Is it? I know people who are really happy without doing much in their retirement. Probably because they weren't workaholics.
To my mind, if one doesn't have hobbies during the working years, then they will struggle to find purpose when they retite.
You don't have to find purpose when you retire
At all.
Instead, you just have to be willing to face each day when the day has no expectations. You can do anything you want, and decide you love it, hate it, whatever. You can do it again the next day, or not. you can hate it one day and love it the next. It's completely up to you.
For some people, this lack of structure is crushing. For others, it's liberating.
It's similar to having spent significant time alone as an adult - some people can't deal with it, some can.
I meet a lot of people who are like "I haven't figured out what i will do when i retire". These are the people i worry about, because there isn't anything to figure out. They want a structure that probably won't exist. They will likely tire of trying to force their own structure on it, and seek structure elsewhere (IE work).
In the past 3 weeks i've done the following:
Building powered paper airplanes with the kids
Mentoring high school and college students
Advising startups.
Woodworking
Hacking on CNC machines
Hacking on minecraft mods.
Hacking on compilers.
Playing video games.
and a lot more.
The next 3 weeks may be the same or different, depending on lots of things (mood, energy, schedules).
There are also days i do nothing cool or useful at all, and feel great (and unapologetic - nobody gets to judge my retirement but me, my spouse, and my kids :P) about it
The world is really big, and has lots to do. You just have to be able to drive yourself because you aren't being forced into doing anything at all.
In the end - for some i also feel it's similar to divorce - lots of people don't get divorced because they don't want to deal with being alone.
Retirement similarly forces you to spend a lot of time with yourself (even if you have an SO and even if they are retired). Lots of people don't like that, at all, for various reasons. Work lets them ignore it.
I wonder if this was the LOL[1] days - looking back on it, it's hard to believe how much people outside the org cared about the name, and us trying to not take ourselves too seriously.
[1] For everyone else, at one point we named the org Languages, Optimizations, and Libraries. People either loved or hated it.
I am saving up to retire early. If I mention this to friends, most look at me with big eyes and ask “But what will you spend your day on then!?” in a sceptical tone.
I imagine they think I want to drink beers and play golf all day every day, or something like that.
I’m a bit heart broken, that so many of my friends cannot imagine being masters of their own time, without thinking it would be bad for them and/or unproductive.
They seem relieved when I explain it’s more of the perpetual weekend I’m aiming for: sleeping till I wake, reading, cooking, hanging with friends and family, coding on my FOSS projects etc.
As a developer if, let's say, AI does make my profession no longer a viable option monetarily, what would happen if my entire identity is tied to it?
You cannot fully control your career no matter what. Many external factors can affect it and you deeply if that's your identity.
What if you can't even teach after retiring because nobody else cares about it?
For me it's about risk/reward and unfortunately in our current system the fact that all my efforts reward someone else disproportionately more completely taints it.