I have spent most of my adult life believing there wasn’t enough time, and it made me rush through everything - meals, conversations, errands and, too often, time with my family. This constant feeling of “time poverty” is one of the “thickets” that gets in my way of Doing Sixty. Throughout my sixties I’ve practiced slowing down. I’m making progress, but this is a challenge I face every day.

As I wrote in this piece, Seneca had it right two thousand years ago: it’s not the amount of time you have, it’s how you use it. Now, when I catch myself antsy for something to end - a boring meeting, a long line, a slow drive - I try to look for the richness in the moment. (It’s always there.) Sometimes I even think about how lucky I am to be bored, given the alternative of not being alive to enjoy it.

The bonus years of our sixties are supposed to be the years where we finally slow down enough to notice them. I’m working on it. How about you?

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Those of us now in our sixties grew up in a world that was constantly improving. We were all riding a rocket ship of progress together. The world got better every year, and we assumed it always would.

And now it feels like it is all unraveling. Repressive governments and ideologies are on the rise. Climate fears, AI dangers, extremism … all threaten the foundations of the world.

I obsess over this more than I should, and so do most of my friends. (Do you?) This obsession often distracts me from what I really want to be doing: Enjoying the moments of my life.

So what do we do?

Know what’s going on, and, when possible, do what you can to make the world a better place. And still, prioritize living your sixties with joy and attention.

Sure, easier said than done. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “how can I enjoy myself when the world we are leaving to our kids and grandkids will be so much tougher for them than it was for us?”

But that trap is not productive. Even if you become an activist to address one of the challenges we face, you can still have time to enjoy your life. Compartmentalize. Keep things in perspective. Do Sixty.

It’s like writing poetry in a hurricane. Seek shelter from the weather, and stay safe. But be sure to embrace what it means to be human as you live this very special phase of life, your sixties, your bonus years.

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This past Wednesday through Sunday were a perfect opportunity to practice this. Arna and I were with our three grandchildren. I rolled around on the floor. I played the games they wanted to play. I now know more about Pokémon than any sixty-something needs to know.

Sure, I reached for my phone a few too many times. But mostly I pushed the rest of the world aside and stayed with the joy in front of me.

There was a list of things I meant to get done over the last five days. and I completed very few of those tasks. Fine. Wonderful. I’ll either catch up on those things over the next few days, or I won’t. But whatever happens to that list, it’s nothing compared to the experience I had with my grandkids.

Do you ever have trouble turning off the productivity spigot, after so many years of working hard to build your life? When are you best able to turn it off? Any tips you can share?

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We all understand that our bodies change as we age, but his comment got me thinking. How am I viewing the new aches and pains of aging? Do I see them as part of a general decline? Am I accepting them, or am I resisting them? Am I doing anything, when possible, to mitigate the decline, or at least slow it down?

I called this subscriber. I wanted to hear more.

He told me about a rough bout of COVID five years ago that left him with a blood clot in his leg, a clot that outlasted the main COVID symptoms and took a few months of blood thinners to finally clear. “But,” he said, “even after the clot cleared I had limited circulation, and that leg would get fatigued pretty quickly.”

Then, just a few months ago, a routine scan turned up something neither he or his doctor expected: his leg had grown a new collateral vein to bypass the blockage. “I realized that my left leg hadn’t been fatigued as I’ve been walking and exercising lately,” he told me. “My leg’s not back to 100%, but it’s a lot better than it was two years ago.”

I can’t stop thinking about that. Our bodies, it turns out, don’t always just accept damage. Sometimes they compensate. They adapt. They grow something new to make up for what was lost.

We can’t count on our bodies to do this every time — a new vein or some other deus ex machina surprise from our bodies isn’t guaranteed for every injury life throws at us as we age. But the idea of the new vein is worth holding onto. What if we treated it as a model, not just a medical curiosity? What if, when we lose some capability, our job is to ask: what’s my equivalent of the new vein? What can I build — with my mind, my habits, my intention — to compensate for what’s slipping?

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There are many things you can do in these situations, beyond what your body does:

Intentionally work to improve situations

As part of my exercise/fitness practice, I’ve always worked on maintaining good range of motion and balance. I’m continually focused on how well my body moves and balances. But over the past few months I’ve noticed that my range of motion was a bit more limited, and I didn’t seem as sturdy when I tried to balance.

That concerned me, so I started focusing on regaining my range of motion and balance. I resurrected some of my old practices and moves, and brought back more yoga into my exercise rotation. I’m not back to 100% - yet - but I’m feeling much better.

Unlike the subscriber’s new vein, my body is only going to improve physically in this situation if I work, with intention, on making those improvements.

What can you do to “win back” some of the territory you’ve ceded to aging?

