Retiring Well: Considerations at Every Career Stage

Professor Emerita Teresa Amabile, whose current research focuses on the psychological and social aspects of the retirement transition, discusses ideas from her new book, “Retiring: Creating a Life that Works for You,” including how to consider retirement throughout all career stages. From early career years where issues of identity, relationships, and life structure are most relevant, to mid-career, which she calls an ideal time to create a “life map,” to retirement itself for which she suggests four steps to enable a smooth transition: deciding when and how to retire; detaching psychologically from your work; building a provisional retirement life; and, finally, consolidating a retirement life.