Retirement: An occupational transition with consequences for temporality, balance and meaning of occupations

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The aim of this study was to explore retirement as an occupational transition. Twenty‐nine participants aged 66 years were interviewed and the data analysed using a comparative qualitative method. The analysis showed that a new temporal structure developed where the participants were gliding into a slower rhythm. Some occupations also changed meaning when they were performed in the new circumstances of retirement. A common pattern in the transition was to go from one imbalance, where work took too much time in life, to another type of imbalance where some kind of regular commitment within retirement would have been preferable. The discussion relates the findings concerning meaning and rhythm to concepts in dynamic systems theory. The importance of regular commitments in life for experience of occupational balance and the changing perspective of the future are also discussed.

This publication has 27 references indexed in Scilit: