The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

You’re wise to be planning for your retirement. But the best-laid plans can be turned upside down in an instant. Sarah Cart joins us to share her experience and her new book On My Way Back to You: One Couple’s Journey through Catastrophic Illness to Healing and Hope. Sarah Cart joins us from Massachusetts. _________________________ Bio Sarah Cart was raised and educated in New York and New England. As a freelancer, she wrote for multiple local publications while she and her husband, Ben, raised four sons in northeastern Ohio. Upon becoming empty nesters, the two moved to the Florida Keys, but they returned every summer to the Pennsylvania Poconos, where each had lifelong family connections. Then came Covid. The pandemic, combined with Ben’s health issues, necessitated their sheltering in place in Florida for the entirety of 2020. In the wake of Ben’s undergoing miraculous lifesaving measures, they have been afforded the unanticipated gift of a future and, more than ever before, relish time spent with family and friends. Sarah Cart’s On My Way Back to You is a first-hand account of the rollercoaster world of lifesaving transplants and the unimaginable challenges Sarah faced as she struggled to manage her husband’s devastating illness and to save his life, their marriage, and her sanity. Throughout her 42-year marriage, writer Sarah Cart has enjoyed a life of “gloriously controlled chaos,” as she and her husband, Ben, a successful entrepreneur and seasoned outdoorsman, embarked on numerous adventures with their four active sons. Then the unthinkable happened. In suspenseful and heartrending detail, Cart shares how Ben developed an incurable autoimmune condition that was manageable and under control one minute and threatened to kill him the next, landing him in the ICU as the Covid pandemic closed the world down. Thrust into the role of nurse and caregiver, Sarah joined the ranks of 39 million Americans who champion and care for an ailing loved one. In addition to confronting doubts, fears, and endless setbacks, aggravations, and red tape, she also had to consent to daunting procedures on Ben’s behalf. Too, there were the months-long Covid-era restrictions on hospital visitations and the post-surgery snafus with home healthcare personnel. Thank goodness for the heartfelt communiques with family and friends, all of which reflect the faith, fortitude, grit, and grace that sustained her. ________________________ For More on Sarah Cart On My Way Back to You: One Couple’s Journey through Catastrophic Illness to Healing and Hope ________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Ride or Die – Jarie Bolander The Self-Healing Mind – Gregory Scott Brown, M.D. Planning for Family Caregiving – Danielle Miura, CFP _________________________ Wise Quotes On Perfection vs. Good Enough “Perfection is not always a good thing. I never perfected being a perfectionist, but I like to know that things are done well and right and the way they’re supposed to be and the very sobering idea that if we had known before Ben went into the hospital that he had a broken hip, which is the kind of thing I mean, I was his caregiver, how could I not know that? That’s unforgivable. But if we’d known it, he wouldn’t have been a candidate for transplant. That just blows my mind. Not all the examples are that huge, but well, another one is he probably wouldn’t have been a candidate for transplant if it hadn’t been the COVID pandemic.” On Gratitude “Over the course of Ben’s being in the hospital, I had taken to sending emails to family and friends on a regular basis to keep everybody on the same page. And I had all those emails, and in the beginning, every single one of them was a part of the original outline of the book, just because they told the story, and all I really needed to do was kind of link them together. But then people pointed out that I needed to tell a little bit more of the story at the beginning and a little bit more of the story at the end. And it just, it was a way for me to figure out where we’d been and to realize, I mean, I think I was pretty grateful every step of the way, but to realize the magnitude of gratitude that was appropriate for where we ended up.” On Caregiving “And so my advice would be, be kind to yourself, be forgiving of yourself, you’re not going to get this right. There’s not an answer sheet for that. this, and you’re not going to get graded. You’re going to get through it. What I used to tell people, a year ago, I would say, Oh, you’re stronger than you think. And I believe that, but I think the more helpful thing is to say: You’re going to get through this – because that doesn’t put the pressure on Oh, I have to be strong. You don’t have to be strong, you just need to put one step in one foot in front of the other and move forward if you can, sideways if you have to, backwards if you get pushed. But just keep trying. Break it down into manageable pieces. And if the pieces that you’ve broken it down into don’t feel manageable, pick them up one at a time and break them down to something smaller. It sounds so much easier than it might feel in the moment.” __________________________ About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

There are a lot of variables to consider in planning for retirement. A big one is longevity. We don’t know how long we’ll live, but we should plan for a long life. But there’s more to consider than just our lifespan. Rejoining us is Maddy Dychtwald, co-founder of Age Wave, to discuss her new book Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan, a guide to living better longer by proactively attending to your healthspan, your brainspan and your wealthspan. Maddy Dychtwald joins us from California. _________________________ Bio Recognized by Forbes as one of the top fifty female futurists globally, for nearly 40 years, Maddy Dychtwald has been deeply involved in exploring all aspects of the age wave and how it’s fundamentally transforming our lives and the world at-large. This has led her to become an award-winning author, acclaimed public speaker, and thought leader on longevity and aging, health, wellness, and the new retirement. Maddy co-founded Age Wave, the world’s leader in understanding