Yet, when she opened her calendar to see how her actual days were unfolding, she discovered a stark disconnect. Coaching tasks had quietly colonized most of her week, pushing her carefully curated priorities to the periphery. As someone who makes a living coaching other women through the exact same retirement transition, the irony was not lost on her.
Belansky, who retired from a university career last year and transitioned into coaching, is far from alone in this experience. Many women find themselves wrestling with the same paradox. They can effortlessly rattle off a list of things they love, only to watch their weekly schedules bear zero resemblance to it. For others, the challenge runs even deeper. When well-meaning friends advise them to pay attention to what brings them joy, they search their minds and come up entirely empty.
This gap manifests differently depending on where a person stands in life. For those still tethered to a traditional job, the disconnect often surfaces when colleagues or family members ask the inevitable question: What will you do with yourself once you retire? For those who have already crossed the threshold into retirement, the reality check arrives quietly during a morning coffee ritual, while scrolling aimlessly through a smartphone and wondering how to fill the empty hours stretching ahead.
According to Belansky, the answers are rarely found by staring anxiously into an abstract future. Instead, they hide in plain sight within the framework of a week already lived. A real, tangible week serves as a diagnostic tool, revealing two crucial pieces of information: what activities genuinely bring a sense of joy, and what invisible obstacles keep those activities from fitting into daily life.
What Was Crowding Out My List
Stepping away from her university position last year, Belansky chose to make retirement coaching an integral part of her next chapter. She genuinely loves the work, and her conversations with clients rightfully hold a top spot on her personal list of priorities. The problem, she soon realized, was not the coaching itself, but the endless administrative tinkering that orbited around those conversations.
Without the strict boundaries of a traditional 9-to-5 job, minor tasks began to expand to fill all available space. Belansky found herself rewriting a newsletter for the twentieth time, tweaking a blog post, endlessly adjusting her website layout, polishing a free guide, and then hunting for yet another digital detail to improve.
The tipping point arrived on the same day she made her priority list. Looking at her overwhelmed schedule, she wrote a revealing sentence in her journal regarding her burgeoning business: "I’m constantly finding ways to improve and it’s exhausting me." Without intending to, she had allowed coaching-related tasks to consume the lion’s share of her retirement, leaving little to no room for art classes, social gatherings, or quiet walks in nature.
What One Good Day Showed Me
A couple of days after that journal entry, Belansky experienced a day that felt entirely aligned with her values. Recognizing the shift, she immediately documented the sequence of events to pinpoint what she later termed "the recipe."
In chronological order, her ideal day unfolded with a relaxed morning coffee with a friend named Rosie, followed by a refreshing walk outside. Later, she carved out dedicated time for knitting and creative art projects. Only after these restorative activities were securely checked off did she sit down to write her newsletter.
The sequence was a revelation. Next to the newsletter entry in her journal, she emphasized the discovery with capitalized urgency: "And only then did I write a newsletter. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!!"
On a typical, frustrating day, the order was completely reversed. Coaching tasks and digital upkeep went in first, while the things she loved were squeezed into the margins of the evening—if they happened at all. Every single ingredient in her successful day was already present on her initial priority list. What changed was not the ingredients, but the sequence in which they were added. When coaching duties came first, they hijacked the entire day. When her personal joys came first, the administrative tasks naturally fell into a healthy proportion.
Your Answer Is in Your Last Week
Defining joy can often feel like trying to catch smoke with bare hands. Belansky looks to the definition offered by researcher and author Brené Brown, who describes joy as an intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation. It is a concept rooted in warmth and presence.
Because asking "What brings me joy?" in the abstract can paralyze the mind, Belansky suggests shifting the inquiry to the recent past. Asking oneself, "When did I feel that kind of joy last week, even for a few minutes?" yields much richer answers because the person was actually there to experience it. Once those moments of genuine connection or pleasure are identified, a second question naturally follows: What forces crowded out the time meant to be spent on them?
Whether an individual is still navigating the final years of a career or settling into the quiet routines of established retirement, reviewing the cadence of the previous week offers a reliable mirror. Even seemingly minor occurrences—a spontaneous phone call with an old friend or a quiet walk around the block—hold significant data about what truly matters to an individual.
What I’m Doing About My Own Weeks
Reflecting on her journey while finishing an article from an Irish pub while her husband watched a football match, Belansky acknowledged that old habits die hard. Even on vacation, work habits attempted to creep in. Yet, by consciously recognizing the pull of overwork, she is actively redesigning her return home.
Her first week back is heavily booked with client sessions—a fact she welcomes—but she is intentionally carving out calendar blocks for art lessons, gym visits, hiking excursions, a newly joined women’s group, and unhurried time with friends. To maintain this fragile balance, she occasionally relies on a simple evening checklist to structure the following day, ensuring that joy remains a non-negotiable appointment rather than an afterthought.
Ultimately, designing a fulfilling retirement does not require having a master plan mapped out years in advance. It begins simply by paying attention to what already feels right in daily life, observing the sequence of days that feel most harmonious, and making deliberate space for the things that matter most.
