Your Walking Into Retirement Hosts

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  I’ve never really liked the R word and have only recently been able to embrace ‘retirement’ as one way of describing this current stage of my life. 

As I talked about stopping work, I never described it as being ‘retired’ as I thought the word was loaded with negativity, it implied a lack of relevance, being devoid of purpose and intent, a state of passivity. That wasn’t who I was, or how I had lived my life and I was in denial that a conscious decision to step away from corporate life would automatically ‘pigeonhole me’ with all these negative characteristics.

I have spent over 40 years working, most of it in the fast moving, highly charged and exciting international environment of the ‘IT industry’, more specifically software, and in particular leading Global Consultancy teams, mostly for North American companies.

I graduated as a Biologist, a Zoologist with a passion for parasitology (a specialism that proved surprisingly apt for the business life I eventually led) and was set on studying for a PhD but got diverted by a neighbour who offered me a job as his assistant, earning a magnificent £5k a year (with a car), travelling the world and learning all about running a small company.

John was my first mentor, a fiercely intelligent, funny man who was both scary and caring. There were only two of us in the business, and after two intense, formative years where John taught me the basics of finance, sales, marketing and above all how to move things forward, we completed a feasibility study for three Saudi brothers that led us to move to Saudi Arabia to build and run the Kingdom’s first blended fertilizer factory. 

I was 23 at this stage and responsible for the operations side of the business (logistics, analytics and financial reporting) with a small local team ( mostly Egyptian and Palestinian ) learnt some Arabic , but more importantly for this story realised we needed IT systems to handle the increasing volumes of materials in and out of the factory , which I duly put in place.

After two years we returned to the UK, but I found it hard to settle back into the routine of working life after Saudi Arabia and so I retrained and applied for a job as a Project Manager for a UK software company that specialised in commercial operational systems.

Forty years later now retired from my Global Head of Services role at one of the major HCM (human capital management ) Software companies in the world, I have reflected on how that first working experience opened my eyes to the possibility of developing a career in a way that would never have occurred to that young graduate contemplating a life behind a laboratory bench.

By the end of my career, I had worked for several Global software houses, normally in leadership roles, often engaged in some sort of business transformation and always finding myself building teams and developing individuals. I found it was this ‘people focused’ component of the technical and commercial endeavours that gave me most satisfaction, where I got my energy and where I believe I made the most contribution. 

My leadership style was gentle and people-centered, built on trust, respect, and giving individuals responsibility. Over time, I saw how motivated, capable people (energised around a shared goal) consistently delivered strong results, enjoyed the work and developed a fierce loyalty to the team and company. What may have looked like ‘magic’ from the outside was really quiet, servant-style leadership with attentive oversight that delivered repeatable results while developing people. Although this approach was sometimes challenging in more robust North American software cultures, I learned the power of listening, working one-to-one with stakeholders, building alignment, and quietly fostering confidence and strong relationships.

As I approached the end of this stage of my life, I have to be honest and say that I found the corporate dance harder to engage with, month end pressures to make the numbers, and the constant push for ‘more with less’. The challenge to get my voice heard during strategy sessions and all the escalations that would routinely take over every day. 

It became increasingly harder to stay magnanimous and optimistic and I was less energised, the job was starting to become a burden, and I realised it was time to leave.

As retirement loomed, I thought about all those things that would allow for: - more time with my family and friends, particularly supporting my wife Beverly with her practise in the same way she had supported me over many years. Time with the kids and grandkids, time to attend to the myriads of hobbies and passions that hadn’t been prioritised over the last few years, time to apply my energy and enthusiasm to things that matter in my local community. Then there was the need to step back, release some pressure, live more in the moment, to slow down and enjoy the small things, to appreciate life, be a new ‘happy’.

Reality has proved to be all these things, but it is also a mixed bag because for all the joy and positivity gained from more time and more freedom there is also a dark underbelly to retirement that regularly shows itself and brings new daily challenges. The walk into retirement is far from over.

  I have spent most of my adult life, like many other people, being defined by what I do; husband, father, friend but most of all, worker or bread winner.

But like many people who have enjoyed long, absorbing, occasionally exhausting careers, work has not just been a way of earning money (important of course) but also as a source of structure, of personal identity, of defined confidence (my co-author knows me well and will attest to my sensitivity in this area), of focus and purpose, and (being truly honest here) sometimes escape (from those demanding roles of husband, father etc.). 

