating spreadsheets and trying to fill every minute of your day so that you keep yourself just as busy as you were at work.

Remember, your lifestyle in retirement is fundamentally different to your working life. Now, you have the opportunity to enjoy wealth you’ve spent a lifetime accumulating at a pace that you decide.

This might mean embracing a quieter, comfortable, and more relaxing pace, and spreading out your retirement goals across the rest of your life rather than rushing to achieve them straight away.

5. Be kind to yourself

Lifestyle transitions aren’t easy, especially when you are trying to unlearn a routine you have spent the last 40 years perfecting.

It’s therefore important that you give yourself time to adjust. If you are struggling, don’t be hard on yourself; trust that retirement is a process, and you will arrive at your perfect routine in your own time.

Get in touch

Make sure your pension doesn’t get in the way of your dream retirement by working with The Pension Planner today. We can help you build pension wealth that lasts, so you can focus on living your life the way you want to.

Email info@thepensionplanner.co.uk or call 0800 0787 182.