You Can Only Make So Many Chairs
On purpose, contribution, and the non-financial side of retirement
🟢 Someone I love is getting ready to retire. He is already asking himself the right question.
When someone asked him what everyone asks — “So, what will you do?” — he paused.
“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “I know I love fixing on cars, working with my hands. I’d like to get into making outdoor wooden chairs. But after I have chairs for my backyard and I make some for the kids... what do I do?”
You can only make so many chairs.
It is a good question!
🧭 Most people can easily fill out the first two circles.
In my work with people approaching retirement, I use a framework called the Life Design Sweet Spot. It has four overlapping circles: what you love, what you are good at, what you can offer, and what the world needs. The center, where all four meet, is where purpose lives. And purpose does not have to be one big thing. It can be a portfolio of activities that are meaningful to you.
Most people can easily fill out the first two circles. They know what brings them energy and joy. They know their skills and strengths. My uncle spent his career doing sheet metal work on airplanes. He knows he loves working with his hands and building things. He knows he is good at it. In retirement, he wants to keep doing exactly that.
The circle that trips people up is always the third: what does the world need? And paired with it, the fourth: what can you offer in a way that creates real value to you, and maybe to others?
That is where the chair question comes from. It is not really about chairs. It is about whether the thing you love doing can mean something beyond your own backyard.
🌱 The recipient changes everything.
A colleague recently shared a story about a group of elderly women who loved quilting. Their worry? They had already made quilts for every family member. “No one else needs a quilt,” they told her.
She did not try to talk them out of their doubt. Instead, she went looking for who did need a quilt.
A local fabric store agreed to donate leftover bolts of cloth. A connection was made with Social Services. And now these women, who thought their best giving years were behind them, are making individual quilts for children entering foster care.
Same skill. Same love. A new recipient. And a purpose that moves them to tears.
The chairs were never the problem. The question was always: who needs the chairs?
💡 Clarity comes from experimenting.
This is where the IDEA Cycle comes in: Imagine, Do, Evaluate, Adjust. It is a simple loop built on one core belief… clarity comes after the experiment, not before it.
Most of us wait for the answer before we take a step. Once I figure out the right cause, the right community, the right outlet, then I will begin. But purpose rarely announces itself from across the room. It reveals itself through action and learning.
For my uncle, one small cycle might look like this. Imagine: donating a chair to the local recreation centre and leaving a card with his name and contact information on it. Do it: one chair, one place. Evaluate: who noticed? A staff member stops him and mentions the seniors program has been looking for outdoor seating. A visitor admires it and says she has been wishing for something like that in her own yard. Adjust: maybe he builds two more for the centre. Maybe that visitor commissions one. Maybe it opens a door he had not thought of yet.
The key is that the Life Design Sweet Spot does not fill itself in sitting at the kitchen table. It fills in through small experiments that generate real information. One step generates the next.
✍️ A question for you:
You probably already know what you love and what you are good at. But have you been intentional about finding who needs it?
If you would like help working through your own Life Design Sweet Spot or IDEA Cycle, I would love to support you. Reach out at nextchapterlifedesign.ca.
I share more thinking like this here each week. The Life Design Sweet Spot and IDEA Cycle worksheets are available as free downloads in the Resources section at nextchapterlifedesign.ca.
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