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

Design: top down Implement: bottom up

In my experience, certain tasks are not challenging and I really don't want to do them. I have a system for when things get this mundane. A pad of paper, and 3 pens, blue, red and green. I write down the next 5 or so things I need to do to make progress in blue. Really nitty-gritty when needed ('search list for target value', etc) Optionally, if needed, I put a green dot (instruction pointer lol) next to the current line in the list. When the line is complete I joyously scribble over it in red and get to the next thing. Repeat as needed.

I ran into this problem after salmonella at the age of 28. Cognitive decline occurred after some serious headaches. I had to re evaluate everything. I had to relearn how I took notes. I had to understand how I remembered things. I could no longer work as radial as I used to. And had to switch to linear mode. I had to break down tasks from "intelligent people only" mode to "anyone with a brain".

Of course there were other problems that prevented me from doing that like mental instability. But the whole process took a while. A couple of years.

If you want to improve your cognitive function and you drink alcohol, stop drinking. I stopped 8 years ago and felt more mentally alert within a few weeks.

At around 40 my interest in actually writing code declined sharply. That was after doing it for 30 years, and after it hadn’t really been challenging for quite some time. At the same time, my interest in the “big picture” increased at least as much.

I found that I was much more interested in how the work impacted customers, how we could work more effectively as a team, building relationships across the company I am at, etc.

At 48 I switched from programming to managing. It was a good move for me. I don’t love managing the way I once loved programming, but I periodically reassess and realize that although it’s fun to take a day and write some code here and there, I would be pretty miserable if I were to go back to it full time. I would constantly have to find ways to motivate myself to get anything done.

I do still take those days sometimes and write code for our product, but keep myself off the critical path at all times.

Management may or may not be for you, but it’s something you may want to consider. I wish I had moved over sooner.

As an aside, I had read in my twenties about a theory that claimed something happens physically in our brains as we age that explains this phenomenon of greater interest in the big picture and less interest in detail-oriented work but I have never gone back and tried to confirm or learn more about that theory.

Use chat gpt :) and get blood work done.