Why you should take your 20's seriously

Obviously these stats don't mean that old people are stupid and close-minded. Knowledge accumulates and helps offset many of the deficiencies. Still, this evidence does suggest that young people might want to change their behavior to benefit their future selves. This doesn't just mean making the most of the time you have. Exercise, continuous learning, and a few drugs can help to slow the decline. As an analogy, think of athletes. A 50 year-old is never going to win the Boston marathon. But with proper training, nutrition, and maybe a few performance-enhancing drugs, they can beat 95% of 25 year-olds.

I can tell you that there are probably a hundred things I could've done better with my time in my twenties. However there was no way that I would have known then what I would be like today and what makes me happy now. Back then I thought I would keep gigging in bands and I'd scrape together a record label and have a long career in music. That's what made me happy at the time and what I sought out to do. How could I have known that I would change? I have a wife now and a daughter on the way, I've become a mild-mannered programmer who enjoys mathematics and literature, and rather than getting pissed on a Friday night and making a lot of noise I like to hang out with my friends and play board games. But if I was wiser I might have went to university and worked on getting a PhD then I'd probably be better off now, today. Hindsight...

What I'm saying is that humans are terrible planners. We're good at adapting and adjusting but we can never seem to be able to accurately predict outcomes. I think that we glorify those people who seem to far surpass the status quo and bend their stories into myth. It's romantic to think that Einstein or Steve Jobs had set out to change the world when they were young but if we're honest about their history it's more likely that they drifted towards those things and all the right pieces were in place at the right time to make great things happen.

And it doesn't end when you hit thirty. I'm still as ambitious as ever and I see new currents that I'd like to follow that I would never have thought possible before. You don't just become a dumb, boring, cantankerous old person over night. Quite the contrary; I find that my tastes are far more refined, I can see dead-ends before going down the path, and I am more adverse to wasting my time. You start to see patterns in the ocean and can navigate the seas with ease.

So plan all you want but be prepared to fight the current and the winds!

I have felt that palpably running my own company for the last 5 years. In the first few years, it was just my wife and I doing everything, writing the code and running the business. As we started to make enough money that we could hire people, I started to notice how set in our ways we became.

Since we had started writing iPhone apps near the beginning of the mobile revolution, our code was written to suit older devices. In places, we did things for performance reasons so our apps would work well on old phones. Also, we never adopted ARC, because that's just not how we did it. But as we started to hire people, our engineers pushed us to change our old ways, and as a result, our code became much better.

So, I say - don't fear the reaper. Just find some young friends (or employees). I turned 30 this year, so I have a few gray hairs, but working with people in their 20s really has changed my ideas on the right way to do things, and given me perspective on my own life.

According to the author, a woman’s ability to get pregnant plummets starting in her mid-thirties. To make matters worse, the odds of a miscarriage for a woman over 35 is one in four."

Our family doctor gave the odds as 3 in 5.

In practical experience, I know of four friends who have miscarried at 35 (after being pregnant for over 3 months), out of about 11 who had kids at that age.

My wife and I have always suspected that the 3 out of 5 statistic also includes miscarriages in the first two months of pregnancy where you might not have been sure you were pregnant or late.

I feel social pressure plays a big part. Even the so-called open-minded 20 year olds will make fun of people in their 30s and 40s who still try to live an "unsettled" lifestyle. To accept wild and crazy ideas in your 20s just means you still have some growing up to do. To do the same later in life shows an abandonment of your responsibilities, which is frowned upon by society – in North America, at least.