Is early retirement a good idea? Not for your health

Instead of chasing elusive goals, make fundamental changes in your outlook and the way you lead daily life

- Pavan Soni

You often come across people saying, "I want to retire by 40." But how many people who have actually retired at 40 have you come across? I haven't met one yet. Early retirement remains a mirage.

I have, however, sadly, known many people to suffer from hypertension, heart ailments and other lifestyle diseases before they turned 40. Why have we sold ourselves this chase of excess?

So, here's a call to slow down. There's almost nothing you can't achieve by slowing down.

Thanks to advancements in medical science and agricultural productivity, we are enjoying the highest lifespan in the history of humankind, but the question remains: Are we making it count? Are we willing to reset our work cadence knowing well that most of us would be celebrating our 75th birthday, albeit by ourselves? A long life is a blessing only if one knows how to design it well. What's the point in being a CEO by 45 and then dragging an ailing body for another 30 years? Yet scores of professionals are running a marathon at the pace of a sprint, exhausted but never realizing that it's not even a race.