The Retirement Newsletter: Do you need a work detox?

Issue Number: 182 (35) — Do you need to detach from your former life?

Photo by Author — the wallpaper at Jane Austen’s house

Welcome

Welcome to issue number 182 (35). And if you are wondering about the photo, it has nothing to do with this week’s subject; I like the image and thought I would share it.

Last week, in issue 181 (35) — Fighting 50 years of programming — I wrote about how important I thought it was to break our programming in our retirement. My argument was that through education and our working lives, we are programmed to work and think in a particular way, and the programming could hold us back from getting the most from our retirement.

This week, I am continuing the theme of breaking the programming by examining how we can draw a line under our working lives and move on — something I’m calling the work detox.

This need to draw a line may not apply to all careers and work. But I’ve certainly found it to be true for my career as a scientist and an educator. When I retired, I was still left with particular "itches” that needed to be scratched from my career. And I knew that if I didn’t scratch them, I would have trouble settling into retirement.

The itch

I think it is important that we find a way to draw a line under our careers. We need to make a break between the old and the new. I think this is especially true if we had a career in which there were things we wanted to do or achieve and didn’t meet all our goals.

If you don’t "draw the line,” you can feel frustrated in retirement, as you still carry the baggage from your career. You still have things you want or wish you had done. You have that itch that needs scratching.

For the last few years of my career, I drew up a list of things I wanted to do, try, or achieve — things I needed to get out of my system.

The list was short and consisted of only two things, which became three.

At the top of the list was I wanted to be a bit more experimental with my teaching (I touched on this last week in Fighting 50 years of programming where I was talking about education as training to become a cog in a machine, and the work of Sugata Mitra’s where learning was more student-led).

However, and if you are outside academia, you may not know this: changing how you teach a course is very difficult.

The first problem is administrative. There was a lot of paperwork if I wanted to change what I taught, and several committees had to agree on the changes. Even if the changes were agreed upon, implementation could take one to three years.

The second problem is the students.

If you teach at a university, your teaching (and hence your career) lives and dies on student feedback. At the end of each course or module, the students submit feedback on the teaching, the organisation, and how everything went. If you get poor teaching scores, typically below 80 to 85% satisfaction, you end up having a very awkward conversation with your line manager.

Therefore, if your teaching had good scores, you left it alone, even if you thought there was a better way of doing things — if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Of course, this score-based approach to teaching leads to stagnation and a lack of innovation.

I got good scores on my teaching and didn’t want to rock the boat by making significant changes. So, I introduced changes slowly over many years, and making any significant change would take five or more years. Then, COVID-19 came along, and we rapidly shifted our teaching from on-campus in a lecture theatre to online.

Professionally, this was the silver lining of the COVID-19 cloud — I could be “experimental” with my teaching. If my teaching scores plummeted, I could say it was because we had to adopt a new teaching style, which hadn’t worked.

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I moved away from my traditional stand-up in the lecture theatre and talk for 50 minutes approach to teaching. Instead, I recorded videos and used online resources to guide my students’ learning. I also introduced live-streamed feedback sessions, during which the students could ask questions about the learning material, which I would address in those sessions. I had never worked so hard on my teaching. I loved it; it was the most fun I had experienced teaching in years. I think it was one of the best teaching experiences I have had in my career.

I thought it worked very well, and I got great feedback on it from the students. However, regrettably, once we returned to on-campus teaching, we were forced back into the lecture theatre to deliver our teaching in the old style. This move back to the old ways was partly driven by senior management wanting students back on campus, spending money on accommodation and campus resources, and the students wanting more social interaction with their classmates.

I sympathised with the students who wanted a more traditional university experience with a social life based around campus. Still, it was a shame that we lost all the innovation and advancement we had made in teaching during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 allowed me to scratch my "teaching itch,” so I didn’t take it into retirement. But it introduced a new “itch” — I wanted to do more online teaching and videos.

The second "itch" I had from my working days was also teaching-related, and that was writing some textbooks.

During my career, I thought there was a need for three small textbooks. For years, I searched for such books but had no luck. I sat down several times to write the books but never finished them, and by the time I returned to them, they were dated.

Now, in my retirement, I am finding the time to write them.

I have published my first textbook, a glossary of biomedical terms, and I’m writing the others. While I’m not expecting to sell many, if any, of these books, writing them and getting them online is scratching the “itch,” and I am getting them out of my system.

However, as I said above, I miss producing teaching videos and interacting with students online. So, in my retirement, I’ve continued recording teaching videos and discussing science with students via YouTube comments. Hence, I still teach, but my teaching is now available online to anybody who finds it on YouTube.

The work detox

So, what is a work detox?

The work detox involves removing things from your system that you wanted to do during your working life but didn’t. For me, this includes writing the glossary book and making videos.

This process is important for me because if I don’t do it, these unmet desires will fester, nag, and distract me from my retirement. They will always be there in the background, nagging away at me. I won’t be able to let them go, and they will impact my enjoyment of retirement. Hence, I think it is important that we recognise and address these needs. We must scratch the itch.

Is what I’m describing common? Do you still have things from your working days that you need to address? If so, what did you do about it? Please let me know in the comment below whether you felt you did or needed a work detox.

This week in the Retirement Hustle

I have been unwell this past week, so there was no Retirement Side Hustle video. Normal service will be resumed next week (hopefully).

Travel — Nostalgia Corner

This week, more stories from my time in Thailand:

• Thailand — On's Thai Vegetarian Restaurant, 1 71000, 268/1 Maenamkwai Rd, Ban Tai, Mueang Kanchanaburi District, Kanchanaburi 71000, Thailand — A superb meal. It’s well worth a visit.

• Thailand — Kanchanaburi Allied War Cemetery (สุสานทหารสัมพันธมิตรกาญจนบุรี), Sangchuto Rd, Mueang Kanchanaburi, Changwat Kanchanaburi 71000, Thailand — Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery — a very moving experience.

• Thailand — Thailand-Burma Railway Centre (พิพิธภัณฑ์ทางรถไฟไทย-พม่า), Chaokhunnean Rd., Mueng Kanchanaburi, Changwat Kanchanaburi 71000, Thailand — A must-visit museum.

• Thailand — Chungkai War Cemetery, National Hwy No 3228, Mueang Kanchanaburi, Changwat Kanchanaburi 71000, Thailand — Another “Death Railway” Cemetery.

• Thailand — Nakakiri Resort & Spa (นาคาคีรี รีสอร์ด แอนด์ สปา), Thong Pha Phum, Changwat Kanchanaburi, Thailand — Time to move on. It was a very odd place to stay and difficult to find.

Next week, I will tell you about my incredibly moving visit to Hellfire Pass.

Next week

Next week, in issue 184 (37), I will share some exciting news with you! (Well, I think it is exciting.

Thanks

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Until next time,

Nick

PS: If you would like to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, or anything else — please get in touch.