Ten Beneficial Activities During Retirement

By Dr Goh Seh Kai

28 Nov 2021

If you are a retiree, you might feel challenging to pass your time daily. How to enjoy leisure might become a problem for some retirees. This article highlights ten practical activities for retirees who can keep themselves busy and stay healthy during their retirement.

Ten Beneficial Activities for Retirees

1. Writing Diary: As a retiree, you can pen down your thought on many aspects of your life daily. For example, you can open your Microsoft Word to comment on the articles or news in newspapers. Just about two hundred to three hundred words will be sufficient to keep you busy for about one to two hours daily.

The reason is you may have to take time in writing, editing and rewriting continuously to ensure you will construct logical and grammatically correct sentences with appropriate words.

I think the time spent is worth your effort because you will improve your writing skills after some time. It is true, especially if English is not your native language.

You will be surprised to notice that you will be satisfied with significant improvements in your English writing skills one day. Moreover, your ability to journal even at your retirement age will enhance your self-esteem.

2. Cooking Meals: You can learn how to cook meals for your family, as cooking will take up about two hours of your time daily. The experience is worth your time because you will be delighted with having mastered the cooking skills.

My retired friend once told me that he had improved his cooking skills because his food taste was more delicious each time than the previous one. He was satisfied with the praise given by his family members for having cooked delicious meals for them.

He told me that the improvement could be in the appropriate amount of salt, sugar, oil, etc., required in each food type. Also, you can refer to cookbooks and experience mixing different kinds of materials for your cooking.

After each meal, you can improve your food quality by modifying the recipe slightly for the next meal. The experience you gain from enhancing your cooking skills will make your retirement life more exciting and add value to your life.

3. Reading News and Articles: Like writing, reading can take up a few hours of retirees’ time daily. You shall cultivate reading habits even you are a retiree because you can enhance your vocabulary, reading and comprehension skills besides understanding what is happening in your community and the world.

The real-life stories you read will prepare you for responding fast to future changes and provide you with information for writing your diaries.

My retired friends enjoy reading stories in newspapers, magazines, books, journal articles, etc., during their leisure because they understand that it can help them realise the objectives mentioned above.

Nowadays, you need only subscribe to an online version of the newspaper and read the news on a tablet or mobile phone. This approach will eliminate the need to keep and dispose of the newspapers after reading.

Enhancing your knowledge through reading is the right way to allow you to pass your time and enrich your life.

4. Planting Vegetables and Flowers: It is fun to see your planted vegetables and flowers have flourished. They are like your kids who are worth your time and effort in nourishing them. When you see them growing well day after day, you will gain a feeling of achievement.

The happiest moment is when you can harvest fruits or vegetables for your consumption. Then, you may take photos of them and show them to your friends and relatives. The praise received from others for your little accomplishment will make your life more exciting and rewarding.

Moreover, you will be busy in the related activities, such as purchasing planting accessories, pots, soils, seeds, etc. and planting activities like filling up jars with soils and seeds.

These activities are good exercises for retirees as they will strengthen their hands and legs’ muscle and enhance the coordination between their brain and eyes.

5. Learning New Knowledge and Skills: Online learning is a trend during the pandemic.

As a retiree, you can learn a lot of know-how and abilities from training providers’ free online courses. It is a matter if you are willing to spend some of your leisure attending these courses.

Although you may think that there is no economic value for retirees to learn the knowledge and skills, it can fulfil their self-actualisation needs.

For example, you will be proud to tell others that you can write a programme to animate some objects after learning programming languages.

Also, you may know some mobile applications to enrich your life, such as making payments on purchase via your phone.

Regardless of age, it is a matter of time that you will know something unfamiliar to you if you can invest one or two hours daily in learning.

I have a retired friend who has no prior computer programming skills and has spent one hour daily learning necessary JavaScript online for six months.

Now he claims that he can use the language to develop a simple website. He is proud to share his learning experience with me and intends to make it his hobby by continuously learning and practising the language.

6. Walking and Exercising: As a retiree, you can keep yourself healthy by exercising, for example, an hour daily, such as walking, dancing, singing, body stretching and so forth.

As you will be turning old and weak soon, exercising will enhance your longevity. Exercising is beneficial to your body and mind, especially if you have sat down for hours.

