Mastering irrelevance

[goodlife]

Just want to share this article, I enjoyed reading it, quite relevant for early retirement for a lot of people IMO.

"Enjoying the freedom that comes with being irrelevant can help us avoid depression and enjoy life after retirement, even for people who have spent their careers being defined by their jobs."

https://hbr.org/2015/06/stop-worrying-about-how-much-you-matter

[Sayonara925]

Interesting article...thanks for sharing.   When I see people retire, then return to work several months later, I attributed it to boredom.  Often, boredom was the reason they cited themselves when asked.  I saw it a lot at my last job.  Now I'm thinking it has more to do with their need to feel relevant.  Definitely wasn't a need for income. 

Also liked this comment:

Much of our suffering derives from our perfectionism, and our belief that we should be ‘special.’ But when you don’t have to be special, life becomes special.

Personally, I think suffer more from the perfectionism thing than the relevancy in RE thing.

[EricL]

Good advice! 

[deborah]

So does this indicate that to retire early we have already attempted to master irrelevance?

It seems to me that many (most?) here have been very committed workers, working at arduous jobs (even several) to get to their goal of FIRE - doing without a job. The people with only one job may be perfect candidates for making our jobs the sum of our relevance. The people with several - particularly if they are different - may already have mastered irrelevance - or they may be trying to be relevant to everyone!

Perhaps OMY is partially a symptom of relevance?

[Cougar]

good article.

truth is we all need to become okay with being irrelevant because we all will be eventually.

even bill clinton, 2 term very popular president cant do one thing to help hillary get elected. sure he can raise money for her campaign but he's not impactin her campaign because he's bill clinton.

i suggest to figure out waht makes you happy and or satisfied and do that the rest of the world really doesnt care about you anyways.