TRY · 10 MIN
Tuesday Without Work
TAIU
The week after work, hour by hour, before it arrives.
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Tool 74 · Develop yourself
When work stops organising the week, what takes its place?
Retirement is not simply having more free time.
A guided 18 to 22 minute conversation using ChatGPT. Free, no account, nothing to sign up to.
01
Copy
Take the TAIU prompt.
02
Paste
Open ChatGPT.
03
Talk
One question at a time.
Copies the TAIU prompt. Paste it into ChatGPT.
You don't need ChatGPT Plus. The free version is fine.
Do you want to stop working, or stop doing the work you're doing now?
Free time is not a plan for a Tuesday morning.
Wanting to keep working is a legitimate answer.
What you'll explore
- 01What work gives you
- 02The Tuesday morning
- 03People and usefulness
- 04Stop or change
A note from Mark
I don't think retirement has to mean stopping.
For some people it will. For others it might mean different work, fewer days, mentoring, building something, family, travel or simply having more control.
What interests me is what work currently provides beyond income.
If you remove it, what do you genuinely want to keep?
What you'll get
You won't finish with a personality type.You'll leave with answers you can actually test.
01
What work supplies
02
What would vanish
03
Stop or change
04
What to test
+
Your TAIU handover — a portable summary of everything the conversation established.
See everything included ↓
- 01What you are looking forward to
- 02What you will not miss
- 03What work currently gives you beyond money
- 04Which of those would disappear
- 05The ordinary tuesday morning
- 06Where people would come from
- 07Where usefulness would come from
- 08Stopping or changing
- 09The rival reading
- 10What deserves protecting
- 11What deserves testing first
- 12Where this goes next
What now?
01 · Save it
What work currently supplies.
02 · Test it
Take a fortnight of the new week and see what you do with the mornings.
Explore this further ↓
What I would do
- 01
List what work supplies beyond income, honestly.
- 02
Describe an ordinary Tuesday morning in the new version.
- 03
Name where regular people would come from.
- 04
Name where responsibility would come from.
- 05
Test a reduced version before committing to the full one.
Test it
- 01
What does work give you beyond money?
- 02
What would you do on an ordinary Tuesday morning?
- 03
Do you want to stop, or work differently?
The alternative
The usual reading is that the choice is working or retiring. Often the honest answer is fewer days, different work, mentoring, project work, volunteering or more control, and full stopping was never the thing wanted. The reverse also happens. Somebody insists on continuing because they cannot picture themselves without the role, and the reluctance is about identity rather than the work.
Think about this
- What you are most looking forward to.
- What you genuinely will not miss.
- What work gives you beyond money.
- Which of those would disappear with it.
- Whether you want to stop, or to work differently.
Take this to Ask Mark
You've done the exercise. Now challenge what came back.
Interpretation, not another copy-and-paste exercise.
Take this to Ask Mark →Want to go further?
READ · GUIDE
Plan your retirement income
GOV.UK
The financial half of leaving work, which people usually do before the harder half.
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Midlife MOT
MoneyHelper
Free, government backed, and covers the three things that actually decide the next twenty years.
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Recommended by the TAIU community
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Finished the exercise?
What did this uncover?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Next tool
What am I still curious about?
If the week needs something in it
Further thinking
A Theory of Work Role Transitions
Nigel Nicholson
Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes
William Bridges
Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People's Relations to Their Work
Amy Wrzesniewski and colleagues
Explore the thinking ↓
Article
A Theory of Work Role Transitions
Nigel Nicholson
Nicholson sets out when a person adjusts to a new role and when they reshape the role instead. Useful for working out which kind of move you are actually capable of making.
Book
Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes
William Bridges
Bridges separates change, which is the external event, from transition, which is the slower internal business of letting go of who you were while it happens. His most useful claim is that the empty middle stretch is not a failure to move on. It is the part of the process where the next thing actually gets worked out, and rushing it usually produces a decision you reverse later.
Article
Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People's Relations to Their Work
Amy Wrzesniewski and colleagues
The study that found people in identical roles describe their work as a job, a career or a calling in roughly equal thirds. None of the three is the correct answer.
Book
The Generative Society
Dan McAdams and Ed de St Aubin
McAdams has spent a career on generativity, the concern for establishing and guiding the next generation. His work shows it is not confined to parents and not confined to later life, and that people who have it tend to tell a particular kind of story about themselves. Useful for locating contribution you already make and have never counted.
Article
Successful Aging
John Rowe and Robert Kahn
Separates ordinary ageing from disease and from disuse. The competing criticism, that it sets an unfair standard for people with illness or disability, is worth carrying with it.