When Russ Schmidt was about 12, he was helping out on his family's farm in rural Kansas when his father looked at him and said, "You're not worth anything if you're not working."

Those words fixed themselves in Schmidt's brain. Decades later — at age 66 — they still have a hold on him.

"I was, I am, a really good employee," he says. Through his two careers in San Francisco, first as an administrator and then as a nurse for 20-odd years, he often did more than what his job required. "I see something that needs to be done, I do it," he says. He rarely took time off, so before he could officially retire in February 2023, he had to use the four months of vacation time he had accrued.

The change of pace of retirement was rough. His life became a cycle of alternating between bed and couch, eating and watching Netflix. He told himself he needed rest and recuperation — "but at some point," he says, "I realized this is settling into depression." After six months, Schmidt found a job working at a sexual-health clinic for two days a week.

When we think of retirement, we often think of endless leisure and zero responsibility. You might imagine yourself relaxing poolside with a book, strolling through a golf course, or binge-watching TV shows. In fact, many retirees live like this. The 2023 American Time Use Survey found that adults between 65 and 74 spent, on average, almost seven hours a day on leisure and sports, with four of those hours spent watching TV. Adults 25 to 54, on the other hand, averaged about four hours of leisure time and about two hours watching TV.

Spending your twilight years lying around might sound ideal — after all, everyone deserves a chance to relax after decades of working. But research suggests a life of pure leisure doesn't make you happier or healthier. About a third of American adults have said they struggled in transitioning to a life without work, and sedentary lifestyles are associated with earlier death. People are living about 15 years longer than they did a hundred years ago, which means we have many more years to spend in retirement. While there's much hand-wringing over how to save up enough money to enjoy those work-free years, much less discussed is how we should spend those years. More and more research is finding that both physical and social activity are crucial for well-being in old age — they keep people happier and living longer.

But that's not what most people are doing. Americans are doing retirement all wrong.

The concept of retirement as we know it came from German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who in 1889 designed a social insurance program compelling the government to care for people who couldn't work because of age or disability. When Social Security was established in the US in 1935, the retirement age was set at 65, though the average life expectancy was about 60 years. The norm was for people to work until they could not work anymore. Today the average life expectancy is about 77, and the age you can start receiving full Social Security benefits is either 66 or 67, depending on when you were born. We're working longer and living longer.

That has created two problems: People need to figure out how to pay for a longer retirement and how to spend their time. Anqi Chen, a senior research economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, says people are addressing both by simply working longer. Researchers, she says, have seen more people claim Social Security while they're still earning an income — something that used to be typical only of retirees. Of Americans 65 and older, nearly 11 million, or about 19%, are employed, and that number is projected to rise to nearly 15 million by 2032. Twenty years ago, just under 5 million Americans over 65 were employed.

Schmidt straddles these scenarios. Before retirement, he changed jobs too often to properly build up a pension — something he didn't realize until it was too late. Now finances are tight. "In that sense, retirement has been a letdown and a struggle," he says. He and his husband, who hasn't yet retired, have watched their savings dip even as Schmidt contributes through his part-time work.

Dee Cascio, a counselor and retirement coach in Sterling, Virginia, says the growing urge to work in retirement points to a larger issue: Work fulfills a lot of needs that people don't know how to get elsewhere, including relationships, learning, identity, direction, stability, and a sense of order. The structure that work provides is hard to move away from, says Cascio, who is 78 and still practicing. "People think that this transition is a piece of cake, and it's not," she says. "It can feel like jumping off a cliff."

In an online survey conducted early this year by Mass Mutual, a majority of retirees said they'd become less stressed and more relaxed upon retirement, but as many as a third reported that they'd become unhappier. Research from the Health and Retirement Study from the University of Michigan suggests that some of the negative effects people can experience in retirement are tied to lifestyle changes such as being less active and social in the absence of work.

For some, the solution is to never give up work. Schmidt feels that even if there had been no need for him to make money after retiring, he still would've sought out a part-time job. With it, "I don't feel useless," he says. "I do work that feels like I'm really giving something to the community."

But returning to your old line of work is hardly the only way to stay emotionally and intellectually fulfilled in retirement.

