I don't feel nearly as smart or "outstanding" as I did when I was younger. But I don't think it is because I have gotten much less smart or outstanding. I think my perception has become more accurate.
Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
171–180 of 312 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#172What's it like to be old? My boss is younger than I am and is absolutely sure he knows more about my job than I do, even though I've been doing it since before he was born and he never did it at all. People on TV keep trying to sell me stuff like Metamucil, some new kind of cane or similar silly gadget, or a scam investment, none of which I want. My grandkids can't understand why I can't read things they're holding r…
Out of all of them, this one rings the truest to me. Thank you! Other observations I've had as I get old:
The older I get the less it matters to me what other people think of me, which is liberating. When I was younger, people's impression of me was my problem. Now that I'm older, people's impression of me is their problem.
I always thought getting out-of-touch would be embarrassing, but it doesn't bother me at all. Pop culture is toxic.
I'm less interested in impressing people.
TV is marketed to a different demographic and appeals to me less and less as I age, which has freed up an enormous amount of wasted time.
I'm more and more suspicious of new products, not excited by them.
The older I get the more I value self-sufficiency and the less I believe in "we're all in it together".
Even though I try to stay tolerant, as I get older, the "woke overton window" moves faster than I can change my biases and prejudices. I can't keep up.
The thing that scares me the most about old age is that my health is going to hit a brick wall, and that I'm not taking good enough care of my body.
I'm most anxious/nervous about retirement: I think every day about retiring and exactly what I need to do and save to get there, and I wish thought about it that seriously in my 20s and 30s.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#173How old is "old"? FWIW as i got "older":
Health:
when young I suffered muscle pain when I worked out. At 40 the pain changed to a skeletal pain, which wasn't nice. At 60 it started to be more tendonitis than anything else. At 70 it's gone unless I suffer an injury, whereupon weird stuff happens, e.g. hand injured a little in a fall, subsequent cat scratches cause the injury to flare up, time to get an antibiotic injection - strange!
I feel heavy, especially when I lay down to sleep at night. OTOH I'm working out more consistently than I ever have, my weight is down from 220 to 185, and so probably I'm more dense.
I'm much quicker than I ever was: I catch falling objects mid-air, stop other's falls, intercept slips and, in general, am scary quick. This weirds me out a bit. I have heard that some people are quicker than others but, other than extremely obvious cases of physically slow people, didn't believe that it was possible for one person to be significantly quicker than another. I've changed my mind about that now.
I have no known serious problems - everything is working fine, and am primarily concerned about my CV system: all else will IMO follow. I take a low dosage statin but I may not need it. More importantly, I'm realizing the simple frailty of the human body and so have re-evaluated different activities: driving (still do), cycling(won't do - crazy in my city!). Back pain: had it since I lifted too much weight 40 years ago. Almost debilitating in the last 2 years until I found some simple exercises that made it go away. Most every man will suffer at least one serious back injury - if you do, you just have to keep searching until you find the fix that works for you.
Advice:
1. Don't ever ever pick up more weight than you've picked up before unless it is a real emergency, 2. If a sexual opportunity seems too good to be true, it probably is - don't accept it. Herpes(or worse) is no fun, no matter how the herpetic community may spin it. Note to my younger self: don't touch the beautiful blonde!
3. Always take the highest offer but be ready to walk out if things go badly.
4. Don't fall for the sunken-cost fallacy - if you're in a bad relationship of any sort then get out early and consider yourself lucky. See "The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli for more. This especially includes love.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#174What's it like to be old? My boss is younger than I am and is absolutely sure he knows more about my job than I do, even though I've been doing it since before he was born and he never did it at all. People on TV keep trying to sell me stuff like Metamucil, some new kind of cane or similar silly gadget, or a scam investment, none of which I want. My grandkids can't understand why I can't read things they're holding r…
Can you please expand on that advice? What should we be paying attention to?
Your teeth. Pay attention to your dental health.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you please expand on that advice? What should we be paying attention to?
Your teeth. Pay attention to your dental health.
I had mediocre dental care for most of my life. Not bad, but I never liked it. I got my first crown, was supposed to get two. It was traumatic. It didn’t feel good. I was depressed.
I found a dentist recommendation. Visited him, he looked at my teeth and said while it all met “the standard of care”, some of the old work would eventually need to be replaced, and the crown fit could be improved, and the other crown I needed could be replaced with an alternate procedure.
