A Thousand Mondays by Gregory Sloane — The Retirement Problem Money Can't Solve

The Problem

You planned precisely what you were told to plan. The money is fine. The rest is not.

You retire on a Friday. On Monday you wake at the same hour you have woken for thirty years, and lie there waiting for the day to tell you what to do. It doesn't. No email needs you. No meeting appears. No decision is yours to make.

For forty years, Monday was issued to you by an institution that had already decided what it required before you opened your eyes. It got you up, aimed you at something, surrounded you with people, and handed you, by Friday, the small weekly verdict that you were good at what you did. Retirement gives Monday back. It sounds like freedom, and at first it is. But the returned Monday arrives without instructions, and you are going to receive a very large number of them.

The Claim

Your career paid you in six currencies. Your retirement plan replaced exactly one.

Money, structure, identity, purpose, people, and the daily proof that you were good at something. Five of the six were direct-deposited into your life by an employer, and all five stopped on the same Friday. The salary was the only one anyone helped you replace. That is why a person with a fully funded retirement can sit at a kitchen table on a Monday morning and stare at a wall for eleven minutes.

This is not a theory of feelings. It is an accounting identity, and it has a design solution, addressed to people who solved design problems for a living.

The Six Currencies

Audit each one. Rebuild the five that stopped.

Currency 01

Money

The one the industry replaced. It is fine. Leave it.

Currency 02

Structure

The week is a building. What holds the days up now that the job doesn't?

Currency 03

Identity

The barbecue question: who are you when the title is gone?

Currency 04

People

The colleagues who surrounded you without being invited. Now they must be.

Currency 05

Purpose

Past the passion myth: work that lands somewhere, on your terms.

Currency 06

Competence

The currency nobody warns you about: the daily proof you are still good at something.

What's Inside

Three parts. An audit, a rebuild, and the load tests.

Intro

Eleven Minutes

The morning the returned Monday arrives without instructions, and the arithmetic that names this book.

Part I

The Audit

The Monday Morning Problem, the Six Currencies, and the Monday Morning Protocol.

Part II

The Five Unpaid Currencies

Structure, Identity, People, Purpose, and Competence: one chapter, one build, each.

Part III

The Load Tests

The Six O'Clock Problem and the First Thirteen Mondays: stress-testing the design against real life.

The Remaining Mondays

Plus a consolidated toolkit and a note for the financial professionals who send clients here.

Who It's For

Written for

Executives, engineers, surgeons, and partners aged 55 to 70
High achievers who built things for a living and think in systems
Readers of From Strength to Strength, Four Thousand Weeks, Die With Zero
Anyone who is funded for retirement and quietly unsettled by it

Not written for

Readers who want reassurance instead of a plan
Anyone looking for beaches, rocking chairs, or golf-and-grandkids sentiment
People who want the money question answered again (it isn't the problem)

What You'll Build

A number of your own Mondays, calculated, small enough to feel and large enough to build with
A Monday Morning Protocol that gives the blank week a spine
An honest audit of which of the five currencies are in arrears, and by how much
A rebuild for each: structure, identity, people, purpose, and competence
A first thirteen Mondays that turn the design into a life you are actually living

The Author

Gregory Sloane

The Intentional Years series

Gregory Sloane writes the Intentional Years: practical guides for adults designing the second half of life. He writes for the reader who spent thirty years building things and thinks in blueprints, protocols, and specifications.

The premise is the same across every book. Life after work is not a problem to be soothed. It is a design problem, addressed to the person best qualified to solve it.

Questions

Before you ask.

Is this a financial book?

No. The money currency is the one your retirement plan already replaced, and it is fine. This book is about the other five: structure, identity, people, purpose, and competence.

I'm not retired yet. Is it too early?

No. The best time to design the returned Monday is before it arrives. The audit works just as well as a pre-retirement plan as it does a repair.

Is it sentimental or therapeutic?

Neither. It treats the second half of life the way you would treat any serious design problem: with an audit, named tools, and a build you can start on a Monday.

When does it launch?

Soon, on Amazon in paperback and ebook. Leave your email below and we'll tell you the day it's live.

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