JAnina, I'm not sure many people are saying everyone should retire as soon as they can possibly afford to scrape a living or that people are suggesting everyone goes from full time to zero work in one go.....the comments are more nuanced than that. (although that will be the aim of some and is the focus of the purists in the FIRE movement) However, many are suggesting not continuing with work well beyond retirement age to purely boost the coffers of what might be a perfectly good retirement income already...ie purely for financial reasons.....frommthenpointnof view that we don't know how much life or quality of life we have ahead of us.
You are quite right though....that it's not all about money. It could be possible to have a long and dull and poverty-stricken very boring retirement.
I suspect those people didn't have a great fulfilling work experience either. A lot of it is about attitude to life. Some people will get the most out of their time at work (not just financially) and in the other areas of their non-working life whilst that age too, and then go onto have plans for retirement that are wide ranging and challenging too. Retiring early doesn't need to mean work is missed and has to be returned to to give focus and purpose in life, but certainly some kind of planning ahead and preparing is good because not working is a very big change in life and can be a shock to the system. People need to plan both their finances and also other elements about use of time too. There's no reason why those retiring early can't do that as well as those retiring at the standard or later times.
I think work gives a lot of identity and meaning to some people's lives. For some, they don't have a huge amount more in their life and stopping can leave a massive hole. Preparing to retire requires different things for different people but probably needs to start a couple of years before it happens at least and for some who have had very little human interaction outside work, or limited involvement in other activities outside work, finding some activities they would enjoy doing and starting on a small scale, so that when work ends, they aren't left alone in the house all day with no human contact or activity. Reducing to part time hours can allow that to happen gradually and also avoid the cliff edge contrast if full time work to zero work.
The reality remains for all of us, that we don't know how long we have ahead of us or how good the quality of our last year's might be. Older people have a sense of making the most of it.....and I think that can involve looking back and wishing they had done more in their working lives, but also and more often involves thoughts about time with family and friends and activities they might have liked to have done, but never quite happened for whatever reason.
Isn't it just about us making the most of the unknown amount of time we have ahead of us....that's now if we're still at work and living in the here and now to get the most out of it, but also planning ahead both financially and for the other aspects of life, so we can get the most out of non-work aspects of life too.
Having choices is such a valuable thing and it's the planning and preparing that gives you choices, so you can pick whichever option works for you, whether that's extreme early retirement, slightly early, standard or late. The thing that people find a bit sad is when they don't have choices but end up stuck working longer than they want or having a retirement that isn't what they hoped for, and they realise that with more planning ahead, it could have been different. We can't plan everything and none of us know how much time we have or the quality of it, but a bit of planning can give us more chances to enjoy the life we have.