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Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

#71

Post by balaji1 »

I do feel the decline as I get older. A few reasons I believe are the reasons -

- Too much information overload. I consume way too much info and infotainment that are not core to my life or work.

- Not having enough time and bandwidth to work on a project. Life has more competing priorities. And lot more admin work in life - especially in the US where you cannot outsource anything - physical or mental chores.

- Also agree with your last theory to an extent - or at least accepting my limitations more now instead of trying to "self-improve" everything. We are all led to believe we need to be a supreme individualist generalist. There is no community or mentors to rely on.

- Expectation of perfection on everything. So stuck without much progress.

Re: Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

#72

Post by emaginniss »

sdnews wrote: post #44

I can relate. Recently I've started working for big company and they have quite complicated and over engineered microservice architecture - the product I'm working on. What I found is that I'm slowest dev in the team. I can do my work well but I'm spending time improving things that are not important in the scope of the ticket I'm doing. I've tried to convince myself that this is because I'm trying to address issues…

"middle age crysis"

Maybe you're playing too many computer games :)

Re: Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

#73

Post by fnordpiglet »

tootie wrote: post #67
fnordpiglet wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should investigate clomiphene citrate instead of testosterone directly. Clomid mutes the brains response to estrogen, the final feedback product of the testosterone cycle. This causes the body to produce more testosterone in the testes rather than front loading the cycle. The primary impact is your testes continue to function, while testosterone over time will chemically castrate you. This has been in use for 60…

I'm pretty sure the FDA has never denied a drug use application because it's not patentable and that's just a conspiracy theory used by people pushing bogus treatments. If there's peer-reviewed research that it works, it would be prescribed without doctor shopping.

That’s not my point. It’s not patentable so it’s not commercially viable to go through the clinical trials process for something that’s basically free to produce.

There is plenty of peer reviewed research, but not all doctors are aware of all research and testosterone replacement is widely marketed with very lucrative contracts to urologists.

Feel free to read the research yourself

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/?term=Clomiphene+testostero...

Re: Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

#74

Post by scrapheap »

First of all - things change, you aren't the person you were in the past (this isn't a good or bad thing, it's just what happens).

Some things will decline, but what declines in one person will differ to another.

Some things will improve, importantly your knowledge base will improve (a good knowledge base is an older coder's superpower).

Before comparing your problem solving abilities with your past-self have a look at what your past-self was doing. I suspect that when you look back at it you'll find that the problems they were solving were simpler problems, had a narrower scope or ran in more stable environment.

Re: Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

#75

Post by spywaregorilla »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #33
PheonixPharts wrote: post #24

I'm in my 40s and honestly feel like my problem solving ability is increasing every year and that I'm more able to better understand and solve problems than at any other point in my life. I also drink and smoke plenty of weed, and hardly sleep so I doubt that's the source ;) a couple of points: - I realize now that when I was younger I felt correct more often than I was. I think one major reason for feelings of cogni…

Wisdom beats intelligence. In the small, I'm not as fast as I was. I code slower. I think slower. I probably type slower. In the large, that doesn't matter. I go down fewer dead ends. I can just see things that I used to have to think through. Overall, I'm faster than I used to be, even though I don't feel as sharp as I did.

Charisma laughs

Re: Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

#76

Post by sophacles »

sdnews wrote: post #44

I can relate. Recently I've started working for big company and they have quite complicated and over engineered microservice architecture - the product I'm working on. What I found is that I'm slowest dev in the team. I can do my work well but I'm spending time improving things that are not important in the scope of the ticket I'm doing. I've tried to convince myself that this is because I'm trying to address issues…

> In my case it seems like some kind of middle age crysis.

If you can run crysis, you probably aren't too old and broken down just yet. :P

Re: Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

#77

Post by [deleted] »

tootie wrote: post #67
fnordpiglet wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should investigate clomiphene citrate instead of testosterone directly. Clomid mutes the brains response to estrogen, the final feedback product of the testosterone cycle. This causes the body to produce more testosterone in the testes rather than front loading the cycle. The primary impact is your testes continue to function, while testosterone over time will chemically castrate you. This has been in use for 60…

I'm pretty sure the FDA has never denied a drug use application because it's not patentable and that's just a conspiracy theory used by people pushing bogus treatments. If there's peer-reviewed research that it works, it would be prescribed without doctor shopping.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

#78

Post by colechristensen »

I had a minor head injury in a car accident and definitely noticed a decline.

Ways to cope:

1) accept it and don't attach yourself to a probably inflated sense of what you were capable of before

2) take care of yourself in the food, sleep, exercise, stress, and stimulation departments. especially valuable is doing things that stimulate your brain in entirely different ways like playing music or doing artwork or some mentally involved task that isn't the same as your day job

3) medication absolutely can have these kinds of effects, you have to weigh the costs and benefits

4) get better and more organized at the practice of problem solving, if you're having trouble doing it without thinking about it, create a system. Checklists, playbooks, or any other sort of organized framework where you have a plan with steps how to solve a problem,

5) each day take time to reflect on that day. what went well, what didn't, what you'd like to change and ideas of how to change it

In the end, often things that were easy get harder with time and that can be mitigated by being a little more intentional about trying to do well at what you want to do. Also, give yourself a break!

Re: Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

#79

Post by Enginerrrd »

tootie wrote: post #67
fnordpiglet wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should investigate clomiphene citrate instead of testosterone directly. Clomid mutes the brains response to estrogen, the final feedback product of the testosterone cycle. This causes the body to produce more testosterone in the testes rather than front loading the cycle. The primary impact is your testes continue to function, while testosterone over time will chemically castrate you. This has been in use for 60…

I'm pretty sure the FDA has never denied a drug use application because it's not patentable and that's just a conspiracy theory used by people pushing bogus treatments. If there's peer-reviewed research that it works, it would be prescribed without doctor shopping.

>I'm pretty sure the FDA has never denied a drug use application because it's not patentable and that's just a conspiracy theory used by people pushing bogus treatments.

No, that's not it, that's a very uncharitable interpretation and is unnecessarily dismissive . The real issue is that no one wants to pay for studies to turn off-label uses to on-label uses if there isn't money in it because the process is expensive, and so won't be done when there are better returns on investment.

Re: Ask HN: Have you experienced decline in problem-solving skills? How to improve?

#80

Post by tobtoh »

One thing to check: Your hearing

I went through a period of life in my late 30s where I felt I was getting stupider. I was struggling to pickup new concepts and get a handle on new situations quickly like I used to. I was made redundant during a 'restructure' and I strongly believe it was due to these issues I was dealing with.

Several months after being made redundant I got my hearing checked - I had moderate hearing loss in the higher frequencies (where speech occurs). After getting hearing aids, it changed my life.

HA made me realise I had been relying on lip reading and context to understand what was being said. When I encountered new technology/concepts, I didn't have pre-existing base knowledge or context to 'fill in the gaps' of my hearing.

HA reversed all of the issues I had previously been experiencing.

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