Thinking about early retirement can lead to three possible outcomes:

  1. You remain stuck and unhappy, except even more so, because rather than solving your current life problems, you distract yourself and waste your mental focus and energy on dreaming of a far-off tomorrow, one that you actually do little to bring about. This is a bad outcome. In this scenario, thoughts about early retirement are what I call “empty calorie dreams” – they don’t lead to the desired outcome of a happier life.
  2. You realize that early retirement requires taking steps today, including researching, reflecting, deciding, planning, and implementing. The outcome of taking these steps is that you make early retirement possible by securing the resources needed to retire in financial comfort. This security is achieved earlier in life than if you hadn’t taken steps to retire early, whether or not you eventually avail yourself of this early retirement option. This is a good outcome.
  3. You realize that your current motivation to retire early is a symptom of your current life problems, and you focus on identifying and solving those problems. You begin to live more happily from day one. This is a good outcome, but it is the one that is least commonly undertaken.

My focus today is on Outcome #3 because, as I mentioned, it is the one least commonly undertaken. And why is this so? Because it often remains unnoticed as a possibility. Thoughts of early retirement lead to thinking about and preparing for the future. Even if steps are taken immediately to secure that future, steps to improve the present are not considered and, thus, not undertaken.

But here is hidden an unmet need, hidden in plain sight: thoughts about early retirement are often a sign that something is not right in your life right now. And by realizing that something is not right and that, usually, something can be done about it right now, then you can begin fixing those problems now.

This focus on making the present a happier time in your life does not obviate a focus on the future. You can and should also plan and deploy your plans for retirement, whether it is early or not. But to plan and secure a happy future can be done without needing to suffer all the way from today to that future retirement date, which – let’s be frank – is not likely coming up all that soon. Sure, secure, and enjoy early retirement. But don’t suffer in the meantime.

A Needed Conversation With Yourself

Ok, ready? Here is an approach you can take right now.

Start by simply asking yourself, “When I think about retirement, what is it I want to get away from and what do I want to get to?”

Of course, a first response might be, “I want to get away from work and start having free time.”

Fair enough, but an answer that is not very informative for solving today’s problems. So, dig deeper.

Ask yourself, “What is it about my current job that I want to get away from?”

I highly recommend you jot down all the reasons that come to mind so you can reflect on them, revise them, and reorganize them. Let it all hang out. Keep thinking, and as you think each thought, it will lead to further thoughts, helping you diagnose sources of your current malaise.

Give yourself permission to complain, to feel unhappy, to want to change your life, real, real bad.

It is common to fear going down this thinking path because it is felt that the answers that arise might lead to bad outcomes. Like what, for example? The fear is that once you see and feel the full depth and weight of what ails you, you will do something crazy. Like what? Quit your job tomorrow? Get divorced? Leave your kids at the safe site at the fire station? Curse and scream or go postal at work?

I don’t think you’ll do any of those things. And, if you’ve grown more and more stressed and unhappy over the last months or years, clearly your current stance of keeping yourself ignorant of what ails you is not working.

Admitting and then acknowledging to yourself, though not necessarily celebrating, what it is you want and what it is that’s causing you pain, will not in itself lead to rash and regrettable action. In fact, getting to know yourself places you in a better position to address possibly long-lasting – because unaddressed – problems.

After all, the first step to effective treatment is completing a diagnostic assessment. Only once you have framed the problems and their sources will you be in a position to intervene.

Also, take the same approach to consider what it is you want to do once you ‘retire.’ What is it that you are unable to do right now that you really, really want to be doing? Specify in detail. Spend more time with family and kids? Take around-the-world cruises? Express yourself artistically in some way? Start a new business venture?
Great. Write all these “things I want to do.”

Ok. With your lists of get-away-froms and get-tos, here are the next tasks. This process is challenging, I admit, but worth it.