Use an adaptive mindset

A friend of mine has an autoimmune disease that causes him chronic pain. Last year he did a month-long pain program at the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab in Chicago, one of the best physical rehab centers in the country.

This program uses no pharmaceuticals. It’s all about mindset and movement. My friend had already learned, over the years, to live with his pain, but this program gave him tools to adapt and work within the pain to reduce his discomfort. Now when he gets a pain flare-up he has a set of things he can do to work through it.

Another good example of adapting to a chronic health issue is my brother Phil, who is now 66 and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis twenty years ago. At every point, Phil’s strategy has been to adapt, not to surrender. He can’t run marathons anymore, but he walks as much as he can. He’s traded in his bicycle for an ebike. And, most importantly, he refuses to feel sorry for himself.

Whether it’s physical or emotional pain, there are things we can do to make it easier to live with these challenges. Adapting to new situations is one of the secrets to human survival - what can you do to adapt to the new aches, pains and limitations that you will confront as your age?

Focus on what you do well

It’s not all downhill. There are some things you can do better now than you could when you were younger. As some capabilities degrade, lean on your strengths.

One good example is your brain. “What?” you ask. “Aren’t ‘senior moments’ an expected part of a likely cognitive decline.”

Sure, most of us will start to notice, at some point, a loss of mental acuity. And we likely envy the fluid mental quickness of the young, who can pick things up so fast. But by our sixties we have developed a kind of wisdom that the young should envy, as I wrote in my piece on the role of wisdom as Do Sixty.

The wisdom of age and experience is a super power. How can you use this wisdom, every day?

Whenever you encounter a new ache or pain, see if you can make any improvements. If you can’t, work to adapt to this new normal. And focus on the things you can still do well … or can now do better than ever.

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No doubt you will change your activities as you get older. You might start taking more elevators, climbing stairs less. You might trade in your tennis racket for a pickle ball paddle. You might move to a one-story house or apartment. Those kinds of things are to be expected. You will definitely discover new limitations as you get older.

Your challenge, using the three strategies listed above, is to limit those limitations as much as you can. Don’t expect to be defeated. But do set the expectation for yourself that you will deal with every new ache and pain intentionally.

One more thought … be careful of fitness trackers. Yes, they can be very helpful, but don’t rely on the tracker alone to tell you how you are doing. Feel your body directly. The tracker’s screen and data will give you some useful information, but that information should be supplemental to how you feel. Do you feel rested after sleep? Do you feel strong in your exercise? Can you hear people talking at a party? Can you go up the stairs without being winded?

So much of this is up to you. You can reduce many of the effects of the inevitable decline that comes with aging … not all, but many. We humans are wired to compensate and adapt, physically, mentally, emotionally and socially. Use that power, and today’s new normal doesn’t have to be that different from yesterday’s.

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The result? I still have almost no idea how Houston fits together.

It’s not because I have a poor sense of direction. I simply never used it during my trips to Houston.

Understanding the geography of Houston is not a major priority in my life, so no big loss. But there is a deeper lesson in this story.

Way-finding is wired into human biology, because our ancestors’ survival depended on this skill for the millions of years we were evolving. If we stop doing things our brains evolved to do, what happens to us? What other essentially-human activities might we be delegating to technology? And when we do this, are we giving up a piece of what makes us human?

Researchers have found that automation often encourages people to pay less attention. When a machine takes over part of the work, our minds naturally disengage. Cruise control offers one small example - a January, 2025 study showed that drivers using standard cruise control had 12% more accidents than drivers not using cruise control.

This lesson is important for us in our sixties. Our sixties are an opportunity to live the lives we’ve created for ourselves after many decades of hard work. This opportunity allows us to savor the experiences of being human and to immerse ourselves in the wonders of the world around us.

Yet we are constantly lured into putting much of our lives on cruise control. As social media algorithms tell us how we should think, and AIs tell us what we should write, it is tempting to give up the very human tasks of thinking and expressing ourselves, because it’s easier to let a piece of technology do the work for us.

Be careful not to sacrifice your humanity for the lure of technology.

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Writing is a prime example, for me and for most everyone I know. I use AI to help edit my work, and it’s an effective tool for brainstorming ideas - two tasks that other living human beings have been helping me with for as long as I’ve been writing, way before the introduction of AI. But I don’t let Claude write my articles, just like I would never let another person ghostwrite for me, because developing ideas and expressing those ideas in words is one of the activities that makes me feel the most alive. It’s tempting … Claude could write this article in a fraction of the time I could. But then I would miss out on the experience of writing. The time I spend writing is not wasted time. It’s a critical part of the process.

As AIs become more intelligent, and develop more agency, the temptations to rely on them for basic thinking tasks will be great. The philosopher Micah Goodman speculates that in the not-too-distant future there will be fitness centers for the mind, to protect our brains from atrophying from less rigorous use, similar to how exercise culture came into being once technologies removed much of the physical labor from our lives. I suggest we keep our brains in top condition now, and resist this atrophy.

