There is a television program I have been watching recently that has got me thinking a lot about the way we live our lives.

It is called 7 Up.

If you have never seen it, the idea is extraordinary in its simplicity. A group of children were filmed at the age of seven, and then revisited every seven years as their lives unfolded.

It gives us something we almost never get in normal life.

Perspective.

We get to watch people change, make decisions, succeed, struggle, adapt and grow over decades.

I am going to talk separately about some of the lessons I think we can take from that program, particularly if we are thinking about the next chapter of our lives.

But it reminded me of another television series I watched a few years ago.

A Channel 4 programme called Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds.

And I think the idea behind that program might contain one of the simplest and most powerful lessons about living well in later life.

What happens when you bring the generations together?

The idea was straightforward.

A group of older residents living in a retirement community were brought together with a group of nursery-age children.

These were people at completely opposite ends of life.

The older participants were mostly in their eighties.

The children were three and four years old.

For several weeks they spent time together.

They played.

They talked.

They helped each other.

They took part in activities.

They went outside.

They laughed.

And the cameras recorded what happened.

It would have been easy for the program to have simply been a heart-warming piece of television.

Children and older people together tends to produce lovely moments.

But what made it particularly interesting was that the program also measured the impact.

Before and after the experiment, professionals assessed the older participants across a range of areas.

Mobility.

Balance.

Grip strength.

Mood.

Memory.

Cognition.

General wellbeing.

Some of the older residents had become physically frail.

Some were struggling with low mood.

Some had withdrawn from everyday life.

A few had stopped leaving their rooms very often.

Then something changed.

After spending regular time with the children, many of the residents improved across a range of measures.

They became more active.

They became more engaged.

Their mood improved.

They interacted more.

And what I find fascinating is what did not happen.

Nobody invented a new pill.

Nobody introduced a revolutionary diet.

Nobody created an elaborate exercise regime.

The children simply turned up.

They asked questions.

They wanted to play.

They needed help.

They needed someone to show them something.

They needed someone to hold their hand.

They needed someone to help them put on a coat or a pair of wellies.

And somehow, in that simple relationship, something important returned.

Three things we all need

When I think about what changed for those older residents, I keep coming back to three things.

Purpose.

Movement.

Connection.

I think those three things matter at every age.

And I think they become especially important when we move away from work.

Most people reading this will not be living in a care home in their mid-eighties.

You might be 58.

You might be 62.

You might be six months away from retirement.

You might already have stopped working after 35 or 40 years in the same profession.

But the mechanism is surprisingly similar.

Because when work stops, three things can sometimes disappear with it.

A reason to get up.

A reason to move.

And people you see without having to arrange it.

We often talk about retirement as though it is simply a financial transition.

Your salary stops.

Your pension starts.

You access investments.

You work out whether you have enough.

All of that matters.

But there is another transition happening underneath it.

Your entire framework for everyday life can change.

Work gives us more than money

Work can be frustrating.

It can be stressful.

It can be exhausting.

Most people have imagined retirement at some point during a difficult Monday morning and thought how wonderful it would be to have complete freedom.

And it can be wonderful.

But work quietly gives us things that are easy to take for granted.

It gives us structure.

It gives us deadlines.

It gives us people.

It gives us problems to solve.

It gives us reasons to leave the house.

It gives us conversations.

It gives us people who need something from us.

It gives us evidence that we still have something to contribute.

Take all of that away overnight and the result can be disorientating.

You may have more time than ever.

But less reason to use it in a particular way.

The residents in the television programme had not suddenly lost everything they knew.

They had not lost the ability to help someone.

They had not lost the ability to laugh.

They had not lost the ability to care.

They had lost some of the context in which those abilities could be used.

Then the children arrived.

Suddenly someone needed them.

That changed things.

Purpose does not need to be grand

When people talk about purpose in retirement, it can sound intimidating.

You might imagine you need to launch a charity.

Start a business.

Write a book.

Become a community leader.

Do something huge.

But purpose is often much smaller than that.

Purpose can simply mean being useful.

Someone needs you.

Something matters because you are involved.

A grandchild needs picking up from school.

A local organisation needs help.

A younger colleague needs mentoring.

A sports club needs someone to organise something.

A neighbour needs support.

A community project needs volunteers.

A friend needs somebody to listen.

That can be enough.

The children in the program did not ask the residents to change the world.

They asked them to play.

They asked them questions.

They asked for help.

And that was enough to create meaning.

Perhaps one of the most useful questions you can ask in the next chapter of life is:

Who needs something that I can give?

That does not necessarily mean money.

It might mean experience.

Time.

Attention.

Patience.

Knowledge.

Encouragement.

Stories.

Those can be enormously valuable.

The second lesson is about movement

The children did not sit still.

Anyone who has spent time with a three-year-old will know that.

They move.

They explore.

They bend down.

They run.

They get up.

They walk somewhere because something has caught their attention.

The older residents had a reason to move because the children were moving too.

That matters.

One of the risks when we leave work is not simply that we stop going into an office.

We may start moving less without realising it.

We lose the walk to the station.

The trip across the office.

The walk to lunch.

The stairs.

The drive somewhere followed by walking across a site.

The unconscious physical activity built into a working day can disappear.

Then it has to become deliberate.

Walking.

Gardening.

Swimming.

Playing with grandchildren.

Golf.

Cycling.

Going to the gym.

Joining a walking group.