and addressing the far-reaching impacts of longevity and our aging population. The Age Wave team has worked with more than half of the Fortune 500 in industries ranging from healthcare and medical technology to financial services and consumer products. With women at the forefront of the longevity revolution, Maddy has dug deep into their specific longevity-related wants, needs, challenges and opportunities. As a researcher and social scientist, she has led numerous acclaimed studies, including the landmark Women, Money and Power sponsored by Allianz and Women and Financial Wellness: Beyond the Bottom Line for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. In addition, she has been involved in more than 25 thought leadership research studies worldwide on longevity, aging, retirement, health and wellness, family and social connections, purpose, caregiving, finances, and leisure, which have cumulatively garnered more than twenty billion media impressions. As a blogger and member of The Wall Street Journal’s Expert Panel, Maddy’s posts on leadership, wealth management, and financial planning have topped the most-read lists. Her insights and research have been featured in prominent media outlets, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, Newsweek, Time, Fox Business News, CNBC, and NPR. Maddy has written four books, including the award-winning Cycles: How We Will Live, Work, and Buy, Influence: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World for the Better, and the children’s/young readers’ book Gideon’s Dream: A Tale of New Beginnings. Her highly anticipated new book, Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan, (Mayo Clinic Press, May 2024) will provide an insider’s guide to living better longer, covering everything from fitness and nutrition to hormones and ageism, from sleep to purpose, from navigating the healthcare system to the role of finances. Over the years, Maddy has herself become part of the age wave and has experimented personally with how to increase her own healthspan, brainspan, and lifespan. She is a co-founder of the non-profit Women Against Alzheimer’s and serves as a board member of the non-profit BrightFocus Foundation, which funds cutting-edge research to cure diseases of the brain and eye. She is also a lead partner for Portfolia in the Active Aging and Longevity 2 Fund. She is also a lead partner for Portfolia, a collaborative women-focused investment platform in their “Active Aging & Longevity Fund 2. Maddy and her husband Ken were awarded the prestigious Esalen Prize for their outstanding contributions to advancing the human potential of long-lived men and women worldwide. An empty-nester, she is highly involved with her adult children and her granddog. ____________________________ For More on Maddy Dychtwald Ageless Aging: A Woman’s Guide to Increasing Healthspan, Brainspan, and Lifespan Age Wave ____________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Breaking the Age Code – Dr. Becca Levy Advice for Successful Career Women Transitioning to Retirement – Helen Dennis From Cravings to Control – Revamp Your Habits – Dr. Jud Brewer The Wisdom and Wonder of Uncertainty – Maggie Jackson ____________________________ Wise Quotes On Ageless Aging & Agency “There are three things that come to mind. First is that we are the CEOs of our own healthcare and our health and our wellbeing, including our brain health. Knowing that we have agency over our health and wellbeing and that it’s never too late to take steps and even just starting somewhere with changing your diet or your exercise or your sleep, it’s really powerful medicine. 90% of our health and well-being is really within our control. And so we ought to know that and take action where possible. Second is that it’s not just about one thing, like sleep or what you eat or your exercise. Those things are the basics and super important. But it’s about a bouquet of different ingredients that all work together to create a more ageless kind of aging. And the good news about that is you can start anywhere and you can pull one lever. And by pulling that lever, you’re going to start feeling better, which is going to motivate you to try more. That to me is good news. And third is, and I didn’t really talk about this with you too much, Joe, but I think the idea of having joy in your life can really add life to the years that we have, no matter how long or short our lifespans might be. One of the pieces of research that I learned along the way was from Dr. Becca Levy at Yale. She did a longitudinal study in the middle of the US. And what she found was that when people felt more positive about aging and their own aging in particular, it could add up to seven and a half years to their lives. And that’s like flipping a switch in your brain to tell yourself on a daily basis: Aging, it’s a gift. It’s a real gift, and we ought to take advantage of it. So that’s why I wrote Ageless Aging, to give people the tools and the information that they need so that they can live better longer.” On Purpose “There’s different ways that we can get a sense of purpose as we get older. The number one way is to continue working in some way, shape, or form. That’s something that I interviewed Dr. Linda Fried, who’s head of the Columbia School of Public Health about. She is their Dean, and she’s also an amazing physician and expert on aging. She told me that often times she would suggest to her patients: you ought to work longer. To spend the last 30 years of your life without a sense of work or purpose is not good for your health. You lose your vitality, your energy, your willingness to go on in life, and that is not something that you want to have happen. So work is one solution, but there are other ones too, like volunteering. Volunteering your time serves a lot of great purposes because when you give, it actually gives back. And there’s been studies that show that giving is a really amazing force of nature that can help you to live better longer. By the way, from the Age Wave studies that we’ve done, one of the things that we found was that adopting a pet was one of the number one things that people were willing to do. add more purpose to their lives.” On Exercise “And I do think there is one silver bullet. And