While walking, you can refresh your mind by breathing in oxygen and strengthening your legs and arms’ muscle by exercising them. As a result, you will always feel energetic and fresh immediately after a half-an-hour walk daily.

We know that most of us seldom exercised when we were young and still working because we might not have free time or not think it is necessary to exercise.

However, it may be too late to discover that we have some illnesses due to a lack of exercise during young.

Hence, it will not be too late for you to start exercising when you are retired but still walk well because exercising will compensate for the lack of exercise you had during young.

7. Playing Digital Games: Since dementia is quite a common disease among older people, retirees need to exercise their brains regularly.

The reason is retirees will normally exercise their brains lesser than when they were still working.

As you are primarily at home, you may indulge in watching TV drama shows to reduce your boredom and pass your time daily. However, after some time, your brain may become inactive and cannot think logically.

However, if you could play some digital games, you would need to exercise your creativity to cope with the games’ challenges, such as solving puzzles, resolving issues, and so forth.

My retired friends told me that their fingers, eyes and brain coordination become faster after playing digital games an hour a day for two months.

Also, they feel satisfied with their achievement when they could attain a higher score in each game than the score achieved in the previous round.

Furthermore, you may also play with others like your family members, siblings, relatives or friends, which will excite you and improve your relationship with them.

8. Doing Household Chores: As we know, some family members will have to do their household chores daily or weekly, such as cleaning and tidying up stuff at home, washing and hanging clothes, ironing shirts and dresses, marketing for household goods and so forth.

Instead of hiring a domestic worker to perform these tasks, you can give your helping hands since you have more free time at home.

As a result, you will be deemed valuable to your family members, satisfying your esteem needs.

If you own a car, you may help drive your family members to and from work or school daily.

The gratification you will gain by helping your loved ones is worth your effort and time. The appreciation that your family members give you will delight you.

As the household chores require you to plan and perform them accordingly, they will benefit you physically and mentally.

You will feel meaningful in your life since you know you have some tasks to complete, which should start and finish at a specific time every day.

9. Socialising with Friends Online: Meeting online for avoiding being infected by the virus has become the norm for some of us now.

You can use software such as Zoom, Microsoft Team, etc., for communicating with others virtually.

Although you can chit-chat with your family members to meet your social needs, it is also essential for you to treasure the long-term relationship with your friends and relatives.

You can share with them your current life experiences, views on news and articles, past work experiences and episodes, etc.

Since you are already retired, you have lost the opportunity of interacting with your colleagues during work. In addition, you might feel lost emotionally after parting with your colleagues who have been with you for a long time.

If you can communicate with them online once in a while, it will help you recall the episodes you were with them, such as challenges and setbacks encountered, work accomplishments, etc.

You will feel fortunate and appreciate how your ex-colleagues have supported you in getting things done.

Your self-esteem will also improve after recalling the moments when you could overcome the difficulties countered, and your colleagues praised you for accomplishing the tasks.

10. Listening to Music and Songs: Listening to music and songs will relax our brain and mind and make us happy.

Music and songs are conducive to creating a productive working or living environment, as well. They energise us when we feel bored and tired after working for long hours.

My retired friends told me that their productivity has improved while doing household chores and listening to their favourite songs simultaneously.

While listening to the songs, they usually sing together to reduce their boredom caused by the household work’s routineness.

Also, turning on music or songs can sometimes stimulate their thought, and they will become more creative while reading or writing, although it may not work for you. However, you should try it out to see if it works for you.

My retired friends also feel that listening to old music and popular songs is enjoyable because they used to hear them when they were young.

It helps them recall the old places they lived in and what they did when they were young. It also arouses their memory of the people they socialised with, the streams they used to catch fish with their friends, the trees they plucked the fruits from, etc.

All these stories are worth their memory, and sometimes, they wish they could reverse time to become children again to enjoy their lives free of worries.

In summary, as a retiree, you can still enjoy your life by keeping yourself busy and healthy by performing the above ten activities. Besides, by performing these activities, you will benefit from the potential of increasing your life span and satisfaction of your social needs, self-esteem and self-actualisation needs.

Thank you for reading, and your feedback is very much appreciated.