Never *retire* if you want to live long and happy life!

Tommy Kan
3 min readOct 15, 2020

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Retire by 40 is a popular DREAM for many *ambitious* people in their 30s, you don’t believe so? Okay, a simple and strong proof — there is a web site called https://retireby40.org/ :)

If you ask yourself, your loved ones and the colleagues, friends around you, you will find the majority does Dream retire early! It’s common sense.

While let’s ask the million dollar question (always) seriously — Why retire early so desirable to most of people? Based on common sense, the answer is not hard, retire means to most of people:
[A] You do NOT need to work to making a living any more since you will be financially independent.
[B] Without need to work, you can really enjoy the life by doing things you really love to like travel, golfing, reading …
[C] Without work, you will not have stress any more since you will be your own boss.
[D] Without work, you do not need to deal with annoying boss, colleagues any more, hence you can just be true self.

From above listed meanings, it’s very clear that people want to retire are NOT actually love retiring, they are just NOT enjoying their work. Hence they want to end this unenjoyable experience as early as possible.

And here is my logic as anti-common-sense to retiring — first I have different definition of retirement. To me, Retirement is not *stop working*, it is *stop producing*.

Producing is much broader than working, daily work is just one way of producing, other ways of producing incl.

  • Generating and spread new ideas like writing a book, a blog or a medium article like I am doing now:)
  • Coaching others for new skills esp. young people
  • Join a NPO do serve as a volunteer to help disadvantaged people/groups
  • Investing in new biz, ideas
  • DIY projects
  • Invent something new
  • Be a YouTuber or Podcaster to spread your wisdoms

So with my definition of retirement as “stop producing”, I strongly recommend you to change your course on pursuing “retire early” as your ultimate goal of your life.

Instead you should NEVER retire by finding yourself the best job — the thing you enjoy and love to do, while not *as a mean just for making a living*. Surely nothing is wrong to pursuit of Financial Independence, and it will give you the ultimate freedom to pick who you want to do.

Finally, you will enjoy working when you don’t work for earning more greenback any more.

Never retire and keep producing (NR-KP!)

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Tommy Kan

A lifelong learner and explorer! Grew up in Asia, now enjoying the dynamism of Silicon Valley in the sunny California.