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Early Retirement May Speed Up Cognitive Decline: Study

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Re: Early Retirement May Speed Up Cognitive Decline: Study

#251

Post by Grustaf »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #60
monster_group wrote: post #9

Not only early retirement but any kind of retirement that gets the retiree in a mode that they don't have to try anymore will result in cognitive decline. I am seeing this in my dad who has been retired for ten years now. Throughout his work life he was a sharp hard working banker. Now he uses his age and retirement as an excuse for not trying. Just yesterday he wanted me to order something for him from Amazon. I tol…

I guess this is why you should work less hard and do more to cultivate hobbies. I can’t imagine retiring and doing nothing. So many projects.

Alternatively it's an argument not to retire. Ideally you should be working with something you actually enjoy doing, though I suppose it's rare.

Re: Early Retirement May Speed Up Cognitive Decline: Study

#252

Post by Grustaf »

tasuki wrote: post #223
dickeytk wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work is the way you contribute back into society. Going to work and doing my job is my way of knowing that I'm giving back into the system that allows me and my family to live. I find it far more fulfilling than anything else. Hobbies I hate. By definition I'm an amateur and I don't perform well. At my job, I get to exercise the skills I'm best at. I can't do any old job though. I have to be able to trace at least a…

> Hobbies I hate. By definition I'm an amateur and I don't perform well. If you love doing something (which is the origin of the word "amateur"), you're likely to be good at it. If you're a professional, it just means you get paid. Amateurs care primarily about the pursuit itself, while professionals care primarily about their paychecks.

Well, unless you live alone or don't work at all, you will always be spending much more time working than on your hobbies, so you will inevitably be better at working.

Re: Early Retirement May Speed Up Cognitive Decline: Study

#253

Post by swiley »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #24
dexwiz wrote: post #14

Sitting around May Speed Up Cognitive Decline. Both my Grandfathers retired shortly before seventy. One sat down in his Chair and did not get up. He ignored his health, and passed within 10 years. The other is highly active in his community and church, still gardens, and travels constantly. He is in his mid 80s with no sign of slowing down. Barring a major health incident, he will live well into his 90s like his moth…

I don't mean to be rude, but your living grandfather is very fortunate. Your deceased grandfather lived an average lifespan for someone in most of the developed world. I don't know ... a great deal about the background of your anecdote, but I would hesitate to overextrapolate, though. Sometimes the lack of activity is the manifestation of the underlying health issue that contributes to mortality.

In my experience grandparents live longer than “average” unless they’ve done something obviously harmful like smoking or sitting all day.

My great grandmother just died at 90 and really what killed her was being forced to stop walking, she lost so much bone mass that the increased Gs in elevator buckled her shin.

Re: Early Retirement May Speed Up Cognitive Decline: Study

#254

Post by greggman2 »

tluyben2 wrote: post #206
Daynil wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how so many people can anchor their lives to work. If you do that, when you retire, you've lost your meaning of life. I have a list of things a mile long that I just can't get to because 40 hours a week is already spoken for. Early retirement speeds cognitive decline? Maybe if you sit on the beach and/or watch TV all day long, but that sounds kind of miserable if done for more than a few weeks.

Well, most people I see did have other plans before they retired, but when finally retired and having no one to force them to do anything, they actually do nothing. The hobbies they complained they had no time for, the charities they wanted to work for, etc all quite rapidly vanish. Smart people with high profile jobs who end up watching tv and doing the odd sudoku puzzle. New generations might be different (although…

I'm a 1000x more productive when I have a support group that I spend time lots of time with. Usually that support group comes from being at the office with co-workers. If I retired and didn't find a support group I'm pretty confident I would not stay motivated.

It's not just having people around either, it's shared goals and shared responsibilities. I'm more productive when I know others need my work. We could be collaborating on a game at a game jam where the game designer needs me to add some new settings they can tweak and the artist needs a way to get some new data in the game and iterate. That pressure is very motivating for me.

But, for me at least, it's both the feeling of wanting to provide solutions for other team members, the feeling of a shared goal, and the feeling of camaraderie I get from actually being with people (vs being remote)

I've been lucky the majority of projects I worked on were things I wanted to work on and see succeed. I can imagine lots of projects where I wouldn't feel that.

Re: Early Retirement May Speed Up Cognitive Decline: Study

#255

Post by cko »

q5jwB6bD wrote: post #80
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is why you should work less hard and do more to cultivate hobbies. I can’t imagine retiring and doing nothing. So many projects.

