11–20 of 164 posts
I think the mistake most people make is to deliberately slow down as you get older. Never slow down and you'll keep pulling ahead.
There's no real data behind this article. It's basically ageism fueled by self-doubt.
I've been in a transitional state career-wise, partially by choice, but I think there's two major factors not really mentioned by the article, and in fact, factors I think the article reinforces.
The first is ageism, like you say. But I think ageism is a lot more subtle than other things, because it's not only an assumption of age-related decline, but more generally an assumption that people can't change. So if you become known for X, it's hard for people to see you as anything but that. You get typecast, and those assumptions become societal constraints. It's like there's career "rails" and if you go off the rails, people don't know how to process it.
The second is a sort of lack of recognition of how much randomness and fads plays a role in certain fields. What I mean by that is that the reasons some people attain relative notoriety and status is often due to butterfly effects or societal viccitudes, and these become revealed only over time.
I think in general, there's a very superficial way we process people and their potential for change or new work. Even when they're capable of it, they're often prevented from doing so because of assumptions and stereotypes.
Sure, cognitive decline happens, but it's not as dramatic as it seems in this article.
Sometimes I feel as I've gotten older it's just a process of seeing more of the wizard behind the curtain. I read articles like this and get depressed only because it perpetuates the societal ills that lead to the problems in the first place.
One of the most productive engineers I knew (who I’m guessing will read this) was in his 60s when I met him. He’s since “retired” and helped a company obtain a $1B valuation. Similarly, my 85 year old grandfather still doesn’t own a wheelbarrow and will move stone, dirt, etc every summer. His motto is “keep moving”, I don’t think there’s really anything else to it. Yes you will slow down, but stay engaged and motivat…
There's no real data behind this article. It's basically ageism fueled by self-doubt.
But that kind of omits the fact that in our modern day and age, the elderly have a lot more technical help available. For Darwin, it was a decision of leaving his family behind to go on a months-long trip. Nowadays, it'd be a 6 hour flight and you can call your friends while you're on vacation.
So the risk/reward tradeoff has massively changed since Darwin's times.
In short, if you were good in your 20s and like your job, you’ll still be good (possibly far better) with 70% raw intelligence but lots of experience and specialized expertise.
Much of the data, Adam argues, is also conflated with people realizing other things are important in life for a time. But many people revisit successful careers after kids move out etc.
1 - https://www.ted.com/talks/worklife_with_adam_grant_career_de...
Related: The notion of "retirement" is a relatively recent invention. Traditionally, when you were too old to work the farm or prove the theorem (sorry, cognitive decline is a well-documented thing, and tends to coincide with physical decline[1]), you would "retire" to a productive life in less-demanding pursuits: caretaking of the grandkids, woodworking, food preservation, writing, etc. It's important to maintain ho…
It's not rigorously backed up by robust longitudinal studies either. Fine, a lot of interesting ideas aren't. But the idea of preparing for a graceful change into a different future self -- maybe not weaker, but definitely not "the same but more", which is how I think we usually imagine a different future self -- seems under-explored to me in modern media. So I like this piece for trying to talk through it a bit.