Mom started selling hawker food since I was 14 or 15. It was grueling. Her plan was to quit when I finished my study, get a job and bring home some money. By the time I was able to make money, that was exactly what happened. She sold off the business and retired.

Problem was her retired days were long. Without work, she didn't know what to do with herself.

One day while at home, I found out she's been going out three times a day to a shop ten-minutes walk away. It was a video rental store, when they were renting VHS tapes.

She was so bored there weren't enough tapes for her to run through in a day. She was willing to walk back and forth under the sun to the rental for some Chinese TV she didn't even were any good.

I didn't say it then, but that felt like a stab to the heart.

I'm especially sensitive to the affliction of boredom. As a kid that's the one major deficiency I had to deal with. For some reason every kid I knew had something: comic books, video games, illegal motorcycles, Legos, Transformers; some substance that occupied them.

All I had were my hands.

So a silent voice within developed over time, vowing that when I'm financially capable, I'm not going to let boredom get to me ever again.

And then I saw it getting to mom. Somehow that hurt more, because this is a domain where she's helpless.

So I got her a satellite TV subscription one week later. I almost didn't care how much it cost.

From there on, mom's life revolved around house work, hanging with friends and TV; with occasional touristing sprinkled in.

Boredom is now a fully solved problem. In fact the lack of boredom is a questionable quality. It remains to be seen what that does to mankind in the long run.

Without boredom though, would I have turned out the way I am? I'm not sure. It might have had a character-shaping effect, for better or worse.

Mom's life was exceedingly simple. Therefore retirement was manageable, even desirable. The narrative was incredibly straightforward: after laboring so hard at something semi-fulfilling, she deserved to rest and enjoy herself.

The same can't be said for knowledge-workers who are worth their salt. A lot of these people (probably you too) can't handle the void that comes with retirement. Meaning crisis lurks around the corner, waiting to pounce when the mind least expects it.

If your retirement plan is "I'll do anything I want," that's not a plan. Be real specific about it or don't think of quitting.