It has filled diaries, justified travel, explained absences, and provided a ready-made answer to that deceptively simple question, ‘So, what do you do?’

For decades, the answer to that question rolled easily off my tongue. I was a ‘project manager’ (anything else was usually too complicated and time demanding to explain). Actually, in my early career days I just said, ‘I work in software’, although I have never been truly technical in anything I worked on, again it was the lazy way of dealing with the question. Over the years job titles shifted, career moves were made, organisations changed (and sometimes changed without me – more than one experience of redundancy under my belt), but progression was achieved, and all the time the underlying narrative remained reassuringly stable in that I was productively busy, I was useful and valued, and I was heading somewhere, plus I was paid well for my efforts.

I even learnt, through that very first redundancy impact, that I could do more than just be an employee. I adapted to having more than one string to my bow by writing and speaking. My eternal thanks go to the career consultant who advised me after I was left with a significant pay-off but no job by asking ‘what happens next time?’. I was shocked at this suggestion that it could happen again, I mean, hell’s bells I was still trying to come to terms with this unexpected disruption to my life, but it was a great question. It was from addressing this that the world of Peter Taylor ‘The Lazy Project Manager’ came about leading to a #1 Amazon bestseller, 33 other business books, and over 530 keynotes around the world in 28 countries.

And then, gradually, quietly, a different question started to appear, ‘What happens when this begins to slow down or even comes to a complete stop?”.

This book exists because I could not answer that question cleanly or comfortably, and in talking to my co-author David, similar concerns were being experienced. Now this is not because I fear retirement in the traditional sense of decline or irrelevance, but because the idea of simply stopping or switching off a life that has been rich, demanding, and meaningful, all feels strangely unnatural. Into this equation you can add that yes, I am a project manager, and I am a third generation Virgo, and being in control is in my DNA.

Added to that, due to my somewhat hazard approach to life and love (more of that later on in the book) I was facing a challenging financial pivot in what lifestyle I needed and what I really wanted in my later years.

Retirement, at least as it is often historically presented, seems to assume that work is something we endure until we are finally released into a permanent state of leisure. That the prize at the end of a long career is rest, quiet, and the absence of obligation and that once the alarm clock is silenced and the dreaded inbox falls quiet, fulfilment will naturally follow.

I remember well my grandparents hitting that retirement age and then, apparently, just stopping work and that was that. Now, I may have missed a lot more of what they actually did but the perception was one of post-retirement inactivity and simplicity in existence, waiting for the inevitable end. My own father tried that work, work, work, stop model and within a year he was back working in a consulting role before he gradually eased into full retirement. He had spent years focused on working and no time considering retirement until he was sitting at home doing nothing (apart from driving my mother crazy I’m sure).

I have enjoyed my work, the stimulation, the challenge, the people (well most of them), and the sense of contribution. I have enjoyed being needed and thrived on being busy, really, I am absolutely no good at not being busy (ask my wife Juliet). And I enjoyed the identity that came with all of that, plus the ego was stroked through my writing and speaking work which was a real bonus of course.

So, when people asked whether I was ‘looking forward to retirement’ or more brutally the ‘not long till you have to retire is it?’, I found myself hesitating, but not because I dreaded it as such, but because I did not recognise the version of retirement they were describing by default. The tidy ending, the clean break, the clear before-and-after line, the empty your desk and have this gold watch as a memory for all the hours you have put in, thank you/bye. Which reminds me of the classic Dave Alen joke about retirement and the gold watch.

All of which brings me, and my co-author, to the point of hesitation at the beginning of the walk into retirement.

Right now, as I write these words, I am 68 years of age (69 in September 2026), married, with a collective of 9 children (between my third wife and I, her third husband, - no judging please, it is just our life) and 7 grandchildren. I am in a full-time job at a very large software organisation, and I also speak and write extensively on my work experience, around the world, for money or a free trip. It is a fun, inspiring, stimulating and challenging world. But on the other side I do have my free bus pass (rarely used to be honest) and I do have my deferred state pension (tax reasons and vanity prevent me from triggering this) both of which remind me of the reality of my age. Perhaps most importantly I have my health, I have been very fortunate in my life on this front so long may that continue. And my father is still alive providing some signpost of my possible future.

But a form of retirement will come in the near future, and I am delighted to be partnering in that journey with my mentor, and now good friend David, and in sharing my own walk into retirement with like-minded people.