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Experiencing your sixties at this time in history, you are surrounded by technologies that earlier generations never had access to as they aged. These tools can provide you with many conveniences, but they can also sap your humanity if you let them. Your sixties are years to savor the moments of your life. With that in mind, here are some guidelines I suggest for Doing Sixty in the Age of AI:

Thinking

• If a task requires critical thinking or reasoning, use technology as a helper, not as a replacement for you. Engage directly in the kinds of activities where you use your massive brainpower. Not only will you enjoy yourself, you will reduce your need to workout at a future brain gym.

• Time-Saving Technologies Can Be Good, as long as you don’t give up thinking. It’s sensible to use GPS to plan your routes, or your phone to remember phone numbers and birthdays. But, be careful about giving up the chance to use your brain. Use a calculator for complex math problems, but do simpler calculations in your head. Ask AI to help organize your email inbox, but ensure that you are the intelligence that determines the right responses to those emails.

Creating

• You inherited the unrivaled power of human language. You have the ability to express yourself in ways that are special, and unique to you. When you have a chance to express yourself in words, make sure it is you, not a piece of technology, that is taking the lead.

Savoring

• Enjoy the moments, not just the milestones. As Cressida says in Act 1, Scene 2, of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, “Joy’s soul lies in the doing.” If the doing of the activity brings you joy, don’t delegate it. Do it, and love doing it.

• Don’t always try to save time: By your sixties, you have earned the right to be inefficient. Sometimes it’s better to drive a route that’s longer than the GPS recommends. Sometimes it’s more enjoyable to tinker and figure something out than to ask ChatGPT how to do it.

So the next time you are tempted to reach for your phone, or your favorite AI, ask yourself whether you’re giving up a bit of what makes you human just because it’s easier. Your sixties are a time to live the life you’ve created for yourself. Be intentional about what parts of your life you delegate to technology, and which parts you are in total control of.

I still don’t know my way around Houston. But next time I have a choice between the quick route and the interesting one — in a car, in a conversation, at a keyboard — I want to take the interesting one. That’s not inefficiency. That’s living my life.

The time we spend thinking isn’t the cost of living. It’s one of the reasons we’re alive.

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We are traveling with our friend Karyn and her husband Ezra. Karyn is always surrounded by interesting books, some written by other people, some written by her. That morning she had a small volume with her, a bookmark sticking out of it. The title caught my eye: Seneca, On the Shortness of Life.

I asked her if I could see the book, and over the next five minutes I had the eerie feeling that this Roman Stoic wrote this book 2000 years ago, just for me, just to find at this moment. I downloaded a copy and devoured the book over the next few days.

Seneca’s diagnosis

Seneca addressed On the Shortness of Life to his father-in-law, Paulinus, who held a very demanding job managing Rome’s grain supply. Paulinus was successful by every external measure, yet he was miserable because he kept sensing that life was running away from him. Throughout the book, Seneca describes other people who are in similar circumstances, all of whom feel that life isn’t long enough to make time for everything they want to do and accomplish.

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Seneca’s answer is not sympathetic or comforting. He says the problem is never the length of life. The problem is that most people don’t actually live their lives. People spend their years getting ready to live, arranging the conditions under which real life will finally begin, and eventually find themselves still in the middle of preparing to live their life when they recognize that they have entered their later years. They suddenly realize they have postponed freely living right up until there is limited time left to actually live. Here’s a passage from Chapter 1:

“Life is long enough to accomplish the most important tasks; we have plenty of time if we manage it properly … So, it’s not that we have a short life, but that we make it short, and it’s not that we lack time, but that we waste it. Just like great riches can be quickly squandered by a careless owner, but even a modest fortune can grow under the care of a wise guardian, our lives have great potential for those who know how to use them wisely.”

On the surface it may look like Seneca is telling us we need to be productive at every moment, but that is not his message. Seneca wasn’t telling us to get more done. He was telling us to be more alive. Seneca’s enemy wasn’t leisure. It was unconsciousness. Productivity is optional. Presence is not.

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In essence, Seneca is telling us that people give a lot of thought to living long, and less thought to living well.

Seneca had a particular contempt for how casually people treat the moments in their life compared to how they treat their money. In Chapter 3 he writes,

“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time, they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy.”

If someone were to ask you for a loan, you’d give it some serious thought before handing over any money. But if that same person asked you for an afternoon, you might agree even if that’s not what you want to be doing that day. Seneca is not asking us to fill every hour. He is asking us to be careful about surrendering our hours. Seneca encourages us to be intentional about how we live our lives.

