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I hope this finds you, your families and colleagues healthy and coping well while you shelter in place.

Many firms have asked me how to ensure that their mentoring programs and informal mentoring initiatives continue effectively while people are working remotely and facing so much uncertainty. If you have questions or could use some help with your mentoring efforts, feel free to contact me. Also, my recent article, Mentoring During a Pandemic, offers some simple advice for maintaining mentoring relationships.

The other area I have been concentrating on involves retirement planning. Now that you have been working from home for two months, are you reconsidering how much longer you expect to continue your practice? In a recent essay, Altman Weil consultant Jim Wilber described his thought process and imagined that other senior practitioners were also “recalculating their retirement horizon.” And it’s not just senior practitioners who are reassessing their priorities and career choices as a result of the pandemic. According to a study discussed in Fortune Magazine last month, 14% of women and 11% of men are considering quitting their jobs due to increasing work-family conflict.

If you are wondering what your future might look like, and how much longer you want to keep practicing, take a look at my recent article, “Is this the time to plan your retirement?” It presents a few basic questions to help you find some clarity about the things that are…

As a writer, I’m a stickler for finding the right words to communicate what I mean. As we read and hear about “social distancing,” it’s important to recognize that what we are practicing during this pandemic is “physical distancing.” For while we need to remain apart physically, we can and must remain connected socially. People are social animals; we have a basic biologically-based human need for social interaction. So while I’ll include below some substantive information about mentoring and an invitation to discuss retirement via zoom later this week, my principal message to you is this:

Reach out to someone every day. Whether you are living alone or with a family, working from home or not working at all, coping well or struggling, healthy (as I hope you are) or worried about someone who isn’t, make at least one call a day to someone. Try to do it by phone or video call. Stay connected or reconnect with friends, relatives, colleagues and neighbors, especially those who live alone or are vulnerable. Find out how they are doing and let them know you hope they’re all right. Use those calls to remind them and yourself of our social bonds, which will survive and maybe even strengthen, when all this is over and we can be together physically once again.

Mentoring During the Pandemic

One of the people to be in touch with is your mentor or mentee. In these uncertain and scary times,…

Whenever you write a book, it’s thrilling and gratifying to receive great reviews from other authors and experts. And I have been very fortunate indeed to receive strong endorsements for Retirement by Design from several of the top thought leaders in the field. I hope you find the book as useful and enjoyable as they do. Here are three of the reviews:

“Retirement by Design presents a revolutionary and entirely professional take on planning for retirement – one that approaches the task like the exciting opportunity it is; and where endless options and tough decisions can be solved through creativity, experimentation and innovation.”

          Marshall Goldsmith, New York Times #1 bestselling author, and Thinkers 50 #1 ranked executive coach for ten years and two-time winner for #1 Leadership Thinker in the World

“Retirement by Design turns the daunting task of getting ready for retirement into the remarkably exciting, creative experience it always should be. Abbott proves this isn’t just the end of working life, but a whole new beginning. By calling on her decades of experience and affection for design thinking principles, she’s built a revolutionary and healthy way to look at and plan for life’s next great adventure.”

          Chip Conley, New York Times bestselling author and Founder of the Modern Elder Academy

“If the best way to predict the future is to create it, Ida Abbott’s Retirement by Design offers essential tools to help you figure out…