Close your eyes and imagine retirement. Do you picture yourself on a golf course? Under a palm tree? Travelling the world? Doug Treen, author of Psychology of Executive Retirement, has bad news for you. You’ve got it all wrong. You are, in his words, applying a “vacation model” to retirement and it won’t work. You are setting yourself up for three or four weeks of relaxation followed by years of boredom and stress. How’s that for an eye-opener?

“Retirement is a health hazard,” says Treen. “Everybody wants off the treadmill, and then a significant majority wants back … What do they miss? The excitement, the adrenaline, the pressure. All the things they wanted to get away from, they miss.”

Treen has a doctorate in social theory, which he parlayed into a successful career split between academia and private sector human resources. He’s spent decades helping professionals prepare for one of the biggest transitions of their lives: retirement. What he’s learned is that a successful retirement plan is one that includes more than just savings.

“This is the most misunderstood issue there is,” he says. “I’m trying to show that the psychological side is more important than the financial side. It is a foundation for you to decide how much money you’re going to need.”

In other words, what do you want to do in retirement? That’s a difficult question for many of us because we spend so much of our lives dedicated to advancing our career. As a result, our self-worth becomes tightly tied to our business card. Treen calls this a “collective sense” of self-identity.

“In retirement, you lose that. Now it’s you and the mirror,” he says. “Unless we understand who we want to be when we retire, we can’t really have a successful retirement. We’ve simply gone into a vacation mode. We’re going to go through stress, and there are huge health consequences.”

Developing this understanding is what Treen calls a life plan. The earlier you start to think about what you want to do in retirement, the better you will be able to prepare for it, financially and otherwise. “Think in terms of your passion,” he says. “Start now. Prepare to be your own person, a person that reports to you. Achieve something that is uniquely you.”

Implicit in Treen’s argument is that those who don’t have a passion outside their professional life will struggle with retirement. That’s why it’s important to start work on the life plan now. Step one might well be to develop a broader range of interests.

There is another advantage of course. Sometimes life doesn’t go as planned. Treen has seen his approach work for those who find themselves unemployed. “A lot of people who use this when they lose their job end up better off. They’ve created something that they can do on their own that they’re happy with. They’re more self-reliant because they’re using what is uniquely their own talent. That allows them to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. And as we know, differentiation is the key to being successful.”

In addition to his consulting work, Doug Treen has partnered with Retirement 101. That’s an educational program designed to address “the lifestyle, financial and non-financial issues and concerns that everyone either thinks about or faces during retirement.”