Interestingly, one of the most common things I’ve heard from people I’ve talked to about Doing Sixty is that they are much more likely to say no to spending time with people they don’t really care about, and to spending time on things that don’t bring them joy.

Seneca’s target is not idleness; it’s misdirected busyness. Stop letting life trickle away unnoticed. He returns to this same theme in a sibling book — the very first of his Letters to Lucilius — where he writes:

“Gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands.”

Again, “save your time” does not mean “fill your calendar.” Sometimes the wisest use of an hour is to do nothing at all.

I know that one of my biggest challenges in practicing Doing Sixty has been slowing down, and jettisoning the feeling of constant “time poverty.” For decades I have felt like I don’t have enough time for everything I want to do, and this causes me to rush through every activity so I can get to the next one … which I will also rush through. In Chapter 7 of On the Shortness of Life Seneca writes:

“Everyone rushes his life and suffers from a yearning for the future and weariness of the present.”

Another moment where I felt Seneca was speaking directly to me.

We spend decades preparing for the future, rushing through our lives on our way there.

Constantly in the preparation trap, we say …

• When the kids are older…

• When I retire…

• When work slows down…

Then suddenly we are in our sixties. It’s time to stop rushing toward the next chapter, because we are already in it.

In Chapter 14 Seneca writes:

“Of all people, only those are at leisure who make time for philosophy; only they really live.”

“Philosophy” here doesn’t mean academic philosophy. For the Stoics it could include reflection, contemplation, paying attention or understanding life.

From our Doing Sixty perspective, Seneca’s “philosophy” could mean making space to think, to notice, to savor every moment with joy and intention, even when you are at leisure. Chill out with no regrets, but don’t chill out on autopilot … everything going on around you is amazing, and leisure is a perfect time to savor the wonders of life.

In On the Shortness of Life Seneca is often pretty critical of people who let their lives slip away from them. But Seneca’s admonishments didn’t make me feel bad about squandering portions of my life. I took Seneca’s guidance as a gift. It’s not how much time we have, or how much time we spend on something … it’s how we spend that time.

As I pondered this, I realized I already had this perspective in my consulting business. Many years ago I stopped billing by the hour, and started quoting project fees, for a simple reason: The value and ideas I provide to my clients are usually not a function of how much time I spend developing them. I’ve offered people multi-million dollar ideas during the first hour of speaking with them. When I immerse myself in an intellectual challenge, the ideas come quickly. It’s all about the quality of my thinking, which is not related to quantity. Why not live the rest of my life that way?

Sure, I want to live a long life. I would love to live past 100. But here in my sixties I want to take Seneca’s lessons and savor these bonus years, knowing that every moment is magical, if I consciously live it.

Since I discovered Seneca’s wisdom, this past week on vacation has been full of rich moments of life. The little bit of work I’ve had to do has been concentrated and powerful. The time I’ve spent with family and friends has been rich and rewarding. And I’ve also been playing a lot of jazz, thanks to my travel guitar and my Israeli friend and teacher, Daniel Weiss.

As I wrote in this article, If I had to sum up my approach to Doing Sixty in one sentence, it would be this: “I am cultivating a practice of living, not a practice of achieving.” Seneca provides us a path for doing just that. Doing Sixty is a verb, and Seneca’s advice shows us how to act.

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I pushed. I strived. And now, in my sixties, I want to stop pushing and striving.

So I’ve been rewriting my definition of achievement. The new version is measured in moments, not milestones. Here’s the list:

As I get into bed at night I want to measure the value of today not by how much I got done but by the quality of personal interactions I had with other people.

At any point in time I want to measure the quality of the last five minutes not by how productive I was, but by how calm I’ve been.

I want to walk along Lake Michigan’s shores without thinking about the opportunity cost of everything else I could be doing.

I want to enjoy a rainy day as much as a sunny day, because the world I live in is always amazing.

I want to enjoy the awe of learning something new, without worrying about all the things I don’t yet know about that subject.

I want to enjoy expressing myself through improvisation on my musical instrument without thinking about how far I still have to go to be a better player. And I want to practice the instrument not only because it will make me a better player - which it will - but because there is joy in the practice itself.

I want to enjoy every minute of a play without being distracted by what might be going on outside the theater.

I want to lose myself in laughter.

I want to lose myself in childish games with my grandchildren.

I want to lose track of where my phone is because I haven’t thought about it for the last hour and a half.

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This all seems so straightforward, but it’s difficult to break habits you’ve practiced for 40 years, especially when you can credit those habits for contributing to your success in life. So, we practice. Doing Sixty is not a state you achieve, it is an ongoing practice.

The good news: My practice is going really well. More and more, I find myself doing the “I want to” and less of the “I should.” The strive monster is losing his grip.

