True Story Time

I was soliciting ideas for blog articles the other day in the Financial Independence (FI) pensioners’ Facebook Group I started called Golden Albatross/Golden Handcuffs. I floated the idea “Coping Strategies For the Last Few Years (i.e. Gutting It Out)” and received the following response from one of my group members:

“I have 6 years. Help me gut it out, and keep my eyes on the prize.”

Six-years eh? That’s probably not an all-to-uncommon time-frame for a person to lose motivation for their job, no matter the reason. I find that pension earners tend to get that “trapped” feeling near the end of their career. That isn’t the same feeling as my self-described Golden Albatross situation. I define the Golden Albatross as the tension a person feels between staying or leaving a pensionable career. In this case, the trapped feeling to which I refer comes after a person decides to stay at a job in order to earn a pension, but before that person can retire with a pension’s full benefits. That’s where I find that “gutting it out” truly comes into play, and it’s the topic I want to concentrate on in today’s post.

Caveats and Qualifications

Much like the articles in my Planning section, I feel compelled to state my (lack of) qualifications for the record. I’m not a medical doctor. Nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. More importantly, I want to remind everyone that I suffered a mental breakdown due to my inability to handle the emotional trauma that piled up from my work. Although I’m in recovery, I’m not recovered. This means I’m still very much a work in progress. Thus, as I outline below some of the coping strategies that have worked me, there’s no guarantee they’ll work for anyone else. As a result, use discretion as you read this article, do your own research and make sure you talk with a medical professional if your problems feel out of control. Trust me, there’s no shame in it.

Secondly, despite not being a medical professional, I feel it’s safe to say that at a certain level, “gutting it out” isn’t healthy for anyone. While engaging in situations outside a person’s comfort zone may be good for building resiliency; day-in and day-out engagement with a stressful situation wears and tears on a person’s psyche. That isn’t to say that all people approaching the end of their career feel trapped. Some people like Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger truly love their job, and can’t imagine a life without it. They’ll never quit.

Job Dissatisfaction

However, not all of us love our jobs. In fact, not even most of us. According to a Gallup poll conducted in 2012, only 30% of American workers were actively engaged at work. A fairly high percentage of those dis-engaged workers actually hated their job. If you hate your job, any length of time until retirement could seem like a long time. Fortunately, if that’s you, just Duck, Duck, Go (the new Google for those who don’t like to be tracked by Google) “what to do if you hate your job?” and you’ll find an endless number of articles and videos to help you. Sources range from major news sites to personal finance blogs and mental health websites.

As a result of the heavy coverage of job dissatisfaction on the internet, I’m going to stay away from the topic of “what to do if you hate your job”. I don’t really like to re-create content, and I’m sure numerous, better, and more qualified writers have covered the topic in-depth. Plus, this will keep me honest because, despite the serious mental issues I’ve incurred as a result of my job, I don’t hate it. I’m just ready to move onto the next phase of my life — the Financial Independence (FI) phase. Unfortunately, I can’t do that until I earn my pension. Thus, some mornings I need to motivate myself to get out of bed and put my trousers on one leg at a time.

That might be you too. If it is, don’t worry. According to Fritz Gilbert, a pensioner, and writer from the Retirement Manifesto blog, it’s perfectly normal for someone towards the end of their career to lack the motivation of their younger self or their more junior colleagues. Since that’s the case, people may find the motivational strategies I employ of use. So let’s get to it.

Coping Strategy #1: Make A Plan

One of the nurses at the Pain Management clinic I attend, said something worth noting the other day. She said, “A goal not written down is just a wish.”. It caught my attention because it was similar to a quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that I used in my Four Golden Albatross Financial Lessons:

A goal without a plan is just a wish

I happen to agree with the sentiment of both quotes. That should come as no surprise since there’s an entire section of my blog dedicated to financial planning. The reason I dedicate so much time and space on my blog to planning is that I found power in the written word.