that is something that I’m kind of obsessed with personally. And it’s a little different than I actually thought it was. If you talk to the brain health experts, they all say the one thing you have to do is exercise. And it’s definitely true. But it’s not just about cardio. It’s about your balance. It’s about your posture. It’s about believe it or not, your ability to relax. That one was a cool one for me. And most importantly, it’s about building muscle strength. Because as we get older, like literally beginning in your 30s, we begin to lose muscle mass. It’s called by a fancy name; sarcopenia. But it really means a loss of muscle mass. And some of the scientists that I talked to were in agreement on the fact that they believe that muscle mass should be the new vital sign with equal importance to our heart rate and our blood pressure and our weight. So that’s how important building muscle mass is.” ___________________________ About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.      

Experts like Stew Friedman, Christina Wallace, and Dr. Jud Brewer share insights on balancing work and personal life, building a portfolio life, and transforming habits. Topics include downsizing for a brighter future, navigating career transitions, and emotionally intelligent retirement planning.

Our memory seems like a mystery. Why can I rattle off the stating lineup of the 1967 Red Sox but can’t remember what  had for lunch yesterday? Charan Ranganath can explain. He joins us to discuss his new book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Mattersand what we can do to strengthen our cognitive fitness. Charan Ranganath joins us from California. _________________________ Bio Charan Ranganath, Ph.D, is the author of the new book Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters. He is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. For over 25 years, Dr. Ranganath has studied the mechanisms in the brain that allow us to remember past events, using brain imaging techniques, computational modeling and studies of patients with memory disorders. He has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. He lives in Davis, California. __________________________ For More on Charan Ranganath, Ph.D Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory’s Power to Hold on to What Matters Website __________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like The Self-Healing Mind – Gregory Scott Brown, M.D. The Power of Saying No – Vanessa Patrick, PhD Successful Aging – Daniel Levitin ___________________________ Wise Quotes On Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone “…I really recommend for people to do new things and get out of their comfort zone. Novelty can be hugely important. It can be anxiety provoking for some people and you’ve got to be careful about that. But one of the things that we know is curiosity and novelty are associated with activity in these areas of brain that release and process dopamine. Dopamine is a modulator that, as I mentioned, promotes plasticity. Some work even suggests that if you, let’s say, put an animal in a box and you let it explore this box that it’s never been in before, its brain gets flooded with dopamine. Then if you give it some task, now it will be better at remembering the things that it was doing for this task. So in other words, that dopamine can have this spreading effect. So I think that is something that will improve people’s memory, potentially. And also I think that kind of engagement is just good for people in general. There’s also just a lot of value in seeing and feeling that you’re learning. It can get very easy to get into a rut and then feel like everything is the same. Sometimes you lose that curiosity as you get older. I know because I see this in my colleagues sometimes and I’ll say, Hey, what are the findings in your lab that you’re most excited about? And they’ll say, Nothing’s new, it’s all the same, we’re all just rehashing the same stuff. And I find that so depressing because it is like my whole business is curiosity and I am a big believer in the power of curiosity.” On The Mind-Body Connection “If you want to improve your cognitive functioning, or you want to retain your cognitive functioning over time and you want protect your brain health, consider that your brain is the seed of the mind and it is a part of your body. I think a lot of people have this idea of somehow I am my mind, and then my brain is separate. And it’s not. It is all connected. What this means is that if you’re not taking care of your mental health, your emotional health your physical health, it’s going to affect your cognition and possibly increase your risk for dementia…. If you want to get in to the positives, sleep and exercise are very important.” On Prioritizing & Memory “So at a minimum you want to prioritize, right? So I don’t hear people telling me, Boy, I remember this temporary password that I had from 10 years ago. That’s really great. I’m so happy about this. Even if you remembered everything else, you wouldn’t tell me this, right? And you certainly wouldn’t tell me I remembered that you’re happier about remembering the temporary passwords than you are about remember that you have a doctor appointment. So, I think that there’s this intuition that we have that we should be able to remember everything, that any inability to remember is a weakness. I think that intuition is wrong. But, of course, I lose my phone. I lose my keys. So I experience the everyday moments of frustration and of forgetting. And so I can empathize with that feeling. But on average, I think you would not want it in the opposite direction.” On Habits & Memory “Having good habits can help you at a day-to-day level, like just minimizing the number of distractions that you have in front of you, which I kind call memory hygiene, turning off alerts on various devices and things like that, not trying to do ten things at the same time….You say that I want be able to do a better job of remembering where I put my keys. And part of it could be put a sign, put sign saying, Hey, put keys here and just develop a habit. You don even need to remember, right? ” ____________________________ About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.              