You may have habits that get in your way as you Do Sixty, and they may present you with different challenges than mine do. But we still face the same opportunity: Here in our sixties, we have the power and agency to live our lives with joy and intention.

As I wrote in a previous piece, if I had to sum up my approach to Doing Sixty in one sentence, I would say, “I am cultivating a practice of living, not a practice of achieving.”

After years of striving and aiming for the future, it’s now time to live the life I’ve created for myself. The achievement I want is moment to moment, not some point I will reach far into the future.

I think I’ve earned that right. And you have too.

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Doing Sixty is a verb.

It’s not about changing who you are — you are already wonderful. It’s about how you do the life you’ve created for yourself.

Think about that for a moment. You don’t need to make major changes in your life. You don’t need to create a new version of yourself. Instead, focus on inhabiting the life you already have — more fully, more intentionally, more joyfully than before. We spent decades building this life. Now comes the part where we actually live it.

You can be Doing Sixty right now, without delay, without striving, without any preparation. All you need to do is live this moment with joy and intention.

Do Sixty.

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For me, yesterday’s Doing Sixty experience could be called “Springfield to Springsteen.”

I started in Springfield, Illinois, leading a Ditch the Pitch workshop with the wonderful team at O’Shea Builders — helping them learn how to have relationship-building “conversations that matter” with their customers.

After 125 years, this company has built a powerful presence in central Illinois, and I find it deeply rewarding to help them take everything to the next level — one customer conversation at a time.

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The day ended at the United Center in Chicago with Bruce Springsteen — and my sister Sara.

A major Springsteen fan, this was Sara’s fourth concert this month and well over her 100th lifetime Springsteen show. After selling her company, the people there still sought out Sara’s advice — but they had to compete with her quilting, her travels with husband Bob, her role as “Chief of Staff” of our dad’s life, and a first grandchild arriving in May. Sara is totally Doing Sixty.

Springfield to Springsteen … Two completely different rooms. The rewards of Doing Sixty in both.

So I’ll ask you: Are you still working — and, if so, are you finding joy in it? Are you still going to concerts? Is music still part of your life? What does a great day Doing Sixty look like for you?

(If this is your first time here, check out Doing Sixty, Part 1: Your Sixties Are Your Bonus Years )

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As we get older we often envy the fluid mental capabilities of the young. They can pick things up so quickly.

But they aren’t smarter than us. Sure, when we were young our brains were able to do things that they can’t do as well now. But we also have a new kind of brain power that we didn’t have in our earlier decades. We are much wiser, and the brain power that comes with maturity puts us in a position to interpret our world effectively, and to guide our actions.

I would like to share a framework that I have developed for using my more-mature 67 year-old brain to sort through the avalanche of information - and disinformation - that bombards me every minute of every day.

I call this framework “Thoughtfulism.”

To understand this, consider the two meanings of the word “Thoughtful.”

First, Thinking Thoughtfully: A careful consideration of information, where you apply clear thinking when you assess a situation, instead of applying dogma or reflexively jumping to conclusions.

Second, Feeling Thoughtfully: Having empathy for others, for other people, for other things, or even for yourself, and taking actions that are beneficial to the objects of your empathy.

Thoughtfulism has become a guiding beacon for me all day, every day, as I Do Sixty. Am I being thoughtful in the sense that I am thinking clearly? Am I being thoughtful of the feelings and needs of people, including people I know, people throughout the world I’ve never met, and importantly, myself? By thinking thoughtfully and feeling thoughtfully as I encounter information and situations, I am in a better position to decide what I’m going to do, what I’m going to think, and how I’m going to feel.

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Thoughtfulism provides us a useful framework for being wise at this stage of life. When you are thinking thoughtfully you are thinking with clarity and focus, with nuance and intentionality. You are deliberate and flexible. You question your assumptions, and you hold your conclusions with humility. You are acting wise. When you are feeling thoughtfully, you are empathetic and considerate. You are acutely aware of your impact on the world, on other people, and on yourself. Your emotions are in sync with the world, with others, and with yourself.

Thinking and feeling are two actions you are engaged in at every moment throughout your day. Most of the time when you are stuck it’s because of how you are thinking or feeling. Think thoughtfully and feel thoughtfully, and you’ll be ready to savor the precious moments of your life here in your sixties. You’ll be less likely to self-broadcast fake news into your own mind, and you’ll also be less likely to let your emotions play tricks on you.

Let’s dig a bit deeper into the two modes of Thoughtfulism, thinking thoughtfully and feeling thoughtfully.

Thinking thoughtfully: The human brain, the most complex thing the universe has ever created, does not come with an owner’s manual. It’s hard to manage. Our brains did not evolve to give us the most rational, most accurate accounting of our surroundings - they developed to jump to quick conclusions, because mental shortcuts helped us either find food or avoid becoming another animal’s food. Being right wasn’t always the most important factor. Survival was.

