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Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

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Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#11

Post by dushyantbehl »

kardianos wrote: post #6

1. You're getting old. Start writing everything down on paper. 2. Some people decline mentally faster then others, sometimes in their 40-50. Don't freak out, but do pay attention, ask others you know to pay attention to you. 3. Take it one layer at a time, and again, write everything down, best on paper. And keep smiling when it is hard.

Was just going to write this but with a minor modification. It might not be getting old part but rather the boring nature of a mundane task, anyway writing things on pen and paper is best and works wonders to help iteratively understand problem and build a solution.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#13

Post by napolux »

kardianos wrote: post #6

1. You're getting old. Start writing everything down on paper. 2. Some people decline mentally faster then others, sometimes in their 40-50. Don't freak out, but do pay attention, ask others you know to pay attention to you. 3. Take it one layer at a time, and again, write everything down, best on paper. And keep smiling when it is hard.

WTF, AM I ALREADY DEAD AT 42?

Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#15

Post by tptacek »

You're up in your own head, and are sensitizing yourself to frustrations you would have brushed off in your (heh) youth. The cortisol isn't helping either. It's also possible that you're just burnt out.

You're going to have stretches where you look back and feel like you're doing the best work of your career, and stretches where you worry that you're done for. It's all normal.

If this project isn't clicking with you, but you have to do it anyways, use this as an opportunity to build some "compensatory" habits. A similar situation (I'm older than you, but this happened in my late 30s) got me big-time into note taking, which has been a long-term win.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#16

Post by qbasic_forever »

I would talk to your doctor and get their input on the situation. Perhaps it's nothing, or perhaps it's something easily treated with medication. Why spend months and years continuing to suffer without doing anything about it.

I'm curious though have you had one or even more than one COVID infection? Brain fog / difficulty concentrating has been known to be a symptom of long term COVID complications. The sooner you identify it as a potential problem the more you can do to work on addressing it with a healthcare professional.

I don't buy for a second that a 40 year old is 'getting old' or that this is normal for your age. I'm 41 and as sharp as ever--I love solving problems and don't struggle with abstractions. Something is up IMHO and it's time to talk to a pro.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#17

Post by jb1991 »

I don't know you personally but I doubt cognitive decline has anything to do with this.

As we age, we usually end up with more and more life responsibilities, beyond just the work we are doing. All of that is input to the brain and requires energy in response. The brain is not infinite.

I often feel as you do, but then I have periods where I am as light and agile in my productivity as 20 years ago, maybe even more so, and usually it is my life circumstances that are the culprit.

I remember once about 13 years ago I was working on a mobile game and had a similar problem as you describe; there was one day where the technical work seemed to overwhelm me and I felt inadequate. But I was just a young chap, and it was a passing moment -- I had indeed just taken on some enormous new life responsibilities at that time, which were the likely explanation.

Burnout is real, too, and giving yourself space (if you can) to relax and not think about work for a break can be quite useful to recharge.

Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

#19

Post by matwood »

Buttons840 wrote: post #5
pentaphobe wrote: post #2

I've experienced this periodically since my early 20's - generally in hindsight I realise it was: real life getting in the way, burnout, lack of interest (I was interested in the idea, but on some fundamental level - not the activity) - also occasionally just a feeling of Groundhog Day (ie. Some code tasks can just feel a little too familiar - even if novel, and that saps my joy) Either way, at the time it was quite…

Thank you. Good advice about hacking on some personal projects/experiments. I'm worried that wont rebuild my confidence and abilities fast enough though. I want to make progress on this task today, not next week. Other developers seem to be succeeding, and I'm worried about how I'll look if it takes me weeks do to what others are doing in hours. (This isn't meant to dismiss your advice, to but to give feedback and so…

In addition to the GP, I'll add there's a certain level of naïveté of being young that makes one feel like they were better than they were. I'm mid-40s and am probably the best I've ever been at writing good code, but sometimes I can get vapor locked knowing all the things I need to account to for. When I was younger I just coded because I didn't know any better.

So when I get stuck now, I just start writing code like I would have when I was early 20s.

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