There’s a lot we can learn – and relearn – from the younger people in our midst. They do many things in a  way that’s highly beneficial for older adults. Dr. Hasan Merali is the author of the new book, Sleep Well, Take Risks, Squish the Peas, which shows us how toddlers bring out the best in humanity and how we can, too. It’s a whole new way of looking at and learning from toddlers. He joins us from Ontario. __________________________ Bio Hasan Merali, MD, MPH, is an associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics, McMaster University and a pediatric emergency medicine physician at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on child injury prevention in low- and middle-income countries. He has published more than twenty-five peer-reviewed journal articles, and his writing has been featured in Science, The Boston Globe, NBC, CBC, and Popular Science. Dr. Merali lives in Oakville, Ontario, with his wife and their toddler daughter. ____________________________ For More on Hasan Merali  Sleep Well, Take Risks, Squish the Peas Website ____________________________ Mentioned in This Podcast Episode Chatter & Your Inner Voice – Ethan Kross Auburn Sage Who Has the Secret to Well-Being? The Answer May Surprise You. Old People’s Homes for 4 Year Olds ___________________________ Podcast Episodes  You May Like The Power of Fun – Catherine Price Emeralds of Oz – Peter Guzzardi ___________________________ Wise Quotes On Sleeping Like a Toddler “I think sleep is one of the most important ones, and for anyone interested in wellness or improving their life, I would argue that sleep is the most important one to start with. I think it’s a foundation for everything else to build on. And I like the toddler routine because it is so simple and it works. And so the Toddler bedtime routine is a very easy thing to do. And if we all did it, we would all sleep better like they do, and so what you do is you set a bed time, you kind of stick to it. You got to be regular about that time. Start an hour before. None of this involves any screens, so those screens are completely off. One hour before, you’re either taking a hot bath or shower and what that does actually is cool down your body and your body needs to be cooler when we sleep and so that kind of gets your body into that mode. The next thing you do what toddlers do is they have lotion put on them and certainly that’s something we could all do. It feels good, massage is good but really any hygiene related activity is fine. And then finally I think we’re going to talk about this later too is reading and that is the best way to end your night. It’s no screens. If it’s an e-reader, it is fine, but there’s no other distractions. And it s a way to consolidate all that knowledge we’re getting because if you read and then sleep, you’re going to retain a lot more of it too.” On Laughing Like a Toddler “If you look at a graph of age across the spectrum and how much we do an activity, there is the first cliff that we go off is really humor and laughter. And there are a whole bunch of other ones. Reading is another one. Play is a another. And some of them do come back when you’re retired, which is wonderful. You know, for reading, it comes back for example when your 65. But laughter is definitely one of them that we can never reach the same level that we did have when we were toddlers. So toddlers left to themselves and they’re miked up. They’re laughing almost one time a minute. So nearly 60 times an hour. And adults, at most, will get to half of that level. And so this amount of laughter is good for them and us for a lot of different reasons. It’s everyone knows this it’s a stress reliever. It makes us feel good. And one of the things that I mentioned that toddlers are always trying to do is build relationships. And so, you know, one other things we know but we could probably do a lot more of is do some laughter in groups to build those relationships, we get less stress hormones.” On Engaging with Books “We kind of want to read all the time when we’re younger, and this kind falls off in later childhood and doesn’t come back until we were in our 60s. And I think this idea of placing that much importance on books is really critical for our well -being. I mean, it’s hard to be around a toddler or preschooler without being asked to read them something almost constantly. And there’s a couple of lessons there. One is that reading is very important for our own learning, but also for cognitive function. You know, looking at the data again, just in adults, if we look at people who read more, they’re the people who have lower rates of mild cognitive impairment and dementia as they get older. I think that’s really the biggest benefit of reading daily and if even get 20 -30 minutes as part of the bedtime routine ideal but any other time is really helpful. And the other big piece is something called deep reading. This has been promoted by a professor at UCLA named Maryann Wolf and she talks about how we are in this culture where we’re doing a lot of skim reading because we read on screens, there’s a lots of online articles, we just looking at the titles and we going through things very fast. But if they really want to absorb a book, we nearly need to get into deep reading. And I think toddlers are the ideal people to emulate with this. You know, I have a three -year -old, so I sit down with her with a book and we get through a couple of pages. There’s a lot of questions about the picture, about the text. We flip back. We have to go through other things, connected the dots. We get to the very end of this book much later than it would take me. And the question invariably is, again, and this way of engaging with the book, really focusing on the Book is really something we need to be doing. And so I would hope that your listeners, when they’re reading, not set chapter goals or amount of reading goals. Really, you want to set time goals and really engage with a book. And that can be in a lot of different ways. It can take notes, highlighting, book club. That’s the kind of deep reading that we’re missing out on and what toddlers and preschoolers do all the time.” ____________________________ About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.    

