Never Retire - How Exercising Together Can Improve Cognitive Function And Why It Matters
Work less today so you can work less longer.
The cornerstone of my Never Retire strategy.
Rather than deliniate between your working years and retirement years, you live the semi-retired life now and for the duration.
When you have no choice but to work in retirement—even just a little—you must focus on preserving your physical and mental capacity to help foster your ability to work into relative old age.
So the type of work you do matters. Easy on the body, but challening without being too stressful on the mind.
What you do in your spare time—when you’re not working—also matters.
To that end, exercise matters. Doing it with the person you love might actually enhance the positive impacts of exercise.
Let’s take one thought at a time.
First, here’s my view on exercise—in my mid-40s—from an April Medium article:
Anyhow, (66-year old comedian Bill) Maher said the key to ageing is pacing yourself. Scaling back. Realizing what you can and cannot do as you get older. Not trying to do too much.
I think I paraphrased him correctly.
Where I’m at with exercise drove this point home in recent years.
Because I see physical and psychological results from it, I’ve been walking and hiking a lot the last few years.
A few months ago, I wanted to add something to my exercise routine to take things to the next level.
So I went back to something I did obsessively 5 or 6 years ago — Spinning. Indoor cycling.
Longish story short, it’s didn’t feel right.
Around the same time my girlfriend introduced me to hot yoga (Maher joked about this on the aforementioned special).
Another longish story short, it feels more than right.
I love everything about it. It has transformed my body in a way I didn’t think possible at my age and over such a short period of time.
Ten or twenty years ago I would have tried to make indoor cycling work. It would have been a pride thing. If I was able to do it at 38 or 40, why not now?
That would have been physically and psychologically counterproductive. Not to mention stubborn and stupid.
Yoga isn’t easy. In fact, it’s super challenging. However, it’s just the right exercise for my body and mind at my age.
I’m convinced picking the most appropriate exercise — and giving up what isn’t suitable — holds a significant chunk of the key to ageing.
To ageing gracefully.
We should apply the same philosophy to how we work.
If we work less now, we preserve our body and mind so we can work less longer.
So it’s a virtuous cycle.
Second, consider the results from a Masters’ thesis I recently came across.
In Individual and Partner Exercise Status and Cognitive Function in Older Adults, Human Development and Family Science student, Kathryn Georgette Ratliff, hypothesized and discovered the following:
The health problems of one partner can “spillover” to the other partner. Therefore, “positive health outcomes may have a beneficial impact on partner health.”
Generally speaking, when you exercise with your partner, you tend to stick to it and see better results.
Exercise can help mitigate normal aging and maybe even help change the course of cognitive decline and prevent physical health problems.
Among married people between the ages of 65 and 95, those in relationships where they exercise together had better cognitive outcomes and less cognitive decline than those who did not. At the same time, physical activity among one spouse influenced and might even improve their partner’s cognitive state.
I was pleased to read this study.
My girlfriend and I exercise together regularly—usually up to 5 or 6 times a week. We get a lot out of this as a couple. We look forward to it.
I like to think this all feeds back into what I said at the beginning of this newsletter post. That fostering solid physical and mental health routines today can help preserve physical and mental healthy capacity over time. If exercising together has an additional effect, all the better.
One of the big reasons why people struggle in retirement is because physical or mental health problems prevent them from being able to work. The earlier you realize you’ll Never Retire—at least not completely—the more time you have on your side to do the things in your control to situate yourself to work less now so you can work less longer.
It’s these obvious, seemingly little things that can make a big difference. We often overlook them amid all the practical talk about money and personal finance at it relates to aging and retirement.
From a recent hike on a camping trip in Central California—
