My 100 days in this new state of life has just passed. If I were in a new role in business it should be the right time to assess my success and to make early corrections to my behavior and goal setting.
What have I done? Many things, actually. I made a promise to finalize a couple of projects that had been on my agenda for quite some time. I have chaired Nokia Foundation for 8 years soon and while this is my last year I have to do my best to help may successor to have a running start. There has been also some other tailing projects but all in all those will end by the end of this year. I will give up all my duties and tasks that have any Nokia flavor.
I have been working on many other topics parallel to Nokia and those will continue. Tekniikan museo, Standardointilautakunta and TEK valtuusto, just to mention some. The challenge I have relates to the academic studies, do I have the energy and passion to progress with them. I have several options to pursuit.
And then, of course, I have the options open to focus more on housekeeping, gardening and all kinds of maintenance work that I have put aside. And many similar hobbies to work with family trees or small electronics and anything between.
During the first 100 days I have not yet been able to identify the essential areas but rather I have been working on all that just have popped up. This is obviously not the optimum. I will waste my precious time on my retirement if I can not decide what is important and what is not. In the short term I can not avoid spending a lot of time and thoughts for the previous generation while I should spend at least equally for the well-being of the next.
Retirement itself is clearly a blessing. There is so much more time to invest in things that require more. On the other hand, it may become a curse if I’m not able to decide more clearly what is important and what is not. Retirement is an opportunity which deserves personal leaderships, similarly as any other period in one’s lifetime.