I’ve spent years thinking and writing about how we work — about culture, purpose, and how to build kinder places. Now, as I approach my own retirement in March 2026, I’m learning something more personal: how to build a kinder rhythm for my own life.
I don’t have this figured out. What follows isn’t a lesson — it’s an experiment I’m living into, one uncertain step at a time.
Learning to Retire To Something
For most of my life, I’ve been wired to build, lead, and plan. Retirement felt like stepping out of a story I’ve been writing for decades — an ending, a withdrawal. But lately I’ve realized: you don’t retire from something. You retire to something.
The question is: to what?
Åse Lill and I asked a facilitator (yes, ChatGPT) to help us slow down and ask better questions. Over a few hours, we each answered prompts — first alone, then together — and created a shared document. It became a working draft of a new work title, a position description for ourselves, not retirees but what we now call Connoisseurs of Leisure.
The Questions That Guided Us
What do you want more of in this next season?
Åse Lill: “Visibility, calm mornings, shared plans I can actually see.”
Me: “Adventure, evolution, learning new things together.”
What are you each afraid of losing?
Åse Lill: “Structure and purpose.”
Me: “Momentum and curiosity.”
What does freedom look like?
Åse Lill: “Knowing what’s coming and having a say in it.”
Me: “Not knowing what’s coming — and trusting we’ll figure it out.”
Somewhere in those differences we found our balance. She wanted visibility and calm. I wanted evolution and flow. We both wanted anchored time together — time that wasn’t owned by obligation or urgency.
Building the Scaffolding
We decided to treat this transition with intention — not because life needs to be managed, but because good things deserve structure.
We registered the domain retired.email and set up new addresses: robert@retired.email and ase@retired.email. You can now contact us there! We created a shared Google Workspace and a “Connoisseurs calendar”. Started a shared backlog of interests, hobbies, and dreams as a living roadmap.
Every quarter, we’ll sit down as product owners of our own leisure — maybe over coffee or during a sunset walk — and check in: What gave us joy this season? What felt heavy or forced? What might we change or pause?
The goal isn’t productivity. It’s presence. Space without pressure. Rhythm without rigidity.
What We’re Pausing
Together we hosted one Norway retreat this year — a beautiful, life-giving experiment. For 2026, we’re giving ourselves permission not to hold another. We need room to adjust, to live into this new rhythm before deciding what belongs in it. Look for our next one in 2027!
The same goes for my books. I’ll finish the current one, then pause. Not to stop writing, but to make room for new things. Åse Lill and I are launching our joint venture together — building on what we’re learning through this process. Less about output. More about listening and learning.
A Shift in This Blog
Which brings me here, to Better Places.
I started this blog to explore how we create kinder workplaces, how we might reduce work hours and embrace more humane rhythms, how we can be present across cultures and contexts. That work still matters to me. I’ll keep writing about those things.
But as I drift toward retirement, I’m expanding the lens. I want to explore what happens after work — the post-occupational life, if you will. What does it mean to retire well? To travel not as an escape but as a practice of noticing? To build a life that’s full but not frantic, intentional but not rigid? It may touch on new parts of my life, spiritual for example.
I’m calling this exploration leisure aptitude — learning how to be, not just do. How to shed a little ego and grow a little presence.
I don’t know what I’ll discover yet. But I’m going to write about it here — the observations, the experiments, the failures and small discoveries. This blog will still be about building better places, but the places I’m exploring now include the space beyond the office, the rhythm after the alarm clock stops, the freedom that comes when structure falls away.
If you’ve been reading quietly for a while, I hope you’ll keep reading. And if you’re standing at your own threshold — whether it’s retirement or another transition — maybe you’ll recognize some of the same questions.
Our Shared Compass
Here’s what we know so far:
We want to wake with the light, not an alarm clock. We want our meals and sunsets to be anchors, not afterthoughts. We want to stay healthy enough to keep moving — walking, swimming, creating. We want solitude and connection. We want to keep choosing curiosity over comfort.
That’s the whole plan, really. Everything else is just details.
Learning How to Arrive
This isn’t a polished story. It’s a work in progress — our best attempt at finding grace in the in-between. I still catch myself wanting to measure, to plan, to define. But more and more, I’m learning to let that go.
We’re not leaving something behind so much as learning how to arrive.
You can reach us at our new addresses:
robert@retired.email
ase@retired.email
This next chapter isn’t a conclusion. It’s a beginning we’re writing in real time. If you have your own experiments in the art of living — in work or beyond it — I’d love to hear them. None of us have the answers. But maybe we can learn together — quietly, patiently — about what it means to become connoisseurs of leisure.
Better Places 