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Have you ever noticed that it doesn’t cross most people’s mind to think of retirement before it is almost or too late? For majority of people, retirement is always a far away destination, to be arrived at one day in the distant future. And so, they fail to give any thought to it.

And it’s true. Retirement is a distant destination. But because we are always moving towards it each new day, most people tend to arrive at that far away destination without being conscious of how close they are to it.

They just wake up one morning and discover that they are only a few kilometres to the Great Retirement City that comprises two distinguished classes of citizens: those who prepare for it and those who don’t.

By the way, what is retirement?

According to one dictionary, it’s to stop performing one’s work or to withdraw from one’s position; to withdraw from active participation.

Retirement is to pull back or move away or backward from what you used to be actively engaged in on a day-to-day basis.

For example, if you are a salaried worker, there will come a time when your employer will consider you too old to do the job you’re being paid for. When that time comes, you’ll be told to withdraw your services. You’ll be retired.

Or, you may be the owner of your business. As you continue to operate it, age will be catching up with you. What you had strength to do yesterday will be a struggle today. Slowly but steadily, you are heading towards the Great Retirement City. These are facts of life.

The puzzling thing is, if it is so obvious that retirement is an inevitable outcome, something that no one can escape from, why is it that little or no time is spared to plan for it? Why is it never considered by most people until it is almost too late?

There will be more than one answer to that question. But the one that strikes me as most likely is that most people are too preoccupied with the challenges of living from day-to-day that they just cannot afford to spare time to think about something that is still far away down the road.

This is why most people arrive at the Great Retirement City —  a tragedy waiting to happen! They have battled life all the way, struggling to eke out their living and only barely succeeding at the daunting task; so that when they finally retire or are fired, they’re thrown into retirement without any preparation for it.

This should not be so and this series that I’ve titled Guide to Retirement Before You Are Tired Or Fired! is designed to help you overcome this challenge.

Am I qualified to be your guide?

Here are my credentials. At 59, I’m a semi-retiree by choice. I’m just one bus stop away from full retirement. I was 32 years old when I started to plan actively for this phase of my life.

When I started out, my goal was not to plan for my retirement per se. I mean, I didn’t get up from bed that morning in February 1983 and said, “Okay, from today, I’ll start planning for my retirement.” No. Rather, on reporting for work on my first day at The Guardian newspaper as the pioneer sports editor, I asked myself an important question: What next?

The question was important because of two reasons. First, because I had determined that my journalism career would start and end with sports reporting, my appointment as the sports editor of The Guardian newspaper meant that I had reached the top of my career.

And since I knew I could never remain a sports editor of The Guardian forever, the question, what next?, was critical.

Second, based on the knowledge I gleaned from the motivational books I’d read previously, I understood the importance of asking powerful questions such as what next? When a question like this is asked and a serious attempt is made to provide the right answer for it, it usually leads the questioner to opportunities that may never have occurred to that person.

That was exactly what asking this question at this point in time did for me. All of a sudden, it dawned on me that whether it’s in a few days time or a few years time, if I didn’t have a plan mapped out about what I’ll do next when it becomes compulsory for me to leave that office, I would be stranded.

The very thought that I could be stranded, and my desire to avoid it at all costs, propelled me to start thinking seriously about what I could do if and when I leave the sports desk of the The Guardian newspaper.

Ancillary to this thinking was this other thought that if one clocked 40 and one had not found his feet, one may never do so again. I know better today. You could be fifty and still be struggling and, just about then, if you could somehow rouse the giant within you that had been sleeping, then you could still make the most of the remaining days that are allotted to you to live on planet earth.

But this was something I learnt in later years. As at February 1983, with less than eight years left for me to clock 40, I was disturbed that I hadn’t many years left before I reached that milestone. And this made me to be even more determined to do something about the situation.

That thought hung around me all through the rest of that year. One Saturday in December 1983, my wfe and I paid a visit to my Big Uncle, Bishop George Amu, at his Opebi home in Lagos. As we were about to leave, I saw some books and two titles caught my attention.

One of them was Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill while the other one was Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude co-authored by Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone. I picked up the books and asked our host if I could have them. Without hesitating, he said, “Yes!”

As it turned out, those two books contained the answer to my question, what next? The answer I got from the books led me into entrepreneurship. It led me to starting our sports publishing business in 1984. And, as they say, the rest is history.

Just as I hinted earlier, the answer to my what next? question didn’t lead me directly to the present semi-retirement phase of my life. But it was instrumental to my being in a position to enjoy the freedom that I do today.

After ten years of running our publishing business, and GOD had so favoured us to see that the business survived, the thought of what I would retire into started to cross my mind.

I actually started to think about it in 1993. But by the end of 1994, I had a clear plan in place. The plan was to establish an NGO  which would give me the opportunity to do exactly what I’m doing presently: coaching other Nigerians, especially the youths, to discover their potentials and maximize them.

The transition from being actively engaged in running my business to devoting my time to running a non-profit NGO was a deliberate choice: carefully planned and well executed, with the Spirit of GOD guiding me all the way.

Our publishing business is running at full steam –– thanks to a sound, creative and innovative management team led by the Group Managing Director, Alhaji Mumini Alao –– and the NGO, Success Attitude Development Centre [SADC], publishers of SuccessDigest Extra!, is breaking new grounds every year.

Talk of living one’s dream; that is my story today. I’m following the exact script I had written for myself in line with GOD’s purpose for my life. When you locate where GOD wants you to be, He will take you there.

As a semi-retiree, I’m having the best of two worlds. I’m taking life easy while deriving tremendous satisfaction from doing what I’m so passionate about, helping others, without any stress. That can be your story too.

By trusting in GOD, planning carefully and having the discipline to execute your plans, you’ll not only retire gloriously when the time comes, you will also be looking forward to it with joy instead of  being scared of its imminent arrival.

Next week: Why Planning For Retirement Is Important.