Not long after I retired, I became unexpectedly good at filling a diary.
I exercised, met people for coffee, worked on projects, made plans and wrote lists. If a free afternoon appeared, I quickly found something useful to put in it. My working life may have ended, but apparently my internal administrator had no intention of retiring.
From the outside, it probably looked as though I was embracing my new freedom. And in many ways I was. I had things to do, places to be and evidence at the end of each day that I had not wasted it.
But underneath all that activity was a question I had not yet learned how to answer: who was I when I was not producing something?
That question is one reason the Swedish word lagom interests me. It is often translated as “not too much, not too little” or simply “just enough.” The meaning is more nuanced than the cosy lifestyle slogan it has sometimes become outside Sweden, but at its heart is the idea of sufficiency: recognising when something is adequate, balanced and appropriate without always needing to make it bigger, busier or more impressive.
It made me wonder whether retirement asks us to discover our own version of lagom.
Not only enough money, although financial security clearly matters. Not only enough activity to keep us healthy and connected. But enoughness itself: the ability to believe that a day, and perhaps a person, can have value even when neither has produced very much.
We leave work, but productivity follows us home
For decades, most of us have lived in a world that makes output highly visible.
At work there are deadlines, targets, meetings and results. We know when we have had a productive day because something has been completed, solved, delivered or crossed off a list. Other people depend on us, recognise our contribution and reinforce the idea that usefulness is closely connected to worth.
This is not confined to paid employment. Raising a family, caring for relatives and running a household can also teach us to measure ourselves by how much we manage for other people. We become the person who remembers, organises, fixes and keeps everything moving.
Then retirement arrives and removes many of those external demands almost overnight.
In theory, this is the freedom we have spent years anticipating. In practice, it can be surprisingly disorienting. When nobody is setting our priorities, we have to decide for ourselves what deserves our time. When nobody needs a report by Friday, a Friday without an achievement can feel oddly empty.
About three months into my own retirement, I felt that emptiness quite sharply. I had looked forward to leaving the pressure of my working life, yet I had not realised how much structure, identity, connection and purpose had arrived with it.
My instinct was to rebuild the structure as quickly as possible. That helped, but I eventually had to ask whether I was creating a life I genuinely wanted or simply constructing another system in which I could prove that I was still useful.
Lagom is not an argument for doing less
It would be easy to turn lagom into another instruction: simplify your life, clear your calendar and become serene.
That would rather defeat the point.
As Sweden’s official website explains, lagom can mean “just enough,” “in moderation” or “appropriate.” It is not a universal formula, and it does not demand the same level of activity from everyone.
One person’s lagom retirement may include volunteering, caring for grandchildren, travelling and learning a language. Another person may want long mornings, a garden, a few close friends and plenty of time to read.
The question is not whether a retirement looks busy from the outside. It is whether the shape of it feels right to the person living it.
I have always believed that retirement needs some structure. Too much unformed time can leave us feeling directionless, particularly after a demanding career. Regular movement, meaningful relationships, curiosity and a sense of purpose all contribute to a life that feels alive.
But structure and overcrowding are not the same thing.
A meaningful schedule supports a life. An overfilled schedule can become a hiding place from it.
The peculiar guilt of enjoying something useless
One of the most revealing parts of retirement is discovering which activities we can enjoy without needing to justify them.
Going for a walk is easy to defend because it is exercise. Reading is good for the brain. Gardening keeps us active. Meditation reduces stress. Even hobbies are often described in terms of the skills they develop or the health benefits they may provide.
We have become very talented at making leisure sound like work wearing comfortable clothes.
But what about sitting in the sun? Looking out of the window? Drinking coffee without reading the news? Doing something simply because it is pleasant?
Research suggests that the way we think about leisure can affect our ability to enjoy it. In four studies involving more than 1,300 people, researchers found that those who regarded leisure as wasteful tended to enjoy it less. This belief was also associated with lower reported happiness and greater stress, anxiety and depression.
The effect was particularly noticeable when the activity was pursued purely for enjoyment rather than as a means to another goal. Exercise or meditation could still feel acceptable because they were perceived as productive. Simply relaxing was harder to defend.