The result of this? We often delude ourselves. We are certain we are correct when we have no solid reason to believe that.

We have many cognitive biases, which act as thickets that stand between us and fully living the moments of our life. Being able to recognize those biases, and have the humility to question our own judgement, helps us think more thoughtfully. In our sixties, we are well-equipped to use this kind of wisdom, if we choose to.

Daniel Kahneman taught us the difference between “Thinking fast and slow.” Fast thinking, which Kahneman calls “System 1,” is characterized by the quick cognitive and emotional responses to have, relying on our intuition and snap judgments. We couldn’t survive without System 1 thinking. We also need “System 2” thinking, which is slower, more deliberative and more rational. We need to be thoughtful when we think both fast and slow, because they both happen constantly. For System 1 thoughtfulism, question your snap judgements, and train your self to notice when a reflexive cognitive or emotional response may give you an unwarranted sense of certainty. With System 2 thoughtfulism, be careful to question to logic and pre-conceived biases you use as you come to conclusions. See every situation for the unique situation it is, using your vast life experience to evaluate it, but also resisting any mental templates or dogma that could cause you to deceive yourself.

Feeling thoughtfully: Just as our cognitive biases lead us to think things that are incorrect or misleading, we have emotional biases that can cause us to feel things about the world and about other people that can lead us astray.

We get mad at other people needlessly. We get mad at the world. We get mad at ourselves. We hold resentments. We are needlessly impatient. We are needlessly indignant. We are needlessly guilt-ridden. We manufacture anxieties.

Instead, be gentle. Be gentle with yourself, with the world, and with others. Feel thoughtfully. Part your emotional thickets, and you will be much better prepared to savor the moments of your life. Don’t let messy feelings get in your way.

Empathy is a key element of feeling thoughtfully. Your assessments of situations, and decisions about what to do in response to those situations, considers the impact of those situations on other people. Here’s an example: No matter what your beliefs are about immigration reform, and no matter how much you believe your country needs to limit immigration, you are feeling thoughtfully if your position recognizes and considers pain and suffering of people who are not as fortunate as you are to live in a safe place. If you feel only anger towards the Venezuelan family asking for help on a street corner, and have no empathy for their plight, you are not thinking thoughtfully, even if, at the end of the day, you still believe they should not be allowed to live in your country.

As you go about your day, apply the framework of Thoughtfulism - thinking thoughtfully and feeling thoughtfully - and you will be in a much better position to use the wisdom of your years to live life in your sixties fully.

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I decided to take a bike ride. It was a wonderful spring day in Chicago. I thought, “I’m going to get on the bike path and I’m going to ride all the way down to Hyde Park. It’s going to be beautiful. It’s going to be relaxing. I have plenty of time and no need to be anywhere else. No pressure to be productive today.”

I got on my bike and I started riding, very excited about this new idea of Doing Sixty. It took me only a few minutes to reach the bike path along Lake Michigan and start heading south. I suddenly remembered that I need to write an email to a client the next day, Monday.

“Okay, no problem,” I thought, “it’ll take me about two minutes to write that email. I can do it while I’m eating breakfast tomorrow morning. No problem.” And I kept riding.

About seven minutes later, I realized that for that entire period of time, seven minutes, I’d been writing and rewriting that email in my mind, over and over. It was an unimportant email. It would take only two minutes to write tomorrow morning, but I had just spent more than three times that amount of time writing it in my head. And the whole time I was writing that email in my mind, I didn’t even notice the sunlight bouncing off the waves, the sailboats gliding across the lake, the birds circling overhead. The lakefront was right next to me, but I hadn’t even noticed it. “Okay,” I said, as I caught myself. “I guess I’ll start Doing Sixty … right now!”

I kept riding. After a little while, I realized that while I was riding, enjoying the ride and the scenery, I was reflexively looking for places I could turn around if I wanted to head back home. Maybe I could take a turn on 18th Street and head back up north. Maybe I could just turn around on this upcoming strip of grass next to the bike path.

I thought, “Why am I looking for places to turn around? I’m not tired. I’m really enjoying the exercise. I love being on my bike. I’ve got no place else to go. Why am I reflexively thinking I need to hurry home?”

I recognized this as a bad habit that constantly plagues me: I always feel like there isn’t enough time to do what I want to do, so I’m always rushing through whatever it is I’m doing so I can get to the next level, or get to the next thing I need to do.

“Wow, this is pretty frustrating,” I thought, and I stopped my bike, and sat down on the lake front. I looked at the beautiful scenery and said, “Doing Sixty, this isn’t going to be so easy.”

I realized that day that Doing Sixty was not like flipping a switch. I had ingrained habits that were in my way, and it would take practice to learn how to get them out of my way.