The idea that our personal worth is determined by how hard we work and how much money we make is deeply embedded in US work culture. This "Protestant work ethic" puts the responsibility of attaining a good quality of life and well-being on the worker — if you don't have the time or resources for leisure, it's because you haven't earned it. Or as Schmidt's father put it, "You're not worth anything if you're not working." This pernicious way of thinking prevents people from seeing purpose or value in life that doesn't involve working for a paycheck.

Meanwhile, more and more research suggests that a sense of purpose is a vital factor for health and happiness, especially in older age. "Higher purpose in life is associated with reduced risk of heart attacks and strokes," says Eric Kim, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia. For adults older than 50, it's also associated with better grip strength and faster walking speed, better overall health, healthier habits, less loneliness, and a lower risk of depression.

So what does purpose outside a career look like? Paul Draper thinks he's figured it out.

In August 2023, six months before he was set to retire from his job as an enterprise-software product manager, Draper, now 68, made a plan. He liked his job and felt satisfied leaving it behind, but he recognized he still had a lot of energy and wanted to learn new things and meet new people. He was already involved in volunteering — doing prison ministry and working with soup kitchens — but more than that, "I was interested in doing things that I didn't know anything about," he says.

Draper's first thought was to work at a hardware store. He was somewhat handy but wanted to learn more about home repair. So he did. He got a part-time job at his local big-box hardware store handling doors, windows, and staircases. "That was great," he says, "because all of a sudden I had to learn a lot" to be able to answer customers' questions and solve their problems.

The job was never meant to be a forever thing. After 10 months, it began to feel more monotonous and less like a learning opportunity, so Draper decided to move on. He plans to replicate that experience and pursue other areas of work he's fascinated by. "There's a company in my area that builds continuous transmissions for bicycles and e-bikes," he says. "I just want to intern there." His dream role, however, is to lead city tours on Segways.

Since Draper isn't worried about needing an income, he can focus on learning. "There are a million fun things to do, but 99% of them are unsustainable to do as a career," he says. He views retirement as his opportunity to experiment with that 99% without worrying about achievement, a career, and the general hustle. Plus, he says it's been fairly easy to find these gigs. "I have found that there's a lot of employers that love retirees," he says. "One, because they're good with people. Two, because they're very reliable for the time that they have them, and they're calm, and they work well with other employees."

Cascio has found that when helping clients bring purpose back into their lives in retirement, it can help to think about the "six arenas of life": work, relationships, leisure, personal growth, finances, and health. A lot of people have drawn their sense of purpose or identity from work, and they might want to continue doing so through jobs or volunteering in retirement, she says. But any of these arenas can be a source of purpose. "If you haven't attended to your health and that's something you want to improve in retirement, that can become a purpose," she says.

Some activities can provide purpose in several of those areas. Draper's various odd jobs mean that he's more physically active than he would be if he stayed at home, and he's constantly meeting new people. "I've heard of people's circles closing up, but I'm finding I interact with more people, and on a regular basis," he says. Both greater social interaction and increased physical activity are associated with happier and healthier aging.

Kim says retirees who aren't exercising, socializing, or pursuing a sense of purpose may have self-limiting beliefs and pessimistic views of aging. "I've met people who will say, 'I'm X years old, and people who are this age don't really exercise anymore,'" regardless of whether their bodies are capable, he says. Sometimes older adults have to first overcome the idea that because they are older they are limited. A well-known 2002 study — and much follow-up research — found that people with more positive views of aging lived longer than those with more negative views. Kim says it can be tough to surmount those limiting beliefs, especially in a society where aging is seen as something to be avoided. In reality, there's no expiration date for finding new sources of fulfillment.

Of course, some people are perfectly happy with a leisure-filled retirement. "If you're only golfing and watching TV and you don't feel like there's anything missing in your life, you're completely happy, then I wouldn't go and say there is a psychological reason why you need to go and volunteer for a cause you care about," says Yochai Shavit, the director of research at the Stanford Center on Longevity. If you live a life of leisure but are still bored, or if you're ignoring a sense of discontentment, that's when the trouble starts. "The risk I see is that people brush aside those feelings," he says.

There's no "one size fits all" formula to retirement, but experts like Shavit hope that more people approach retirement with the understanding that they still have the ability — and often the time — to find meaning and fulfillment. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that "boredom is a 'natural' part of retirement and having aches, both internally and physically, is just a part of growing old," Shavit says. They're not, and they don't have to be.

Hannah Seo is a Korean-Canadian journalist based in Brooklyn, New York, who writes about health, climate, and social science.