I got a good feeling from him. I spent the next 3 months having him re-do everything in my mouth. i was terrified and uncomfortable but I just went into it headlong. I was a bit flu$h, but it didn’t actually cost a lot.
It made all the difference in the world. My bite felt better. My teeth felt good. The tooth sensitivity to temperature vanished. I never think about My teeth anymore. They work, they are comfortable.
I think of myself as someone who is scared of dental visits. He cured me of that. I plan and attend each visit diligently.
I have a new dentist now.. I moved. I found someone I like. Understanding that my dental dissatisfaction was rooted in work that “met the standard of care” but which wasn’t satisfactory with each bite and sip I took was transformational.
I also floss diligently.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#176Don't wait until you past 40 years old to take care of your health. Starts now. Physical exercise becomes more important to fight against aging. Especially core exercises to take care of your back. Watch your diet and eat well because it's so much harder to lose weight when you are older. Not to mention your innards are deteriorating fast if you abuse them. Contact sports or extreme sports has super high cost when yo…
I'm 39 and still recovering from a wrist injury from trying to learn snowboarding last year. One's body does not heal quickly after a certain age -- and beyond some point, I imagine it never really recovers from certain kinds of physical damage.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you please expand on that advice? What should we be paying attention to?
Your teeth. Pay attention to your dental health.
And sunscreen. Taking care of your skin (especially your face!) is one of the easiest passive ways to help yourself age gracefully.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#178No matter how you live your youth, you will probably regret it when you are older. Unless you inherit so much money that you don't have to ever work in your life. If you spend your youth having fun and enjoying your youth, then when you get to middle age you'll have wished you worked harder and saved more so you could be wealthy and comfortable. If you work your butt off in your youth and have lots of money and succe…
This is exactly what I’m afraid of. I feel I’ll regret my younger self no matter which path I take, even if I take a balanced path. There will always be choices that I would have made that my future self will deem wrong. How do I deal with this? Is the key to happiness when older is to just lose all memories?
Why do you dwell on the past so much? Make decisions with conviction and then live with the consequences.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#179Try to eat well. I had no 'dietary education' from my family (basically it was an "eat what you like, when you like") and at 44 I fiscally felt so bad that I went to my doctor saying "I need to be checked as I think I have something really bad". I went through a number of checks and I was fine. This was also worsened as I am not obese, so I did not connect in a first instance my feeling bad with my eating habits. I d…
I would add that healthy diet is not something complicated. I wish I know about it much earlier.
Here is the basic concept: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-....
Just split your plate (approximately of a hand size in diameter) on 4 parts: 2 parts vegetables, 1 is protein/meat, 1 is for carbs (should not be overcooked, just slightly undercooked to not transform it into fast digesting food). Spoon of healthy oils.
Thats it, 3 times per day. Nothing more, nothing less. Here is my diet for the last couple of months and this is the most impactful thing to the quality of my life besides walking every day at least an hour.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like to be old? What advice would you give to younger people?
#180It's never too late to get healthy at any age. I've realized this after many years but have finally started to take it seriously.
I follow a lot of literature and social media around fitness. I think the rise of social media has made fitness seem out of reach for most people. Seeing these fitness personalities usually being in the top percentile in terms of genetics for body weight, muscle definition and just looking amazing makes the rest of us feel like it's not something we can do easily. Having most of these people spout their pseudo science also doesn't help. It's hard for any sane person to understand what to do, whether its diet (keto, low-carb, water fasting, carnivore diet, etc.) since there is so many possibilities.
As I've grown older I've realized that staying fit has so many benefits that it might as well be the best anti-aging change we can make for ourselves.
If you're over 25% or more body fat, it's worth figuring out how to bring that down to 20% or less. See how far you can go. Not all of us can get to 12% and maintain it without feeling like we're starving ourselves but I think the higher range is doable.
I've realized for diet and exercise there is no one answer for anyone. The wisdom of eat less, exercise more seems to be the ultimate truth.
What that looks like for each person is unique. Personally for me I've tried all of it. I've done the 7 day water fast, intermittent fasting, low-carb eating, etc. At the end, as long as I'm eating within my maintenance calories relatively good clean food it doesn't matter for me which one I do.
For exercise, I've settled on three total body weightlifting sessions with half an hour cardio session on the non-weightlifting days.
So, the best thing you can do as you getting older is figure out what works for you. There is so many ways of eating and exercising and sometimes it takes a while to understand what works for your body.