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Here’s a metaphor to visualize what I encountered on this bike ride, and what you may encounter as you try to live your life in your sixties with joy and intention:

Imagine you are standing behind a dense thicket, and you reach out and part the leaves and branches of this thicket to reveal a beautiful clearing on the other side. The thicket represents the thoughts, challenges, strivings and neuroses that can distract you, and the clearing is the fulfilling moment of life that is right there, on the other side of the thicket.

The joy, the satisfaction, the prize of savoring a rich moment of life is close by, at all times. All you have to do to enjoy this moment of life is part the thicket and step into the clearing.

We all have our thickets that get in the way of enjoying moments of life. My personal thickets that constantly get in my way as I seek to Do Sixty are 1) my constant need to strive so I can reach higher levels that the one I’m at now, 2) the voice in my head that was busy composing that work email while I rode my bike, and 3) the constant feeling of time poverty that forces me to rush through things, which led me to look for ways to end my bike ride and head home.

What are your thickets? What could distract you from savoring the moment of life you are in, right now?

Here are examples of thickets that other people have shared with me that are getting in their way as the try to Do Sixty:

The Thicket of Past Memories

Where my concerns about the future can distract me, many people are distracted by what happened in their past. This could be trauma from things that happened earlier in life, or could be pining for times when life was better, when they were on top of their career, their life, and their social standing. Do thoughts about your past cloud your enjoyment of the present? If so, part that thicket - you have the power to live this moment unburdened by your past, if you choose to.

The Evil Should Thicket

“I should do this.” “I shouldn’t do that.” Really? Are all the “shoulds” you keep repeating to yourself actually necessary? Are you being needlessly hard on yourself? “Should” is meant to be a judiciously-used guideline to safer, better and more productive living, but many of us turn it into a constant anxiety-inducing, screaming barrage of admonition, fear, and stress. Don’t let the Evil Should wreak havoc on your life.

The Curmudgeon Thicket

“I can’t believe the WiFi in this plane isn’t working.” “Doesn’t anybody in this town know how to drive anymore?” Getting needlessly pissed off doesn’t fix the aircraft’s WiFi or get people to drive better. All it does is create a thicket that will block you. This happens to a lot of people as they reach an older age, yet there is no reason it has to happen to you. When you find yourself getting triggered and become upset by things that happen to you,recognize that you have created this thicket - and can just as easily part it.

The Anxiety Thicket

We live in an age of anxiety. Even though we live in the safest, easiest, most prosperous time humans have ever lived, we still have the biological wiring that evolved to keep us on guard, nervous, vigilant, and worried. We constantly make ourselves more anxious than we need to be, and anxieties can take us out of Doing Sixty mode faster than thunder can scare a dog. Work to part the anxiety thicket.

The Thicket of Envy

Envy can distract us by creating obsessive thoughts as we compare our lives to those of others, or by focusing our energies on matching the status of other people. And often, the things we envy in other people aren’t things we really want. You have plenty going for you, and those you envy are probably not as happy or well off as they seem. Don’t let envy get in the way of savoring the moments of your life.

The Judgement of Others Thicket

One of the most refreshing things I’ve heard from some of the people in their sixties whom I’ve interviewed is that they are less worried about what other people think of them than they were earlier in life. But that isn’t true of all of us. A key part of Doing Sixty is living your life the way you want to live it. Letting the judgement of others guide your thoughts and actions creates a thicket between you and what you really want to be doing at any given moment.

Whatever your personal thickets are, recognize that you have the power, the agency, to part your personal thickets, and to live your sixties with joy and intention, at any moment.

I’ll share more ideas about how to Do Sixty in other articles. For now, just enjoy as many individual moments of life as you can. They are right there in front of you, at all times, just waiting for you to savor them. You can be Doing Sixty at any instant without delay, without striving, or without any preparation. Just part the thicket, and enjoy the moment of life that awaits you in the clearing beyond.

The next article in this series talks about the wisdom we’ve created in our lives, and how to use that wisdom to live our lives these bonus years well.

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If I had to sum up my approach to Doing Sixty in one sentence, I would say, “I am cultivating a practice of living, not a practice of achieving.” After years of striving and aiming for the future, it’s now time to live the life I’ve created for myself.

“The aim of life is to live.” Listen to the poetic words of Henry Miller, as he describes this idea:

Strange as it may seem today, the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of godlike awareness, one sings, In this realm, the world exists as poem.

Henry Miller wrote these lines in his essay, Creative Death, from his book, The Wisdom of the Heart. Yes, as Henry Miller says, the aim of life is to live.