Now obviously, I’m not the first to coin that phrase or to discover that effect, even in the financial world. Search for the phrases “the power of the written word” or “the power of the written plan” on the internet and no shortage of material will appear. However, I cannot emphasize enough the psychologically healing effect I felt from simply creating and testing my retirement plan. I went from feeling out of control over many of the circumstances in my life to being in control. It’s probably the closest thing I’ve ever felt to a religious experience … outside of learning to the surf!

It turns out, that it’s not just a feeling. Something physiologically transformative happens when a person takes time to write a plan. As Mary Morrissey pointed out on Huff Post recently, when a person writes a plan, it forces the logical hemisphere of the brain to take and translate the goal (up to that point merely an idea) from the creative hemisphere of the brain. That cross-over act happens in the corpus callosum, which is a bunch of neural fiber connecting the two hemispheres. When that cross-over occurs, electrical currents are shot through the spine into every nerve ending of your body. As Mary put it:

you send your consciousness and every cell of your body a signal that says, “I want this, and I mean it!”

There’s another important effect as well. Writing a plan tremendously increases the odds of success in achieving your goals. That could prove pivotal if you find yourself lacking motivation and/or feeling trapped in your current work environment. Who knows? You may even spot an opportunity to change or improve your circumstances once you write that plan. Finally, if you don’t know how to write out a retirement plan, I suggest you check out my article on the method I use called the GRO2W model.

Coping Strategy #2: Change Your Circumstances

One of the virtues of being in the military (depending on your service and specialty) is that you change locations and job responsibilities routinely. For me, that routine has occurred every two to three years throughout my career. None of those changes were small either. Every single one involved moving from one side of the country to the other, if not overseas. They also involved a change in duty and responsibilities after every move. As a result, things rarely get stale. Just about the time the job transitions from routine to boring, it’s time to move again.

Of course, that has it’s downsides too. Moving every two-to-three years is hard on the family. It’s also tiresome. At some point, you start to yearn for a place to put down roots and call home. However, I’m not implying that everyone should move or change jobs as frequently as I have. What I am saying, is if you’re feeling trapped in your job, or bored, or unmotivated; maybe it’s time for a change.

That change need not be a move from whatever company or organization you’re currently working at either. In fact, if you’re getting long in the tooth like me, I’d discourage a move if your pension’s at stake. What I would recommend is you look for new or different opportunities within your current company or organization. Maybe that’s a lateral move to a different department, or maybe it’s a reduction in responsibilities if you’re getting too stressed. It could mean a move within the same company or organization but in an entirely different locale. Whatever the case, maybe your lack of motivation or the entrapment you’re feeling is more about a perceived lack of control in your life, and less about the job itself. If that’s the case, stop letting your work-life simply happen to you, and look for a way to take back control.

Coping Strategy #3: Take More Time-Off

Project Time Off reports that 52% of American’s leave earned vacation days unused at the end of the year. While that’s a downward trending statistic over the last three years, it’s still above historical norms. Use your vacation time people, it’s good for you! Search online for the benefits of vacationing and you’ll find numerous articles like this one on the positive physical and mental effects. American’s have a habit of looking down their nose at other nations, especially European ones, vacationing for entire months at a time. I don’t! Or at least I no longer do. I want to do more of it, and so should you.

Time-off need not translate to an expensive vacation though. In fact, the closer you get to “retirement”, the more you may want to consider taking time-off specifically to practice your intended retirement routine. Fritz Gilbert, from the Retirement Manifesto Blog, did exactly that in 2017. He wrote a great article chronicling the lessons he learned from his retirement dry-run. I highly recommend it, and his website in general, for anyone looking to retire in the next five years.

As for me, ever since my mental break down, I make sure I take all of my thirty earned leave days each year, and then some. That lifestyle change was made easier by a Department of Defense (DoD) rule change a few years ago which lessened the number of leave days active duty service members can carry over from one year to a next. Regardless though, I no longer look at my large number of saved up leave days as a good thing. Even if I’m not taking a major vacation, I still take my days. It does me good.

