I feel it too. And I'm about the same age.
Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.
451–460 of 534 posts
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sharing my own anecdata: my Oura ring shows that on days I drink, RHR is 10bpm higher and HRV about 15ms lower. Exercise has a huge impact on sleep quality too. My theory is that when you're young, your body has a much wider margin for error. A few drinks or sloppy exercise routines never seemed to impact my work. As I've aged, the margin has shrunk, and now there's a measurable effect that I can no longer ignore. Ag…
Is the Oura a good purchase? I've been really eyeing the health benefits of the Apple watch but there's no way I want a portal into the digital world that's a flick of the wrist away. It's bad enough with the phone pickups.
100% recommended as a non-obtrusive sleep tracker. But it's a bit bulky as a ring (and... it's a ring) so I can't recommend it to the same degree for day-time wear.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.
#453I 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…
Personal anecdote: I'm around the same age as OP and until recently also felt like my thinking was slowing down over the years. I went for many years without an exercise habit. About 5 months ago I started lifting weights. The transformation has defied all my expectations and the biggest unexpected benefit is that my mind has become sharper, faster and more focused. I essentially feel like I've reversed a decade's wo…
Anyone have experience comparing weight lifting vs other forms of exercise? Curious of how cardio vs weightlifting compares for example. I have heard a lot of podcasts talking about some psychological benefits from low heart rate cardio that are difficult to replace with other forms of exercise, for example.
Call me a wimp but I find DOMS can be a little distracting haha.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.
#454Sorry for your situation.
I'm sure you will be okay later on because that has nothing to do with your age or cognitive decline.
You can be physically stronger and "brainly" faster and more effective than any man younger than you as long as you keep exercising/coding.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.
#455Clean your office. Seriously. All the little distractions and annoyances around us eat a serious amount of brainpower that _is_ shared with the brain chunks needed to do deep coding work.
Every time I find myself unable to focus beyond a shallow level I invariably find that I've let my mental and physical environment slowly go to shit and I'm running at 1/3 capacity because of it.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.
#456First, the entire point of using abstractions is that you do not need to understand what's behind them. Try to port API layer by layer (ideally if you can also apply vertical slicing e.g. user endpoint, invoice endpoint). Stub lower layers with some not-implemented-exception or whatever you have in your target language. Make the project compile all the time, setup Jenkins(CI) etc. Then slowly move API part by part. Ideal case would be to make a single API request working in the target language and then to move the rest of the API incrementally.
Second, what you are doing is one of the most boring work there is. Try to find automated translator that can speed up the process (a least the boring parts). Writing one is not an easy task for most folks so I am not advising DIY. If you are doing this work for a 2 weeks or more maybe you are just bored?
Did you notice mental decline in other tasks? LeedCode & stuff? Chess? Forgetting words? If this is only work related it may be burnout. If not, you may try to revisit your lifestyle: did you recently gained weight? are you eating healthy food? do you have enough exercise? In any case it may be a good time to make an MD appointment.
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.
#457Is it that you don't "know how" or that you aren't motivated to do it?
As I've gotten older (and overall more competent) my threshold for novelty / interest has gotten higher. Drudge work, that once might have been fresh for a younger version of myself, now feels repetitive. I already "know how" to do something, since I've done things like it before, and as soon as I sketch out the high level overview in my mind grinding through the implementation bores me. It's simply become harder to find projects I have an interest in.
This manifests in my work. The stuff I find boring/lame I am terrible at - when I sit down to work, my mind wanders.
For me, at least, this feels a lot like school. "I know this already. Or at least, I know the broad strokes enough that I can see how I'd go fill in the gaps. Time to zone out and think about something more interesting."
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.
#458I'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…
Often the "hack on something personal" just flicks a switch for me, I'm talking within an hour or two - but sounds like you're feeling a bigger sense of urgency than even that would help.
.. which honestly sounds an awful lot like the stress of the situation (or concern about cognitive decline) - which isn't going to do your focus any favours!
Any kind of reset can help with that: go for a short walk, chuck some binaural beats on headphones and close your eyes for 5 mins, drink a warm (non-caffeinated) beverage and think about something else.
Above all else: probably good to just remember everyone has off days, other engineers aren't going to judge you for a day of lower productivity
Aside from reducing your internal stress, One key ingredient of finding "flow" is a sense of immediate feedback, perhaps allocate 20 mins to some short tasks which give rapid reward; write a couple tests, draw a diagram, etc..
Binaural beats (use "relaxed"): https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/binauralBrainwaveGenerator...
Going for a walk is kind of a lightweight "shower effect", random article link: https://buffer.com/resources/shower-thoughts-science-of-crea...
(Sorry, time zone mismatch slowed my response)
Link dump (for reading some other time)
- stress and brain function: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6504531/ - flow state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.
#459You might enjoy this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58100575-from-strength-t...
Re: Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.
#46047 years old here, programming daily. I think what we have to deal with is not just cognitive decline, but more importantly cognitive overload. People in their 40s usually juggle lots of responsibilities, especially if they have a family. At this age you normally also have earned some money, and if you start buying things like a summer house or an apartment for renting out, those things come with maintenance tasks. T…
BIG +1 on cognitive overload.
I can still bang out code like nobody's business, even in my late 40's... when I can find 4 uninterrupted hours to get into it. Which is rarely.
It's more about depth of focus, which was so easily available for 10+ hours a day when I was younger.