Last week I told you that I was going to give up my calendar for a week. This post is a report on how that went and what I learned from that experience. Almost everything in the list below is primarily applicable for someone in their retirement years. When you work a mandatory a 40 – 60 hour week, little time is left for much of anything else.

• I learned that keeping a calendar filled with goals and activities is critical to me in my retirement years. It’s just too easy to fall into a “do nothing” mode without it.
  
• I learned that knowing what I have done with my time helps me to make sure it is well spent. My week without a calendar showed me that it is easy to fall into the couch potato mode when there are no goals for that day. I see far too many people in my RetCom who aimlessly wither away their lives as if their sole purpose seems to be just waiting for God to take them home. I hope I never become one of them.

• Keeping an active calendar and planner helps me make sure that my time is balanced between all my activities. Without my calendar, I can obsess over one thing and disregard the rest. (As I wrote these last three words, a song by Simon and Garfunkel streaked across my mind😎). Of course, this kind of focus is part of my Aspie traits. I can spend an entire day working on something and skip exercise and other such things that need attention to maintain a healthy life. Total focus has both a positive and negative results in my life. I need to fully understand that.
  
• Because I am getting more forgetful as each day passes now, I need a place besides a desktop full of Post-It notes to recall what needs to be done. But, I do have another aid to help in this regard, and that is my Apple Watch. It is full of alarms that go off throughout the day to remind me to take my pills, go eat in the dining room, and things as simple as setting a timer to when that new pot of coffee is done.
  
• Without my calendar app, I found myself taking twice the number of naps I usually do. I like to get 8 hours a night sleep, but I have purposely limited the nap times during the day. It’s just too easy to fall into that trap and end up sleeping 12 hours a day. That is for old people, not me.
  
• Finally, I learned that when you don’t use a calendar app I often forget what day of the week it is. I HATE THAT…

So, long story short, I am back to scheduling events and activities daily, but not as obsessed that every minor item needs to be put on that calendar.

Sometimes lessons are learned that some things are fine pretty much the way they are.