And the tasks are:

  • Pretend you are a career consultant to yourself.
  • Go down your lists in turn, considering how each activity that you want to stop doing can be minimized or eliminated, and how each activity that you want to start doing can be started now or very soon, even if at a smaller scale or devoting less time than you imagine you’d devote to it if you were to wait until retirement.
  • Have a conversation with yourself, as consultant and client in turn. You, as the client, the recipient of consultative services, can push back against the consultant. You can insist that nothing can change, that retirement is the only answer. If you like, you can stomp a foot, cross your arms across your chest, pout, or throw up your hands. And you, as the consultant, can smile inside, remember not to roll your eyes, and walk you, as the client, to start, gently but sincerely, to consider how you can achieve more happiness in your current life.

OK. Do you buy it? Or do you think I’m full of it, that what I suggest is stupid, and that I just don’t understand? I may not understand your life situation, and you might be right that I have nothing to offer. But I have spoken with dozens of unhappy physicians. It’s one of the blessings of my position, and I mean this unironically.

Common Source of Present Unhappiness

The common source of unhappiness with the individuals I’ve chatted with comes down to too much work, too much stress at work, and too little time for anything else. And the common final pathway of their feeling of being stuck in this state of (noxious) affairs. And this stuckness, I believe, is due to a gross underestimate of the control they can achieve over their career.

The reality is that, because of the severe clinician shortage, almost any physician has the power to negotiate or renegotiate their employment contract or, failing that, to change jobs.

If you want, you can change the parameters of what you do, how you do it, and how much time you devote to it.

Most instances of stuckness are partially self-imposed. I don’t mean to suggest that any of us is free to do anything we want. The world does constrain us in so many ways. But within those constraints, we remain free to choose.

One form of stuckness is thus due to a lack of recognizing that one can take control over what one does.

Another form is due to not being willing to make compromises. For example, if you are really burned out from long hours, but are unwilling to settle for less money for fewer hours of work, then you are perhaps boxing yourself in and doing so intentionally. You want to tough it out in order to maximize your income to lead you to a retirement that can’t come soon enough. By all means, do so. I will suggest here that you, instead, consider how you might make more money per hour to allow you to make that same amount of income in less time. Ask around. Investigate. Many physicians are not making as much money per hour as they perhaps can and deserve to.

Still another form of stuckness is due to a lack of knowledge or skill that leads to working inefficiently and getting burned out from overly long hours. For example, perhaps you notice you’re always the one working the longest hours at the clinic. Why? What else is everyone else doing? Poor charting skills are a frequent culprit. If this is an issue, go get some EMR training and peer guidance.

When Work vs. Retirement Becomes All-Or-Nothing Thinking

Now, let me say a few words about putting off what you want to do until you retire. I would advise you to ask yourself if this is a form of all-or-nothing thinking: work life is all bad, and I can’t do anything  I want, and retirement is all good, and only then will I have the time of my life.

Challenge yourself with these questions: “If I had to do more or any of what I want to do now, what would it take?” “What steps do I need to take to prepare for and make that outcome happen without waiting for retirement?” “What is the fastest way to get to that desired outcome?”

Another common mindset that gets in the way of success and happiness is a belief that anything worthwhile must be hard to achieve. This mindset can lead to making overly elaborate plans to get to a goal when, in fact, a lot of those steps, those prerequisites, are unnecessary. The goal is the goal! And, thus, with the goal being the goal, the way to achieve it is to devise a plan that is as simple as possible and that achieves the goal as quickly as possible! Your task is to question and eliminate all unnecessary steps. You’ve heard the term, Analysis Paralysis. I’ve seen it. It is real. It hurts a lot of people, stops them in their tracks.

One last thought. Sometimes you don’t do what you know you need to do because you are afraid and you are daunted. It feels hard and complex and, often, unreachable. If you feel this way, it’s ok. Everyone setting off into the unknown feels some trepidation. Remind yourself that you do not need to – nor will you even be able to – know everything you need to know to reach those desired outcomes. But you must have enough faith to take the first step. The first step lets you take the second and so on. It is the journey that lets the journey continue. Each step teaches you something, lets you perceive from a new place, and changes you. Once you arrive at your hard-won goal, it is a different, stronger, wiser you who has arrived. Change begets change, skill builds skill, hope births hope, love spreads love.

Yours on the way,
Dr. Jack

Language Brief

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” – Epictetus

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” – Socrates

“Money is a great servant but a bad master.” – Francis Bacon

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” – Seneca