We’re surrounded by uncertainty and we don’t like the feeling of not knowing. But there’s often hidden strength in some things that make us uncomfortable. Maggie Jackson’s new book explores the research that shows that uncertainty is not a weakness, but instead can be a powerful tool for navigating complexity with creativity and adaptability. Maggie Jackson joins us from Rhode Island to discuss her new book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure and why we should embrace uncertainty as a catalyst for curiosity – and more. ________________________ Bio Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her prescient writings on social trends, particularly technology’s impact on humanity. Her new book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure has been lauded as “remarkable and persuasive” (Library Journal); “trending” (Book Pal); “incisive and timely-triumphant” (Dan Pink); and “both surprising and practical” (Gretchen Rubin). Nominated for a National Book Award, Uncertain was named a Top 10 Social Sciences book of 2023 by Library Journal and a Top 50 Psychology book of the year by the Next Big Idea Club. The book inspired Jackson’s recent lead opinion piece in the New York Times on uncertainty and resilience. Her acclaimed book Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention sparked a global conversation on the steep costs of our tech-centric, attention-deficient modern lives. With a foreword by Bill McKibben, the book reveals the scientific discoveries that can help rekindle our powers of focus in a world of overload and fragmentation. Hailed as “influential” by the New Yorker and compared by Fast Company.com to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Distracted offers a “richly detailed and passionately argued … account of the travails facing an ADD society” (Publishers Weekly) and “concentrates the mind on a real problem of modern life” (The Wall Street Journal). The book is “now more essential than ever,” says Pulitzer finalist Nicholas Carr. Maggie Jackson’s essays, commentary, and books have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New Philosopher, on National Public Radio, and in media worldwide. She wrote the foreword to Living with Robots: Emerging Issues on the Psychological and Social Implications of Robotics (Academic Press, 2019) and has contributed essays to numerous other anthologies, including State of the American Mind: Sixteen Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism (Templeton, 2015) and The Digital Divide: Arguments For and Against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking (Penguin, 2011). Her book, What’s Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, was the first to explore the fate of home in the digital age, a time when private life is permeable and portable. Jackson is the recipient of numerous grants, awards, and fellowships, including a 2016 Bard Graduate Center Visiting Fellowship; Media Awards from the Work-Life Council of the Conference Board, the Massachusetts Psychological Association, and the Women’s Press Club of New York. For a National Public Radio segment on the lack of labor protections offered to child newspaper carriers, she was a finalist for a Hillman Prize, one of journalism’s highest honors for social justice reporting. Jackson has served as an affiliate of the Institute of the Future in Palo Alto; a Journalism Fellow in Child and Family Policy at the University of Maryland; and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia. Her website has been named a Forbes Top 100 Site for Women three times. Jackson is a sought-after speaker, appearing at Harvard Business School, the New York Public Library, the annual invitation-only Forbes CMO summit, the Simmons and other top women’s leadership conferences, and other corporations, libraries, hospitals, schools, religious organizations, and bookstores. A graduate of Yale University and the London School of Economics with highest honors, Jackson lives with her family in New York and Rhode Island. ___________________________ For More on Maggie Jackson Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure Website __________________________ Podcast Episodes  You May Like Edit Your Life – Elisabeth Sharp McKetta Strategic Quitting – Julia Keller The Emotionally Intelligent Retirement – Kate Schroeder & Nick Wignall The Mindful Body – Ellen Langer _________________________ Wise Quotes On Tolerance of Uncertainty “So, tolerance of uncertainty is a personality trait. It’s basically, in a nutshell, if you’re intolerant of it, you are fearful of the unknown, you see uncertainty as a threat. If you’re more tolerant and open to uncertainty, then you actually see uncertainty as challenging. So we’re not talking about Easy Street, but challenge versus threat makes all the difference. In fact, scientists and clinical psychologists now see an intolerance of uncertainty as being a root vulnerability factor, a risk factor basically for most mental disorders. So basically when you’re fearful of the unknown, you shut down, your thinking becomes rigid, the opposite to that kind of arousal and wakefulness and good thinking that I’ve been talking about.” Why Uncertainty Can be a Gift “Quite simply, humans and many other organisms need and want answers. So therefore, we’re built to basically have a stress response when we are uncertain. So just to unpack that a little bit, when you meet up with something new or unexpected or ambiguous, your body and brain kind of spring into action. And contrary to uncertainty as a mindset being synonymous with inertia, for instance, actually uncertainty, in effect, wakes you up. Scientists call this arousal. So the stress response leads to your palms sweating, you’re