TL;DR
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A Sixty and Me contributor argues that reviewing a recent week can help people identify activities that bring them joy and habits that crowd them out. Her own calendar showed that the order of activities mattered: making room for art, friends and other priorities before work tasks helped keep those tasks in proportion.
A Sixty and Me contributor says reviewing how she spent a recent week helped her see why coaching work was crowding out art, friends and time outdoors in retirement. She proposes that people nearing or already in retirement list and rate activities from the past week, then use the results to identify what feels rewarding and what is taking more time than intended.
The writer, who says she retired from a university the previous year, made a list of what she wanted retirement to include: friends, art, nature, writing, family and health. Comparing that list with her calendar, she found that coaching tasks had taken over much of her week. She said she enjoyed coaching women through retirement, but time spent revising newsletters, editing blog posts and adjusting her website had expanded beyond what she intended.
A day she enjoyed helped her identify a different pattern. It included coffee with her husband and cat, a walk and breakfast with a friend, knitting, art, writing one newsletter, gardening, a bath, television, errands, dinner and a walk. The writer said the order mattered: she had made time for activities she valued before starting her coaching work. On other days, she said, work tasks came first and often left little room for those activities.
Her proposed exercise is to list five to seven activities from the previous week, including both chosen activities and obligations, and rate each from minus five to plus five. She suggests looking for patterns among the highest-rated activities, such as whether they involved other people, time alone, making something, being outside or learning. She also recommends noticing what came first on the best days and whether any task occupied more time than planned.
Using a Week to Set Retirement Priorities
The exercise offers readers a practical way to think about retirement plans using recent experience rather than abstract predictions. For someone still working, reviewing a full week may reveal which interests they want to make more room for after leaving a job. For someone already retired, the writer says even a phone call or a short walk can be included, so a quiet week is still useful material.
The report’s central point is not that a particular activity guarantees happiness. Rather, the writer uses her own calendar to argue that time allocation and sequencing can affect whether valued activities happen at all. That distinction may matter to retirees who have free time but find that routines, paid work or other responsibilities still take priority. The suggested ratings are personal reflections, not a validated measure of wellbeing.
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How the Writer Reached the Exercise
The contributor says she retired from a university and then chose to include coaching women through retirement in her own retirement plan. She describes the work as meaningful, but says the surrounding tasks—reworking materials and maintaining her online presence—grew until they displaced other interests she had identified as important.
She connects the weekly review to a broader question about retirement: what a person wants daily life to contain. The report also references researcher and author Brené Brown’s description of joy as “an intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation.” The contributor presents that wording as close to her own understanding, while emphasizing that readers can begin by recalling moments from a week they have already lived.
“an intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation.”
— Brené Brown, as quoted in the Sixty and Me report
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Limits of a Personal Weekly Review
The report presents a personal reflection exercise, not research showing that scoring a week improves retirement wellbeing. It gives no study, sample or measured outcome for the method, and it does not establish that the writer’s approach will work the same way for other people. The numerical ratings are self-assessments rather than standardized scores.
The report also does not specify how often readers should repeat the exercise or how to respond when low scores reflect circumstances they cannot change. The contributor says she plans to block time for art lessons, hiking, exercise, a women’s group and friends after returning from vacation, but the source does not report what happened after those plans were made.
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The Writer Plans Calendar Changes
The contributor says her first week home from vacation includes client sessions and that she intends to block time for art, hiking, the gym, a women’s group and friends. She also says she may make a short checklist on some evenings when she feels her schedule is losing the balance she wants. The report does not provide a follow-up assessment of whether those calendar changes lasted or changed how she felt.
For readers who try the exercise, the next step described in the report is to compare their ratings and patterns with the week ahead: note what they want to preserve, what they might reduce and which valued activities need a place in the schedule. Those are suggestions from the contributor, not a promise of a particular result.
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Key Questions
What does the weekly exercise involve?
List five to seven things from the previous week, including both chosen activities and obligations. Rate each from minus five to plus five based on how energizing or draining it felt, then look for patterns among the highest scores.
Is the exercise only for people who have retired?
No. The contributor suggests that people who are still working review their whole week, including time outside work, to spot interests they may want more room for in retirement.
What if last week seemed uneventful?
The report says small activities count too. A phone call or a walk around the block can be included, even in a week when little else seemed to happen.
Does the report show that the method improves wellbeing?
No. It describes the contributor’s experience and offers a reflection exercise, but does not cite research measuring whether the method improves wellbeing or works for everyone.
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