Why People Resist Retirement

With President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, is now the oldest person ever nominated by a major U.S. political party. The vast complexities of this presidential race aside, it has led to a national conversation about age, leadership, and what work means to our identities.

Given that most Americans retire by age 64, some may wonder why these men — or perhaps any number of elderly business leaders — didn’t retire long ago. In a recently completed decade-long study of retiring among U.S. business professionals, my research team discovered what it takes to make that difficult decision — and why many struggle with it.

We found that making the retirement decision means grappling with three psychological issues. First, identity issues can loom large for any deeply engaged professional. Even a small step away from their career can make them wonder who they are without it. One interviewee felt a disturbing identity loss after reducing his work week by just one day: “Now it’s like… I’m only four-fifths of a software engineer. So, is this changing my identity?” Many study participants successfully navigated this challenge by “identity bridging,” finding a way to retain some essential pieces of their career identity into retirement – like a company leader who took up a leadership position in his religious congregation after retiring.

Second, many older professionals resist leaving meaningful work, where each day brings a sense of purpose, contribution to something that matters, and progress toward important goals – especially if they lack a clear sense of what’s next. Several of our interviewees used phrases like “leaping into the void” or “jumping off a cliff.” One who struggled with the decision for years said, “I’ve always been, like, ‘What’s next, what’s next, what’s next?’ And I feel that what’s next is finally not about work. But I don’t quite know what the ‘what’s next’ is.” People who made the decision more easily could at least envision an appealing way to spend their time post-retirement.

The third big psychological issue is dread of losing the strong relationships that accumulate over the course of a long, successful career. Such relationships often carry a heady sense of being needed and respected by hundreds, thousands, even millions of people. A senior manager at a tech company, who’d left a likely promotion to business unit leader when she decided to retire, described the shock of that transition: “I went from being the center of attention and everything for a lot of people, and a little bit the entertainer of an audience, to invisible. That’s a big jump.”

Our study reveals that finally making that leap into retirement can be enabled by alignment, awareness, agency, and adaptability (what we call “The 4 As”). A person needs to value, and strive for, alignment between the reality of “self” – what’s important to them, as well as their current strengths and weaknesses – and the reality of “life structure,” which encompasses everything in their life, including job demands. To assess alignment, they need awareness, a clear-eyed view of both that self and that life structure. If they discover misalignment, they need to exercise agency, proactively making necessary changes – including, possibly, ending their career. Finally, that person needs to develop adaptability to events that they cannot control, such as having a debilitating accident or getting laid off before they can voluntarily retire.

There’s no “right age” to retire. Scholarly research has found enormous variability in both physical stamina loss and cognitive decline associated with aging. Some leaders, such as famed Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt, realize they must retire because of cognitive decline at a relatively young age. Others, such as Warren Buffett, former President Jimmy Carter, and Queen Elizabeth II, can function quite effectively into their late 80s and even beyond.

Leaders who develop an accurate awareness of who they really are and what their job really demands of them – at any given point in time – are much better equipped to overcome the psychological barriers to retiring when the time is right. The same goes for all of us.

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Teresa M. Amabile is Edsel Bryant Ford Professor, Emerita at Harvard Business School. A psychologist who has researched creativity, motivation, and everyday work life, she is coauthor of The Progress Principle and the forthcoming Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You.