Your First Healthy Year of Retirement

1. Get a notebook and put it somewhere you can't avoid it. Write tonight's five lines: when you woke and how the night went, what your body did, roughly what and when you ate, who you spoke to, and one word for the day.
2. Write the function list. Getting off the floor, the low chair, the steps, the shopping, the top shelf, how far you walk before you'd rather sit. Date the page.
3. Phone your doctor's surgery and ask for a general check-in, saying you've recently retired and want to review what you're due for. Booking it is the whole task.
4. Write down the fixed points your week already has, the ones that happen whether or not you decide. Most people have more than they think.
5. Go outside within an hour or so of getting up, and stay out for a few minutes. Notice whether it changes anything about the day.
6. Choose your rising hour: one time you'll aim for most mornings, including after a bad night. Write it on the calendar where you'll see it.
7. Read the week's notebook entries in one sitting. Circle the days that felt good and look at what was in them.
8. Pick one movement anchor and give it a day and a time. Write it in the calendar in pen.
9. Ask one person to do it with you, or find the class or group that already does it at that time. Send the message today.
10. Break one long stretch of sitting on purpose: get up during the adverts, take the call standing, make two trips instead of one.
11. Write the meal card. Every meal you can currently make without looking anything up. Stick it inside a cupboard door.
12. Turn the card into a standing shopping list, the one you'll use most weeks without thinking.
13. Stock the nothing-in-the-house shelf: a few tins, some frozen vegetables, eggs, oats, whatever you'd want on a bad evening.
14. Cook double at one meal and put the second portion in the fridge or freezer with the date on it.
15. Write three columns of names: people you'd like to see weekly, monthly, and people you'd hate to lose touch with. Notice the shape of the lists.
16. Contact one person from the third column. A call, a note, a message. Nothing elaborate.
17. Find out what actually exists near you. Pick up the library or community center timetable, or look up the council's list of groups.
18. Turn up once at something new, and go with the deliberate intention of not judging it until the third visit.
19. Eat one meal at a table, with the television off, and with someone if you can arrange it.
20. Make the one-page health sheet: conditions, medications, allergies, surgeries, doctor, emergency contact.
21. Put a copy in your wallet, leave one at home where it would be found, and tell your emergency contact it exists.
22. List your appointment categories: doctor, dentist, eyes, hearing, any specialist, medication review, and a blank line for screenings to be agreed with your doctor.
23. Name your health month. Pick one month a year, hitched to something memorable, and write it on next year's calendar too.
24. Copy the three appointment questions onto a card for your wallet: what is my main problem, what do I need to do, and why is it important that I do this.
25. Hold a worry appointment. Twenty minutes, a pen, and each worry written as an actual question rather than as dread.
26. Take one item from that list and write the single next step, with a date. Then do nothing else about it today.
27. If money is the worry that wakes you, book or research one conversation with a qualified adviser, and write down the specific question you want answered.
28. Have the time-and-space conversation with your partner, using the script in the worksheets. If you live alone, have a different conversation: agree with one person that you'll check in with each other weekly.
29. Try one evening without alcohol, if it's part of your routine, and note how you sleep that night. One night is data, not a commitment.
30. Write your one-page year: the anchors you're keeping, the one thing you're adding, your minimum week, your health month, and a line about what all this is for. Then put a check-in date six months out on the calendar.

Anchor

Used here for anything that happens at a set time, on a set day, with something outside your own willpower holding it in place.

Baseline

An honest record of where you're starting: how you sleep, move, eat, and who you see, written down before you change anything.

Function

What your body can do in ordinary life. Getting off the floor, carrying the shopping, managing the stairs. The measure that matters most at this stage.

Preventive care

Checks, vaccinations, and screenings intended to find or prevent problems before they cause symptoms. Which ones apply to you is an individual decision made with your doctor.

Screening

Testing people without symptoms to look for a condition early. Which screenings suit you depends on your age, sex, history, and country, and there is no schedule that fits everybody.

Medication review

A proper look, usually with a doctor or pharmacist, at everything you take, to check it's all still needed, still working, and not interacting badly.

Registered dietitian

A regulated professional qualified to give individual advice about food, including for medical conditions. Different from a general "nutritionist," whose title is not protected everywhere.

Physiotherapist (physical therapist)

A regulated professional who assesses how you move and designs a program for your particular body, injuries, and conditions.

Exercise professional

A qualified trainer or instructor, ideally one with specific experience of older adults or of your condition, who can teach and progress activity safely.

Sleep apnea

A condition where breathing repeatedly pauses during sleep, often with heavy snoring and daytime exhaustion. Common, under-diagnosed, and treatable.

Minimum viable week

The reduced version of your routine that survives a trip, an illness, or a crisis, and keeps the shape of the habit alive.

Respite

Temporary relief for someone caring for another person. Usually has to be asked for, often earlier than people ask.

Who is Your First Healthy Year of Retirement for?

For people newly retired, or about to be, who want the first year to build something rather than drift.

What does it not do?

It is not a medical plan, a screening calendar, or a source of treatment advice, and it does not address the financial side of retirement.

How long is it?

About 25,600 words across 10 chapters, with 13 full-page illustrations. In paperback that is about 122 pages. The audiobook runs about 2h 41m.

Can I read some of it first?

Yes. The foreword and the whole introduction are on this site, free, with nothing to sign up for.

What languages is it in?

The books exist in five: English, German, Spanish, French and Dutch, each localised properly — its own illustrations with the labels drawn in that language, and its own country's institutions named in the text. This shop can sell you the English and the Spanish today; the other three are finished books waiting on their paperwork.

What does the complete set include?

All thirty guides in print, in one box, and the ebook and the audiobook of every one of them at no extra charge.

En español