Are you aiming for a traditional retirement at 65 or another specific age with a sudden and complete stop? You’ve circled the date and have a ‘countdown’ to your last day at work. Maybe you’ve even planned what you’ll be doing for the first few months once you’re wrapped up. 

But here’s a thought: what if you didn’t make everything so tidy? 

A visual came to me when talking with a friend about both retirement plans AND remote work.  We both were missing the ability to be in a room with our team drawing ideas out on a whiteboard.   

I said to my friend, instead of drawing a hard retirement timeline, imagine this: You write your retirement date on a whiteboard — “Age 65” — and then you take your hand and smudge it. Not to erase it, but to soften it. “Smudge” it to the left a little and smear it to the right a bit.  Let that date drift a little earlier and a little later. “Stretch” the date might be a better term, but we were riffing with the hands-on-whiteboard example! 

Maybe instead of working full-time until 65 and stopping outright, you go half-time starting at 63. Maybe you keep doing meaningful work part-time until 67. Maybe, just maybe, you start living more of your “retired life” while you’re still working. 

Why? Because you have energy now. You’re healthy now. Maybe you want to travel, volunteer, or try something new — before your body starts disagreeing with your plans. 

Phased retirement doesn’t just make financial sense — it makes sense in helping you shift your mindset and your routines. You don’t have to wait for everything to stop before you start living differently. You can ease out, not drop off. You can downshift from full speed to explore new interests, new rhythms, and even new roles. 

Retirement isn’t an ‘event’ — it’s a transition. So let yourself smudge the date. You might find that blurring the date makes for a much clearer future.