Coping Strategy #4: Do More Stuff Outside of Work

Here’s another thing that I came to appreciate after my breakdown: at some point, the career will end, but life will go on. Make sure you have a life worth living waiting for you on the other side. That’s going to mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. For me, a father with young kids and a wife, that obviously meant family. In fact, family was the motivating factor that led me to seek medical help after my breakdown. I wanted to ensure I had a wife and children who loved me and wanted to be with me once it was time to “pop smoke” … as we say in the military.

However, it also came to mean other things as well. Over my career, there were important and meaningful friendships in my life I allowed to atrophy all because I was “too busy” with work. I’ve subsequently made meaningful strides to re-establish connections with some of those friends. There was obviously a creative calling within me that needed unleashing as well, which explains my writing and the blog.

Finally, there was a deep desire to recapture some of my previous physical fitness. This not only meant getting into the doctor for diagnosis of all my various physical ailments, but more time spent exercising. Thus, I started Karate lessons with Grumpus Minimus #1, started biking to/from work (with all its associated mishaps), and started hiking more with my family.

So what sort of activities outside of work motivate you? Hobbies? Friends? Family? Whatever they are, I suggest you take some time away from work to start refining and expanding those activities into something more meaningful. Not only will it help you get through the day-to-day grind at work, but it will also set you up nicely for what comes next in your life after the career. Who knows? Your work days may start to fly as you wake-up each morning filled with anticipation for what you will do after work is done.

Coping Strategy #5: Limit Your Vices

I was going to call this strategy “Focus on the Positive”, but let’s be honest, with a pseudonym like Grumpus Maximus, it’d be a bit disingenuous. To be fair, I’m the last person who should preach about limiting vices, since I struggle with my own routinely. My personal favorite is beer. I love good beer and drink too much of it. I shouldn’t though because it aggravates both my mental and physical ailments. However, most nights I’ll savor one or two in order to relax.

Fortunately, my body developed an internal defense mechanism a few years back in the form of an instant headache. That’s right, my body doesn’t wait for a hangover the following morning. Instead, I get one instantly. It happens if I drink more than three beers in a night. This means that, fortunately, I’m forced to moderate. However, if that mechanism wasn’t there, I’d have a much bigger beer belly.

Not everyone is as lucky. A senior non-commissioned officer (SNCO) I work with recently reminded me of that fact. He’s been in the service about as long as me but has suffered far more mental injury including combat-related PTS and the death of a spouse. He’s also a recovering alcoholic and a single father.

Unfortunately, this SNCO recently suffered an alcohol relapse and barely escaped getting booted from the service. This is a person who’d sat for hours in my office discussing Financial Independence, investing, the power of the pension, and his post-military plans. In other words, he knew the stakes, but he just couldn’t keep the demons at bay. I’m happy to say my command was willing to give him one last chance, and so was I. However, he’s now walking a tightrope, and he’s still several years from retirement.

Thus, make no mistake, if you’re gutting it out at work, you’re in a vulnerable mental place. Those vices can sneak up on you quick when you’re vulnerable. The next thing you know, they’ve got control of you. That’s about the time something stupid happens. Maybe it’s drinking and driving, or maybe it’s punching your boss. Either way, you need a method for maintaining control of those negative and self-destructive urges. Now, I’m not saying you should become a teetotaler or a Buddhist monk. What I am saying though, is that you should take all things in moderation and focus on the positive.

Conclusion

Arriving at a point in your career where you feel the need to “gut it out”, especially for the pension, is stressful. I know, because I’m doing it. However, you need not resign yourself to the situation. There are positive things you can do to exert some control over your work life. I just provided you with five positive actions you can take to help ease the tension in this situation and to stay mentally and physically healthy.

One last note, all of us possess the ability to go off the rails. If you think you’re immune, you’re deluding yourself. No one’s perfect, so we shouldn’t demand it of ourselves, but we can strive to be better. Whether we seek to improve ourselves at work or at home, sometimes just making the effort is all it takes to get over that hump. By doing so you may just turn that “gutting it out” situation into something bearable, if not downright enjoyable.