in a traffic jam, you are not sure if you will get to the meeting with the boss, your cortisol levels rise, but at the same time, your brain becomes more receptive to new data. Your attention sharpens, and scientists call this curious eyes, which is a wonderful term, and working memory improves. So there are a raft of cascading effects on the brain, literally because you’re uncertain. That is, you’ve reached the limits of your knowledge, and you recognize that maybe it could be this or it couldn’t be that – that you don’t know. This is not ignorance, but it’s that uncertainty is really a kind of almost a stimulant. In fact, doctors in sticky situations show, or report, this heightened attention as well as they tend to look ahead to muster resources to contend with a problem or situation. And CEOs in crises who are ambivalent actually outperform their ultra-decisive peers. They’re more inclusive, they’re resourceful. So here’s a incredible positive aspect of human thinking that we denigrate and have long ignored. So it’s quite interesting. The unease of uncertainty is actually a gift.” On the Value of Pausing “Pausing is really important for memory making. So if you’re learning different things, and say you are doing two different lessons on a software to learn French because you going to Europe next summer, pause just for a few minutes between those two different lessons, and your memory for the vocabulary will be about 20 to 25 percent more. This is true even when people show some memory loss, which is pretty stunning. Pausing also allows the brain to catch up with experience in other ways, to not just encode memory, but to sort of sift memory. So you’re actually able to insert the memory and you relatively, simplistically speaking, you’re able to store memories in places where you emerge with insight….a night’s sleep will do it too. So this is really important for meaning -making. It’s not doing nothing. And that’s one way in which learning about this kind of uncertainty, the suspense of uncertainty the space of the uncertainty has changed. I used to race from thing to thing when I was working –  interview to interview and reading scientific papers and juggling….Everybody knows that feeling. Now I pause in between things just for a couple minutes, and I find that that actually has an incredibly potent impact.” ________________________ About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host  Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.    

Are you ready for the second half of life? Allen Hunt believes we should be more precise and instead concentrate on preparing for the fourth quarter of our lives once we hit our sixties. It helps us focus with a heightened sense of urgency and it can inspire us to be more intentional about the things that matter most. Allen Hunt joins us from Atlanta. __________________________ Bio Allen Hunt is The Fourth Quarter Guy. He helps people discover how to become the best-version-of themselves in the Fourth Quarter of life. A four-time #1 Amazon best-selling author, Allen collaborated with Matthew Kelly to write No Regrets: A Fable about Living Your Fourth Quarter Intentionally. In that fable, they share the ground-breaking secrets of the Fourth Quarter: the 5 Keys to Living and Dying with No Regrets. Those 5 keys then led them to create The Fourth Quarter of Your Life: Embracing What Matters Most, a workbook to help people do just that: Discover and plan how to intentionally live their fourth quarters with confidence, boldness and passion. Allen earned a Ph.D from Yale University. He enjoys hiking, literature, spirituality, history and good food. he and his wife, Anita, live in Georgia. They have two daughters, two sons-in-law, and seven grandchildren. ____________________________ Website – The Fourth Quarter Guy – Allen Hunt You Tube Channel No Regrets: A Fable about Living Your Fourth Quarter Intentionally The Fourth Quarter of Your Life: Embracing What Matters Most _____________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller Independence Day – Steve Lopez Taking Stock – Dr. Jordan Grumet _____________________________ Wise Quotes On the Fourth Quarter of Life “And so when you turn 60, you really are three-fourths of the way through, and you’re in that fourth quarter. And as I’ve kind of accompanied folks on that journey, I’ve realized your perspective really changes at that point in different kinds of ways. Your values may not, but your perspective and your point of view does. And certain things become more important. Other things begin to kind of recede into the background. And like my co-author, Matthew Kelly, and I say, death is the one unavoidable truth. And in the fourth quarter, you begin to realize that at some level. And then once you actually really realize that and accept it, then you can truly begin to live. It’s almost liberating once you realize, and this thing is going to, there is a termination date. ” On Regrets “How do you redeem those regrets and turn them into dreams? You know as we talked with hospice nurses and as we worked with people who were preparing to die and listen to some of their regrets one of the greatest regrets people expresses I really wish I had expressed my feelings more. And so if that’s a regret that you anticipate that you might have or that you have up to this point so okay how can I how can I turn that into a fourth quarter dream instead of letting that regret kind of hang on me like a wet sweater. And one way to do that is to think about three simple statements I love you, I forgive you, or please forgive me. And who do you need to say those things to? And begin to think about who do you need to thank? Who do you need to express love to? who do you need to