When productivity ends, so can our will to go on. A gold watch and a pat on the back can be interpreted as the golden boot: 'All right, thank you very much. Make way for the young now.' You're nothing but a 'human resource', off to the post office and then to the scrap-heap, drawing your pension once a week and scratching down lottery numbers while children squirt you with water pistols.

Lack of goals and a drop in productivity can spell disaster for the recently retired. The sudden change in pace and lack of mental stimulation seem refreshing at first, but can lead to boredom, feelings of worthlessness, chronic depression and Jerry Springer. To compensate, many elderly adopt the habit of living in the past, which tells me they have nothing to look forward to. Far better to stay focused in the here-and-now, remaining active and mentally engaged, not slothful.

Find a job you like or start a business. Set mental tasks. Plan goals. Stay social and relevant. Travel. Make your fondest memories the years in which you have the greatest investment. What do you wish to accomplish by bed-time tonight? (The scale of achieving does not matter!)

• Retirement? I'm utterly against it
• Continue producing, you'll have more fun
• The insurance companies have embezzled your pension fund anyway
• Never retire FROM something, always retire TO something
• Now is the time to use your skills to start a new project
• If you are lazy and not working at eighty, GET A JOB
• The extra income will be useful
• In most long-lived cultures, retirement is unknown. Everyone produces, some still fathering sprogs at ninety
• Employ the elderly. Seventy-year-olds know a lot of stuff
• Dream - Plan - Deliver, and I don't mean pizza
• According to the longevity experts, at 65 you are approximately 55% of the way through your lifespan potential!
• Sitting at home does nothing but provoke feelings of worthlessness (big nocebo), owned up to even by lottery winners, who often face depression or return to work to avoid going loopy
• Why not work for yourself?
• Create! Produce! Serve!
• Show someone you're still alive
• Blink!

The definition of success:
Spending your time in your own way

NEVER RETIRE! We need a sense of worth and value, which retirement dispels. A recent study shows that retirement is not all it's cracked out to be. Stay busy!

RESOURCES
Simple Changes by Phillip Day