That finding made me smile, because I recognise it in myself. I can sit quietly for much longer if I am officially “practising mindfulness.” Give the activity a respectable name and suddenly it counts.
Perhaps lagom invites us to stop turning every enjoyable moment into a self-improvement project.
Retirement unsettles the identity built around work
Research into retirement increasingly recognises that leaving work is not merely a financial or logistical transition. It can also disrupt identity.
One study of identity and wellbeing in older adults found that the way people adapted their sense of self was associated with how well they experienced retirement. Those who could accommodate change and maintain a balance between continuity and growth tended to report better wellbeing.
That makes intuitive sense. A career may have occupied only part of the week, but it often answered a much larger question: Who are you?
“I’m a teacher.”
“I run a business.”
“I work in healthcare.”
“I manage a team.”
These answers describe more than an occupation. They carry information about competence, contribution, social standing and belonging. When the role disappears, the qualities underneath it can become harder to see.
I was still the same person after I retired. I had not lost my curiosity, experience or ability to contribute. But without the familiar role surrounding those qualities, I had to meet them in a different form.
That meeting requires some quiet.
If every hour is filled immediately, we may never discover what remains when the old identity is no longer directing the day.
The self we meet may be quieter than expected
We often imagine that finding ourselves in retirement will involve discovering a grand new purpose. Perhaps we will start a business, write a book, travel the world or devote ourselves to a cause.
Sometimes that happens. But the self waiting underneath years of productivity may not arrive with a business plan.
It may be the person who once loved painting but stopped because there was never enough time. The person who enjoys long, meandering conversations. The person who is fascinated by birds, family history, French films or the changing light in the garden.
These interests can seem too small to form a retirement identity because they do not produce an impressive answer to the question, “What are you doing now?”
But perhaps the question itself is too narrow.
What if retirement is not only about what we are doing? What if it is also about how we are living, what we notice and how our ordinary days feel?
The Scandinavian idea of enough does not mean abandoning aspiration. It means allowing meaning to exist without constant escalation. A small life is not necessarily an empty one, just as a crowded life is not necessarily full.
Enough still includes purpose and connection
There is a danger in talking about contentment as though everyone should be happy alone with a cup of coffee and a view of the trees.
Retirement can bring unwanted isolation, financial pressure, health difficulties and the loss of relationships that once came naturally through work. Telling someone in those circumstances to embrace simplicity would be both inadequate and unkind.
Enough is not deprivation presented as wisdom.
A satisfying retirement still needs connection. It needs movement and energy. It usually needs some sense that our lives matter beyond our own comfort. And it needs a vision—however modest—of the kind of days we want to create.
The balance is personal. We need enough structure to prevent freedom from becoming shapeless, but enough open space to hear our own thoughts. Enough connection to feel part of the world, but enough solitude to remain connected to ourselves. Enough purpose to give our lives direction, but not so much activity that worth once again becomes dependent on output.
This is the balance I explore in my free guide, Thrive in Your Retirement. It is designed to help people think beyond the financial side of retirement and begin creating a life built around purpose, connection, energy and a clearer vision for their ordinary days.
Because the goal is not to plan every minute. It is to understand what deserves a place in the life we now have the freedom to shape.
A life does not have to look impressive to feel right
I still like projects. I enjoy writing, learning and having plans to look forward to. Retirement has not removed my ambition, and I would not want it to.
What has changed is my understanding of what makes a day worthwhile.
Some days are full and purposeful. Others are quieter. I walk, read, think, talk to someone I care about or sit with a cup of tea for longer than is strictly necessary. I am gradually learning not to demand that each day submit evidence of its usefulness.
Perhaps this is one of retirement’s most difficult freedoms: the freedom to stop auditioning for our own approval.
After decades of being valued for what we produced, solved and managed, we have an opportunity to become curious about the person who was there all along.
That person may still want purpose and adventure. They may also want spaciousness, slowness and afternoons that lead nowhere in particular.
The calendar does not have to be full. The life only has to feel like yours.
And perhaps that is lagom in retirement: not too much, not too little, but finally enough.