forgive and who do you actually need to forgive you? Who do you need to say I’m sorry to and begin actually acting on that. And you’ll you’ll not only begin to avoid regrets, but you also begin to experience a freedom from the past and a lightness and a liberty in the in the fourth quarter.” On Being Intentional in Your Fourth Quarter “…intentionality matters in every aspect of your life, whether it’s your physical health, your mental health, your spiritual life. And so just to put together a simple one step, this is the next step I’m gonna take, and then see what God begins to do in your life as you do that, whether you go on that pilgrimage or you develop a daily habit of prayer, or just sitting in silence and being in the presence of God. Take one step, be intentional, and it will be a powerful, powerful force in your fourth quarter, it really will.” ______________________________ About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

A lot of our day-to-day behavior comes from habits. They create useful short cuts. But while they’re efficient, many lack something important – meaning. That’s where rituals come in. From the civic and religious rituals that commemorate key milestones and special events to our morning routines, they add a valuable emotional dimension to our lives. Michael Norton, author the new book The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions, has studied rituals and joins us to share what’s he’s learned about how we can be intentional about rituals, both ones we’ve inherited and new ones we create. He joins us from Cambridge, Massachusetts. ____________________ Curious? Take the Habit or Ritual Quiz _____________________ Bio Michael Norton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He has studied human behavior as it relates to love and inequality, time and money, and happiness and grief. He is the author of The Ritual Effect and the coauthor—with Elizabeth Dunn—of Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending. In 2012, he was selected by Wired magazine as one of “50 People Who Will Change the World.” His TEDx talk, How to Buy Happiness, has been viewed nearly 4.5 million times. He is a frequent contributor to such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Scientific American, and has made numerous television, radio, and podcast appearances. __________________________ For More on Michael Norton The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions  Website _________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Tiny Habits Can Lead to Big Changes – BJ Fogg How to Live a Values Based Life – Harry Kraemer The Portfolio Life – Christina Wallace The Second Curve of Life – Arthur C. Brooks _________________________ Wise Quotes On Rituals & Emotions   “I think one thing that I like about rituals is that they’re a bit domain general, in the sense that we don’t just use them in one domain. So imagine the only thing we use rituals for was to tie our shoes before a big race or to try to calm down before a big event. We for sure use them there. But then we use them in all these other domains of life as well. We use them in our marriages, we use them with our kids and families. We use them at work. So we really think about this idea of rituals allow us across many domains of life to change our experience in one way or another. We’re often looking for an emotion when we engage in rituals. Like if I’m doing something with my wife that we do on date night, we’re doing the ritual in order to feel closer. If I’m tying my shoes, I’m doing it in order to feel calmer. So we have these ways of using rituals to try to get us to an emotion that we think at least would be helpful in that moment.” On Rituals and Retirement “And I think that can help us then have a better demarcation between what we were and what we’re going to be. I was a full-time employee. I was a parent, now I’m retired, or now I’m an empty nester. How are we helping people transition from one to the other? Because it’s a huge transition. When we go through any of these transitions in life, we have, when we look at rituals, there’s many different types.”   On Inherited Rituals “We have just two broad categories are rituals that we receive or inherit. They could be family rituals, they could be cultural rituals, they could be religious rituals that we get from our parents, from our grandparents, from our faith. And those rituals play an enormously important role in our lives. And we know what they are, and we know how meaningful they are when we do them. Weddings and funerals exist for a reason.”   On Taking an Inventory “I think the last thing that anybody wants to hear is add 10 more things to your life. That’s not a good selling point. If I said it’s very helpful to meditate for five hours every day, well that’s great, but  who has time to meditate for five hours every day? So I often think about it less as about adding a whole bunch of rituals all over the place, and instead starting to just actually looking at your current behavior, kind of taking an inventory of what you currently do. Do you have something that you do in the morning? Is it always coffee and then newspaper and then chat with and then dog? Or are you all over the place? And those are places where you can start to see that sometimes you’re doing things already that have some of these propensities. And by the way, if you don’t think you have any rituals, ask your spouse, ask your children, ask your coworkers. They’ll be very happy to tell you all the quirky things that you do. And I like that idea of starting there, of just already recognizing this role that they play in our lives.” __________________________ About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.  

