At the risk of sharing too much personal information, I am an avid follower of the FIRE community. FIRE stands for Financial Independence; Retire Early. Whenever work didn’t feel like a lot of fun, I justified it for myself as it allowed me to save money now so that I could retire a little earlier and escape from the rat race. After I became financially more secure, I actually tried to slow down and work less with the intent of sliding into early retirement. The learning: I hated it. I want to work. I want to contribute. I want to have an impact. Not only that, I read a study of university administrators and the effect of their retirement. One year after leaving their jobs, they had lost 13 IQ points! So, whenever you feel that you can’t wait to retire, don’t use it to double down and grind it out, hoping to get out of the rat race a bit sooner. Instead, use it for what it really means: you’re not in the right place and you need to look for where you would be better off.