I also don't think dislike of phone calls constitutes a mental health barrier that needs resolution.
I never said it was.
I didn't say you said it was.
You did, however, suggest that not "trusting" oneself to maintain social relationships is a problem that requires resolution, and that simply planning around a dislike of certain kinds of social interaction constitutes "micro managing yourself."
Literally not what I said.
I said addressing mental health barriers is more productive than trying to micro manage yourself around them.
So if someone is prone to isolation and depression, the priority should be the issues underpinning this problem instead of focusing on managing around it.
If social interactions are important to someone and they don't trust themselves to maintain something that is a priority, then yes, I consider that a significant issue to address.
all this planning sounds like a lot of work.
Can you just make a list of places and start visiting them? like longer visits, say 2 weeks not just weekends.
Why do you even need a list?
Or why can't the list wait until you're retired and have decompressed a bit?
I maintain *firmly* that NOTHING about retirement needs to be planned in advance. You could literally leave everything and start thinking about it the day after you retire and it would make no meaningful difference to outcomes.
It's not like years of retirement happen at once.
My point is that people have all the capacity on the world to start addressing these things *in retirement*.
Some people will not benefit from planning in advance. Other people will absolutely stress out less by having thought about it ahead of time. At the very least, evidence from this forum suggests that many (but not all) people find it far easier to pull the plug when they have thought about it what retirement might look like ahead of time - in which case it absolutely does make a meaningful difference to the outcome. OMYing because of nerves about what retirement might bring counts as an outcome.
As I said before, though, having a plan doesn't mean one should stick to that plan - it is far more beneficial to use the plan to build your confidence in the decision to retire, then go from there on a week by week basis and allow for decompression to lead you wherever it leads.
You seem to be pushing that no one should do any thinking about retirement until after they have retired, and that seems just as ridiculous as claiming that [everyone[/i] should have a plan. If that's not your intention, maybe soften your language a bit?
No, I never said that. I said that no one absolutely needs to and that *some* people really shouldn't. Perhaps I shouldn't say "no one", I can imagine some cases of severe mental health issues where people do need to plan carefully.
However, the vast, vast majority of people *could* put off planning what to do in retirement until they actually retire.
I think people need to realize that. You need to know what your options are before you can make the best choices, and there's an overwhelming messaging, especially here, that waiting is not even an option, that these things
need to be hammered out in advance, when they can very reasonably wait.
That's not the same as me saying that people, in general, shouldn't think about their future. That's not at all what I'm saying, just that it is a very reasonable option.
I have said firmly that for *some*, planning in advance is a bad option. For some it is a good idea, and for many more it is just benign and would be fine either way.
What I push back against aggressively is this concept that
everyone needs a plan. I 1000% disagree with that.