Teresa Ghilarducci, a retirement and economics expert, discusses the challenges of retirement planning in the new economy. She emphasizes the importance of financial security, criticizes the current retirement system, and proposes a 'gray new deal' solution. The conversation explores the transition to retirement, the role of social security, and the need for enhanced support for older workers. Ghilarducci advocates for universal pensions and building a strong foundation for retirement planning, highlighting the importance of fulfillment and adaptability in retirement.

Are you ready to make giving back your second act? That’s the question posed by AmeriCorps Seniors. While volunteering can make a huge difference in the lives of others, it offers many benefits for you too. Atalaya Sergi joins us to discuss how AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers are making a difference by redeploying their skills and experience, including through intergenerational volunteer programs. Atalaya Sergi joins us from Charlottesville, Virginia. __________________________ Bio Atalaya Sergi leads AmeriCorps Seniors, the federal grant making office of AmeriCorps that is focused on promoting and engaging people aged 55 and over in outcomes-oriented service. She has more than 20 years of experience in service, community engagement, and education, working in the public and nonprofit sector to bring private and public organizations together to ensure people of all ages, as well as those living in underserved communities, thrive. Prior to AmeriCorps, she served as vice president, strategic partnerships & programming at Jumpstart for Young Children, Inc., managing AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps Seniors programs as a federal grantee. She launched Jumpstart’s only AmeriCorps Seniors Foster Grandparent Program. Sergi co-founded Los Angeles Generation to Generation, focusing on engaging older adults in volunteerism to support young children across LA County. She currently represents AmeriCorps on the federal government’s Elder Justice Coordinating Council and Scams Against Older Adults Advisory Group. She has been recognized as a PBS Next Avenue Influencer in Aging, an Encore Network Champion, and was selected as a Co-Generate Encore Public Voice Fellow, using her time to write about the positive impact older adults can have in educational settings. Sergi earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in social work from Virginia Commonwealth University. _____________________________ For More on Atalaya Sergi AmeriCorps Seniors Atalaya Sergi on Next Avenue _____________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Like Changing the World One Small Act at a Time – Brad Aronson The Best Day of My Life So Far – Benita Cooper Why Retirement is About Much More Than Money – Ted Kaufman & Bruce Hiland _____________________________ Related Blog Post Find the Volunteer Opportunity That’s Right for You _____________________________   Retiring? Check out our Best Books for Retirement   _______________________________ Wise Quotes  On the Benefits of Volunteering “One of the things that we have done some research on and learned about is the benefits to your health, and I’m not sure that everyone thinks about that. We did a research study where we looked over a three year period of volunteering, starting with volunteers who had never volunteered before and then following them over time. And we saw that of those that had volunteered for just one or two years, 84% of those volunteers reported improved or stable health. 88% reported decreased feelings of isolation. And we know how important that is given all of the work that our Surgeon General is doing. And 78% reported that they also felt less depressed after volunteering. And I think that getting out, getting moving, staying connected to your community and to others in your community really has a positive impact just on your health.” On Volunteering & Lifelong Learning  “I think another thing that volunteers may sometimes not expect is that they learn new skills. So we’re talking about adults that are volunteering, that have lots of lived experience, lots of career experience, but we always hear from volunteers that they learn new skills when they’re out volunteering from the training they receive. If they’re doing something that’s different from what they did in their career, they learn new skill sets.” On Foster Grandparenting “We have a foster grandparent volunteer in Mount Pleasant Michigan, and they call him Grandpa Rick. He shares his time and passion for reading with the kids, and he started a Book Club where he meets with third and fourth grade students from his assigned classrooms twice a week during recess. So the students get together, they read together, they talk about the story together, and their classroom teacher says that Grandpa Rick’s Book Club has got her students more excited about reading and that they are always looking forward to it. They want to know what the next book is. They want to know how they’re going to get to connect with Grandpa Rick. And when I heard this story, I was like, Grandpa Rick is awesome!” _________________________ About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.2 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. _______________________