I'm some years away from FIRE but currently I plan to have a lot of structure in my retirement: fun jobs, volunteer gigs, anything regular and scheduled. Toastmasters. Yoga class. Maybe go back to school, who knows?
For myself, if I have too much unscheduled time, I just laze around. Read, watch tv, eat. It's so bad. I think I will need structure.
How about you?
I've only got seven weeks of fire under my belt, so I am still in the early part of the decompression phase. But here are the habits that I've established so far:
Wake up, preferably around 7 or 8 AM to take advantage of and enjoy as many daylight hours as possible. I worked second shift for over a decade, so even 8 AM feels early to me. Sometimes I sleep in to my old wake up time of 10 AM, this is usually caused by not getting sleepy early enough the previous night because my old sleep schedule likes to reassert itself.
Much to my surprise, I have decided to continue with shaving every day. I look scruffy and feel unkempt with stubble. Second surprise, I make my bed every day. When I worked, it didn't seem like a worthwhile use of my time.
My last self surprise is something that I'm not doing: naps. Now that I'm caught up on my sleep, and I don't over eat, I find that I simply don't get sleepy or tired in the daytime.
I am exercising every day. Previously, my job provided some exercise (on my feet all day, walking, taking the stairs instead of an inconvenient elevator, some days significant moderately heavy lifting at a quick pace (50# sometimes as much as 900 times in an 8 hour shift.).
I'm eating a better diet. I've lost 10 pounds in the last 8 weeks (I started the diet the day after Christmas). I want to lose at least another 10.
The purpose of the diet and exercise is better health. I already know that left to my own tendencies, I would sit and eat most of the day. Getting obese with high blood pressure and cholesterol and no exercise would probably be a great way to cut my fire short. So I decided some discipline is in order.
I'm studying Spanish on YouTube. Not every day, but the days I do I try to put in at least one hour.
A bit of an aside here. For anyone who is interested, if you want to learn Latin American Spanish (instead of European) I recommend Ana on the Butterfly Spanish channel on YouTube. She is a though, enthusiastic, and personable native Mexican.
Her earlier videos start with vowel and consonant pronunciation and rules and work their way up from there. Her website, and her YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsLYD1Jyf3Ahttps://www.butterflyspanish.com/I spend a few hours each day reading on the internet. General news and special interests, like MMM. Maybe not the best use of my time, but what the Hell, I enjoy it.
I'm about ready to start on my deferred minor home maintenance projects. Exterior windows need paint. Larger projects are removing a butt ugly tile kitchen floor, and refinishing wood floors in two bedrooms and a hallway. I may go with refinishing the underlying wood floor in the kitchen, or I may put down easy clean vinyl flooring. Also, new kitchen cabinets and counter tops.
I've turned on my TV exactly once in the past seven weeks.
I do consider myself to be a little out of step, in that I don't feel much of a need to socialize or do things to be happy or to escape boredom. So my fire may turn out to be less structured than most.