I have had the joy of a 'practice' retirement as I have take my sabbatical this summer. One of the things that changed dramatically is the size of my email inbox. Colleagues and folks in general knew about the sabbatical and didn't really write me about the administrative business of life. I got my inbox down to about 20 and kept it there the entire time fairly effortlessly. This is important in Gmail because you can only fit 50 on a screen at a time and once you get to the second page, it's hard to get a sense of the whole in order to deal what what needs to be dealt with.
I have started back a little earlier than I expected and almost immediately my inbox jumped to 75. Which is to say that I am now already overwhelmed with perfectly reasonable things that need attention. O yes. I remember now why people retire. Once it gets to the second page, there is always a dim suspicion that you are not reading something you are supposed to be reading, and therefore not doing.
Especially in the ministry business where there is, by definition, an infinite amount of work to be done, it was a wonderful respite to not have that background guilt adding up like emails. Ministry is tough because most of what we do is NOT in an email setting and includes being sensitive to programs, parishioners, family and friends who need our attention. We are always disappointing someone and it's a relief for that to go away for a bit.