The Decision to Be Done With Work
The more I thought about retirement and how people construct their post-work lives, the more curious I became about how people make the decision to retire in the first place.
I decided that the best way to learn about the decision making process would be to speak with people who had recently retired or who were in the midst of retiring. I conducted semi-structured interviews from 2014 – 2017 with individuals who were gracious enough to share their experiences.
I am truly grateful to them for their time and their candor. Although each person’s situation was unique, in most cases it seemed that a convergence of internal psychological factors and external circumstances propelled their retirement decision forward.