Researchers are only beginning to understand why some people embrace retirement while others won’t even consider it.
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Yet “the reality is that retirement can be a very challenging time,” said Teresa Amabile, a psychologist at Harvard Business School and a co-author of the forthcoming book “Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You.”
After a decade of research into the retirement trajectories of professionals and executives, her team found that detaching from work can prove difficult, a phase often lasting two to three years before retirees settle into new routines.
The end of a career means “the loss of being a wage earner, of being a member of an organization or of a profession,” said Dr. Amabile, who retired this month at 74. It’s “the loss of being someone needed, counted upon, respected, perhaps powerful if you’ve been the head of a major corporation — or the president of the United States.”