Whatever works for you.

Movement does not have to mean training for a marathon.

It means making sure your life continues to require you to use your body.

The children in the program created that naturally.

That is worth noticing.

Connection without an appointment

There is another part of work that we often underestimate.

It gives us social contact without needing to organise it.

You walk into work and people are there.

You make coffee.

Someone asks about your weekend.

You complain about a meeting.

You talk about football.

You talk about television.

You have lunch.

You solve a problem together.

Much of that connection happens almost accidentally.

Then you retire.

Suddenly, seeing people becomes something that needs organising.

You need to call.

You need to arrange a date.

You need to put something in the diary.

And if you do not make the effort, days can go past surprisingly quickly.

That is why community matters so much in later life.

Clubs.

Groups.

Volunteering.

Classes.

Regular exercise.

Faith communities.

Local organisations.

Neighbourhood groups.

Anywhere where you can simply turn up and people know you.

The television program created that environment for the residents.

The children arrived.

They brought energy with them.

And social contact happened naturally.

Four-year-olds are very good at being four-year-olds

There was another lesson in the program that I think is just as important.

The children themselves.

Watch a three or four-year-old for an hour and you will notice something interesting.

They are remarkably good at being fully absorbed in whatever they are doing.

They build something.

Then they stop.

They run outside.

Then they look at an insect.

Then somebody produces paint.

Then they want a snack.

There is very little concern about whether the activity is productive.

There is no performance review at the end.

Nobody asks whether playing with wooden blocks generated an acceptable return on investment.

They simply become absorbed in what is in front of them.

Psychologists might describe some of that as flow.

Children seem to fall into it naturally.

Adults make it more difficult.

Why do we feel guilty about doing nothing productive?

One of the things that surprised me when I was interviewing people while writing What Happens Next was how difficult many people found unstructured time.

Someone might have spent 40 years measuring the day by output.

What got finished?

What did we achieve?

What was the result?

What is tomorrow’s target?

Then retirement arrives and there is suddenly an afternoon with nothing in it.

That should feel like freedom.

Instead, it can feel uncomfortable.

You sit down at two o’clock to read a book and part of your brain says:

“Shouldn’t you be doing something?”

That is decades of conditioning speaking.

We become used to linking our worth with productivity.

Then we need to learn something children already know.

An afternoon does not need to achieve anything to be worthwhile.

What would a four-year-old choose?

Imagine asking a group of young children what they wanted to do with the afternoon.

Their answers would probably be very simple.

Go outside.

Build something.

Draw something.

Play.

See a friend.

Eat something nice.

Listen to a story.

Make a mess.

Explore somewhere.

Laugh.

Move around.

None of those things has a KPI attached.

None needs to appear on LinkedIn.

None has to contribute to a five-year plan.

Yet almost every one connects to something we know contributes to a good life.

Connection.

Creativity.

Physical health.

Curiosity.

Pleasure.

Play.

Learning.

Meaning.

Presence.

Children do not need a wellbeing framework to understand that these things matter.

They simply do them.

Adults often need reminding.

The next chapter does not need to look like work

One of the mistakes we can make in retirement is rebuilding work under a different name.

We leave a full diary and immediately fill another one.

Every day has an activity.

Every hour has a purpose.

Every hobby becomes a project.

Every interest needs an outcome.

Sometimes that works.

Some people love structure.

But we should also leave room for play.

For curiosity.

For doing something because it feels enjoyable.

For being bad at something.

For wasting an afternoon.

For changing our mind.

For seeing where the day goes.

The irony is that we spend decades looking forward to having freedom, then sometimes become uncomfortable when it finally arrives.

Learning to enjoy unstructured time may be one of the most important retirement skills nobody talks about.

Two experiments worth trying

There are two practical ideas I think we can take from Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds.

The first is to find someone younger who needs something you can give.

That could mean mentoring.

Helping in a school.

Supporting a youth organisation.

Spending more time with grandchildren.

Helping a younger person starting in your profession.

Sharing a skill.

You do not have to become responsible for someone else’s life.

Just find somewhere your experience is useful.

Because feeling needed is powerful.

The second experiment is to borrow an afternoon from a four-year-old.

Think about what a genuinely enjoyable afternoon would look like if you temporarily forgot about productivity.

Go outside.

Make something.

See somebody you like.

Eat something good.

Explore somewhere new.

Read.

Play.

Do something badly.

Do something without turning it into a goal.

Then notice how you feel afterwards.

Perhaps they already know the answer

We tend to think that getting older means accumulating wisdom.

And hopefully some of it does.

But sometimes we spend so many years accumulating responsibilities, identities, expectations and habits that we forget some of the things we understood naturally at the beginning.

Move.

Play.

Connect.

Be curious.

Help people.

Let people help you.

Spend time outside.

Tell stories.

Make things.

Pay attention to what is in front of you.

Those are not childish ideas.

They are human ones.

The people in that retirement community did not become different people when the children arrived.

The environment around them changed.

Suddenly there was a reason to engage.

A reason to move.

A reason to connect.

That is a useful lesson for anyone thinking about retirement.

The question is not simply:

How much money do I need?

It is also:

What framework am I building for my life when work is no longer providing one for me?

Who will need you?

Who will you see?

What will get you moving?

What will make you curious?

What will you do simply because you enjoy doing it?

Those questions might matter every bit as much as the number in your pension.

Perhaps the four-year-olds understood that all along.