This chapter focuses on the practical or ‘doing’ strategies used by older people to manage the ageing experience. This theme is called ‘keeping going’ and three dimensions of older people's efforts to keep going are discussed. These are efforts to: maintain social roles and activities (‘keeping active’); maintain standards and routines (‘keeping stable’); and preserve relationship boundaries (‘keeping balance’).

Keeping active

Keeping active refers to older people's efforts to be proactive, accepting responsibility and taking action to manage everyday living and address difficulties. Keeping active contains four interrelated sub-categories: keeping busy, pushing yourself, finding solutions and adjusting.

Keeping busy

‘Keeping busy’ encompasses three related strands: older people's organisation of their lives in such a way that they are busy; their perceptions of themselves and presentation to others as busy; and their beliefs about the physical and psychological benefits of keeping active that sustain busyness.

Participants’ accounts of their daily lives were replete with references to various activities that occupied their time. These included social and leisure pursuits as well as tasks with functional value. During the interviews, I frequently observed the processes and outcomes of busyness. For example, I overheard telephone calls from friends or family planning to visit, I saw jam being made, homegrown vegetables prepared for freezing, gardens attended to, and the finished products from needlework, art and craft activities. Other studies corroborate the importance older people attach to living active lives (see, for example, Langan et al, 1996; Bowling et al, 1997; Bernard et al, 2004). Concurring with other research, the lives of most participants in my study could be described as ‘characterised by variety, diversity, activity, energy (and) interest’ (Thompson et al, 1990, p 121).