Why You Can't Practice Retirement Like You Can Practice Sourdough

My local bookshop has an entire shelf dedicated to sourdough baking. Instagram is full of proud home bakers showing off their perfectly risen loaves with those signature air pockets. Everyone, it seems, has become a sourdough expert during the past few years, including my wife.

Here's what's remarkable about learning to make sourdough: you know immediately if you've succeeded or failed. Too dense? You'll know within hours. Didn't rise properly? The feedback is instant and undeniable. Forgot the salt? One bite tells you everything.

My wife is beaming that she has mastered beef rendang after multiple attempts. The first try was too dry. The second, not enough depth of flavour. By the fifth attempt, she'd nailed it - that perfect balance of spice, tenderness, and rich coconut sauce that makes proper rendang so extraordinary.

This is how humans naturally learn. We try, we get immediate feedback, we adjust, we try again. The research on expertise shows that mastery comes from "activities of short duration with opportunities for immediate feedback, reflection, and corrections". Every failed loaf teaches you something. Every successful dish reinforces what works.

But here's the sobering truth: retirement planning is nothing like making sourdough.

You Only Get One Rise

When you contribute to your pension at 30, you won't know if you've made the right choice until you're 60. When you decide on your retirement age at 55, you can't try again at 56 if it doesn't work out. There's no practice run for retirement, no test batch, no opportunity to adjust the recipe after tasting.

The behavioural economists Thaler and Sunstein identified this exact problem, noting that people struggle most with "decisions that are difficult, complex, and infrequent, and when they have poor feedback and few opportunities for learning". Retirement planning ticks every single one of those boxes.

Think about the fundamental difference:

Learning Sourdough:

• Attempt 1: Disaster

• Attempt 2: Better, but still dense

• Attempt 3: Good rise, lacks flavour

• Attempt 4: Nearly there

• Attempt 5: Perfect!

Planning Retirement:

• Attempt 1: ...that's it. You're done.

The Anxiety of No Second Chances

This isn't just an academic observation. It explains why so many successful, capable people feel paralysed when thinking about retirement planning.

You might be brilliant at your job, having honed your skills over decades of practice and feedback. You might have mastered complex hobbies, learned languages, or built businesses. But none of those experiences prepare you for making decisions where the feedback comes 10 or 30 years later.

A successful software developer put it perfectly: "I'm used to writing code, running it, seeing if it works, and fixing bugs immediately. With my pension, I'm writing code that won't run for 20 years, and if there's a bug, I can't fix it."

The Peculiar Psychology of Delayed Consequences

When you're learning to make bread, motivation is easy. Bad loaf on Tuesday? You're eager to try again on Wednesday because you know you can improve. The feedback loop keeps you engaged.

With pension contributions, you make a decision today that affects someone else - the future you in 30 years. There's no dopamine hit from a good decision, no immediate pain from a bad one. It's like cooking a meal you'll never taste, for a dinner party three decades away.

This psychological disconnect is why people who are otherwise disciplined and forward-thinking struggle with retirement planning. It's not about intelligence or wisdom - it's about the fundamental absence of the learning mechanism we rely on for everything else in life.

Why Traditional Advice Falls Short

Most financial advice treats retirement planning like any other skill. "Just start early!" they say, as if it's like learning the piano. "Learn from others' mistakes!" they suggest, as if watching someone else's failed sourdough teaches you the feel of properly kneaded dough.

But you can't learn the visceral lessons of retirement through observation. You can't practice being 70 years old with insufficient funds. You can't trial different withdrawal strategies to see which feels right.

The traditional approach of education and information, whilst important, misses this fundamental psychological challenge. Knowing the theory of compound interest isn't the same as experiencing it. Understanding sequence of returns risk intellectually doesn't give you the practiced instinct for when to reduce equity exposure.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Here's what nobody wants to admit: when it comes to retirement planning, we're all amateurs. Even those who retired successfully were amateurs - they just happened to get their one attempt right. There are no true experts in the sense of people who've practiced and refined their own retirement over multiple iterations.

This isn't meant to discourage you. It's meant to free you from the impossible standard of trying to be good at something you cannot practice. It's recognition that feeling uncertain about retirement planning isn't a personal failing - it's a rational response to a fundamentally uncertain situation.

So What Can We Do?

If we can't practice retirement, what's the solution? This is where we need to completely reframe how we think about retirement planning.

Instead of trying to make perfect decisions (impossible without feedback), we need to:

1. Accept the uncertainty - Stop expecting to feel confident about decisions that cannot be practiced

2. Build in flexibility - Create plans that can adapt as you transition into retirement and through the stages of retirement

3. Use process as a substitute for practice - Follow systematic approaches proven across many people's single attempts

4. Leverage others' experiences - While you can't practice your retirement, you can learn from the patterns of thousands of others

5. Get professional guidance - Work with someone who has seen hundreds of "single attempts" and knows the common patterns

The Path Forward

The next time you successfully bake a loaf of sourdough or nail a difficult recipe, take a moment to appreciate the luxury of that immediate feedback. Recognise that your confidence comes not from your intelligence or character, but from the simple ability to practice and improve.

Then give yourself grace about retirement planning. It's supposed to feel uncertain. You're making decisions without the benefit of practice, without immediate feedback, and without do-overs. That's not a bug in the system - it's the fundamental nature of planning for a future you've never experienced.

The goal isn't to become an expert at retirement planning the way you might master sourdough. The goal is to make peace with being a permanent amateur, and to build systems and support structures that acknowledge this reality.

After all, you wouldn't attempt to bake your first and only loaf of bread for a royal banquet. So why try to plan your one retirement without help?