I totally agree. I have so many interests and so little time. I can't wait until I can retire so that I can focus on the things that really interest me. I'm hoping to form groups of like minded people with similar hobbies. I envision my future as one of those old dudes playing chess in the park, except chess would be replaced with one of my many interests.

> Ask a wage slave what he'd like to accomplish. Chances are the response will be something like "I'd start every day at the gym and work out for two hours until I was as buff as Brad Pitt. Then I'd practice the piano for three hours. I'd become fluent in Mandarin so that I could be prepared to understand the largest transformation of our time. I'd really learn how to handle a polo pony. I'd learn to fly a helicopter. I'd finish the screenplay that I've been writing and direct a production of it in HDTV." Why hasn't he accomplished all of those things? "Because I'm chained to this desk 50 hours per week at this horrible [insurance|programming|government|administrative|whatever] job.

> So he has no doubt that he would get all these things done if he didn't have to work? "Absolutely none. If I didn't have the job, I would be out there living the dream."

Suppose that the guy cashes in his investments and does retire. What do we find? He is waking up at 9:30 am, surfing the Web, sorting out the cable TV bill, watching DVDs, talking about going to the gym, eating Doritos, and maybe accomplishing one of his stated goals.

> Retirement forces you to stop thinking that it is your job that holds you back. For most people the depressing truth is that they aren't that organized, disciplined, or motivated.

https://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/

This was so true for me, anyway. I've always had beer tastes on a decent income, so I was financially free five years into working. Now I have all the free time in the world and it's killing me. I do have so many interests but no motivation or discipline to do them.

Re: Early Retirement May Speed Up Cognitive Decline: Study

#256

Post by lisper »

Roark66 wrote: post #231
lisper wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People used to know how to type a url into an address bar. People used to know how to write in cursive too. Some skills just get obsolete.

>People used to know how to write in cursive too. Some skills just get obsolete. I heard this few times. Is it actually a thing that people don't know how to write cursive? Natural writing (cursive) has been a part of primary education in most(perhaps all) countries since the beginning. Did they actually remove it recently? That would be insane. How one is supposed to be able to write quickly, as in when taking notes…

> Is it actually a thing that people don't know how to write cursive?

Of course. Cursive writing is a use-it-or-lose-it kind of skill, and almost no one uses it any more. It has been replaced by typing. When was the last time you received a letter written in cursive? When was the last time you wrote one?

Re: Early Retirement May Speed Up Cognitive Decline: Study

#258

Post by driverdan »

Here's the actual PR: https://www.binghamton.edu/news/story/2117/research-shows-th...

And the study (PDF): http://ftp.iza.org/dp12524.pdf

I haven't read the whole study but it seems like it's pure correlation, is missing some controls, and has suspect conclusions.

They claim

> We find large and significant negative effects of the provision of pension benefits on cognitive functioning among the elderly.

That's correlation. They're claiming that giving people money reduces cognitive function which is ridiculous. Eliminating cognitive activities and meaning could reduce cognitive function, giving people pensions would not.

They didn't seem to have any controls for post retirement activity. All they controlled for was age, gender, and other medical conditions.

Re: Early Retirement May Speed Up Cognitive Decline: Study

#259

Post by saiya-jin »

greggman2 wrote: post #254
tluyben2 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, most people I see did have other plans before they retired, but when finally retired and having no one to force them to do anything, they actually do nothing. The hobbies they complained they had no time for, the charities they wanted to work for, etc all quite rapidly vanish. Smart people with high profile jobs who end up watching tv and doing the odd sudoku puzzle. New generations might be different (although…

I'm a 1000x more productive when I have a support group that I spend time lots of time with. Usually that support group comes from being at the office with co-workers. If I retired and didn't find a support group I'm pretty confident I would not stay motivated. It's not just having people around either, it's shared goals and shared responsibilities. I'm more productive when I know others need my work. We could be col…

What you describe sounds roughly similar to what parent op is warning about. Being reliant on external forces for your own happiness / fulfillment will probably suck in retirement - people generally lose friends, not gain them over the years. Find something that motivates you on its own, regardless of anybody's else involvement.

For me that would be travelling, hiking, and generally being in nature - but this requires at least OKish health for the age, which might or might not be there later. Reality is, we mostly don't know how things (and us) will turn up later in life, and if we end up in good spot it will be mostly by sheer luck.

Re: Early Retirement May Speed Up Cognitive Decline: Study

#260

Post by hastes »

The child in me wonders if something like video games (i.e. StarCraft II/DotA/LoL/Card games, something with strategy and thinking) would be a way to fight this onset of cognitive decline in retired folks.

It would be interesting to see a study of retired folks from the millennial generation, providing they play much more games than older generations.

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