Our sixties are our bonus years, and every moment of life we encounter in these years is a chance to live, a chance to savor the pleasure and privileges of being alive. Moreover, we have earned the right to choose how to live those moments - do you want to chill and relax, enjoy the company of friends, read a book or learn a new skill? You get to choose. You get to decide how to live the life you have created for yourself, in the way you want to live it.

Wouldn't it be joyous to live your sixties inspired by Henry Miller's idea? Are you?

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As straightforward as this seems, most of us in our sixties do not live our daily lives in the way Henry Miller suggests. It is not so easy to jettison the habits and mindsets that compelled us to strive for success during our 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. Their momentum still guides us.

I learned this right away once I started trying to Do Sixty. It was clear that Doing Sixty was not like flipping a switch. Doing Sixty is a gradual process, enhanced by practice.

My Doing Sixty practice was simple and straightforward: Live the moment I am in. Live it for its own sake, not for the sake of how this moment prepares me for my future.

This was difficult for me, because the previous 40 years of my adult life had wired me to look at any present activity as an investment in my future well-being. I worked hard in school to get a good job. I worked hard at any job so I could earn the next promotion. I practiced my guitar not just for the joy of music, but so I could someday become a good guitar player. When I tried to have moments of Doing Sixty, I’d continually find myself slipping back into my old habits. My need to strive would take over, and distract me from the moment I was in.

But by practicing Doing Sixty - essentially, by practicing living - I began to have more and more success. At one point I pictured an old-fashioned balance scale with my old habits on one side and rich moments of life on the other. I saw that, over time, I was getting the balance to shift. I was actually living more, in the way Henry Miller suggests.

The practice is, as we will see, the goal, in and of itself. Every moment of life is a moment in which we can practice living, and enjoy living.

In the next article, I’ll share more about the challenges I (and others) encounter Doing Sixty, along with a framework we can all use to break through these challenges.

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It’s not that the earlier decades weren’t good — they were really good. But they were also really hard. So much of my energy in those years was devoted to doing things that would pay off at some point in the future. I was always preparing for the future, constantly sacrificing the present for the future.

This future-focus started in my 20s and accelerated through my 30s, 40s, and 50s. It even carried past my 60th birthday. But shortly after I turned 60 it struck me that, after all this time mortgaging the present for the future, the future had finally arrived. I wanted to start taking dividends on all those investments. I wanted to start living the life I had created for myself.

This realization happened at a dinner party.

A few months after my 60th birthday, my wife Arna and I were invited to dinner at the home of our friends David and Galit. At one point during the meal, David posed a question to the ten of us: “What is the key story of your life?”

There was silence, then people started sharing fascinating stories — pivotal decisions, formative role models, core beliefs. As I listened and thought about what I would say, I felt like a curtain was opening. A sudden illumination of something that had been right in front of me for decades.

“In eighth grade,” I told the table, “I took pre-algebra so I could do well in algebra the next year. So I could build my high school record, get into a good college, get a good first job — preparation for the next promotion, which would get me to the next job, and so on. Everything in my life was just a stepping stone to the next stepping stone. I’ve constantly sacrificed the present for the sake of the future.”

The table was quiet. I kept going.

“I’ve been climbing a stairway to heaven, where heaven keeps getting redefined as some point in an ever-more-distant future. I just turned 60, and even now, I’m still prepping for the future. What am I waiting for? The future has arrived! I don’t want to just be sixty. I want to Do Sixty.”

Doing Sixty.

Doing Sixty is about shedding the anxieties that we’ve carried with us for decades as we’ve been building our adult lives. We’ve worked hard. We’ve strived. We’ve achieved. We have sown the seeds, and now it’s time to harvest.

We don’t need to be anything different. We are all fine with who we are. We just need to live the lives we’ve created for ourselves. Doing Sixty is a verb.

Here in our sixties, we can live life just for the sake of living it, not just to get some future benefit out of it. Let’s get out of our own way and give ourselves permission, the permission to live our lives fully.

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In earlier generations, most people entering their 60s felt they were entering their twilight years. Fortunately, life expectancy is much longer now. Don’t think of those extra years as being tacked on at the end of your life. They’re inserted right here, right now. Your 60s are your bonus years. We are so fortunate to have been gifted with something remarkable — extra years - and the opportunity to live them well.

You’ve created a good life. Now live it. Are you ready to live these bonus years the way you really want to live them, unconstrained by your past habits and perspectives? Are you ready to Do Sixty?

Are you ready to live these bonus years the way you really want to live them?

Learning to Do Sixty wasn’t like flipping a switch for me. I had to shed habits and mindsets I’d been carrying for decades, and it took real work. But I did it, and it has transformed the way I experience every day. I’d love to share what I learned, so you can make the most of these bonus years. Please share your comments and experiences about this stage of life with me.

In the next article in this series I’ll talk more about “The Joy of Doing Sixty: Cultivating a Practice of Living.” Check it out!

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