For a happier retirement, the key isn’t how much free time you have to spend, it’s how you manage whatever free time you have. That’s the conclusion of a fascinating new study about time management in retirement I think is worth heeding.
Earlier research has found that leisure time is important for retirees, positively influencing their happiness and sense of peace, and that a lack of planning can lead to boredom.
But this was the first study I’ve seen that looked at the significance of managing that leisure time.
Measuring quality of life in retirement
The Taiwanese researchers—Wei-Ching Wang of I-Shou University, and Chang-Yang Wu and Chung-Chi Wu of the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology—studied 454 Taiwanese retirees to determine whether there was a link between how they managed their free time and their overall quality of life. (The retirees had an average of 8.3 hours of free time weekdays and 8.75 hours on the weekends, incidentally.)
The study’s authors discovered that retirees with more free time weren’t happier than ones with less on their schedule. The telling factor was the way retirees used their idle hours.
Read full article at: ~ http://ow.ly/qwBQH