I'm not sure about professional decline. I'm wondering if I might get dementia at some point but nobody will notice because they're used to me talking nonsense. And, if so, if that's a feature or a bug.
Obviously, we can't prove that the secret to happy aging is to never work for AEI or learn a musical instrument, but I think we have enough for a strong suspicion.
That was a super depressing article to read in one's very late forties, as someone who's never accomplished much.
When I was just a little young boy,
Papa said "Son, you'll never get far,
I'll tell you the reason if you want to know,
'Cause child of mine, there isn't really very far to go"
The lesson for you and me, especially after 50: Be Johann Sebastian Bach, not Charles Darwin.
Ok, that sounds easy.
Given that it's coming from AEI, I assume either that it's complete bullshit, or the author is putting it out there to encourage people in a similar position as him to drop out of the rat race so he has less competition.
Personally I haven't felt particularly ambitious or industrious since my mid-20s, and even then it was sporadic at best. Looks like it'll pay off in the long run.
6: You're already not Charles Darwin?
I'm listening to J.S. Bach right now.
And a moment ago I was reading Moby Hick. Darwin, however, is nowhere to be found.
7.1: No. Even conservatives confront the realities of old age, cognitive decline, and death.
I guess I'm wondering about decline but also aware that I'm younger than my dad was when his professional rise happened.
Which was great for him, but it meant that he worked long hours until he was 72.
I have a piss poor perspective, but I'd rather be working long hours at 72 than staring into the abyss all on my lonesome.
Sure, but I was hoping to build a cob house.
If a cob house isn't a lonesome abyss I don't know what s.
Careers that rely primarily on fluid intelligence tend to peak early, while those that use more crystallized intelligence peak later. For example, Dean Keith Simonton has found that poets--highly fluid in their creativity--tend to have produced half their lifetime creative output by age 40 or so. Historians--who rely on a crystallized stock of knowledge--don't reach this milestone until about 60.
Not sure "poet or historian" is a particularly representative sample of careers.
If you stare at a cob house, it doesn't stare back into you.
But if you're inside the cob house, it might be staring at t he back of your head.
If you listen to a cob house, though, it will listen hard back to you. You know why.
Historians accomplish half their lifetime creative output after 60? Count me as a skeptic. [maybe it's vacuously true if you allow old people to self-define their best output]. I can't recall or find the quote but some mid-20th century American author said most of his career was spent trying to recall what he did so well and easily in his 20s, and he made it sound like the general writerly condition, which sounds about right to me. Thanks Heebie for the summary, especially if he quoted David Brooks unironically I'm sure I would not have made it through the original.
There were a few good parts. This would make a good scene in the biopic of this guy's life especially if he was played by Will Ferrell.
Perhaps the worst moment in my young but flailing career came at age 22, when I was performing at Carnegie Hall. While delivering a short speech about the music I was about to play, I stepped forward, lost my footing, and fell off the stage into the audience.
The stuff about empirical research into cognitive decline in this article is Gladwellian simplification to the point of being not colorable, for whatever that's worth.
21. Richard White, Fernand Braudel and CiCely Wedgwood, line 1 please
And I'll take Paul Levy or Leo Kadanoff's late output with very great good cheer,
The advice not to identify too closely with one's professional identity and to seek balance is very sound, and nice to see it in mass-market US print coming from someone who's not a flake, but it's even more applicable to young people who may not realize that failure has a short half-life. The tone and the anecdotes of this article are much better than the "reasoned" substance. I'm glad it got the venue it did overall
23: I didn't read it, but that's still good to know.
So what's up with the happiness-plummeting group?
This was actually addressed in the talk I mentioned a few weeks ago on neurodegenerative disorders. That speaker argued that mental illness with first onset after your thirties has an organic, neurodegenerative primary cause.
I am in my 50s and am completely unable to get employment in the field I have been working in since I was my mid-twenties. I send out resumes and nothing happens. It sucks, and part of what sucks about it is that I am not as sharp as I was then.
This is a potentially interesting topic, from an utterly unreliable narrator in every respect. I wouldn't believe this guy if he told me the sun rose in the east. He's got a lifelong track record of supporting terrible policies with dishonest rhetoric.
I would be interested in reading a responsible piece of journalism on the prevalence of ageism (I'm shocked by the number of my peers who are willing to openly express it in person), the genuinely mixed motivations people have for hanging on to jobs (yes, purpose; but also, I know a couple of folks who are staying because they desperately need the health insurance and/or white collar opportunities to take flex time for caregiving, not because at 60-something they are deeply compelled by their jobs) and strategies for addressing these issues societally and individually. Sadly, this ain't it.
28 is one of the things that worry me about having a job that is pretty much all technical.
Age discrimination is absolutely epidemic. Don't get old!
Yeah, I don't approve of AEI in any way, but the certainly the impending reality of professional decline is undeniable.
I've been working for a long time with a couple of older lawyers. One fellow just turned 80 -- he was smarter than me when we started working together in the mid-90s, and still is. Another fellow is 85, and has noticeably declined in just the last year or so.
The sort of more immediate thing, to any of us in what is basically a gig economy, is aging out of an active network. Both lawyers I office-shared with here have now retired -- one at the end of 2018, the other at the end of 2017 -- because maintaining a law office had become an expensive hobby. People in their 40s hire lawyers in their 40s and 50s. Not mid-60s, so much. You don't even have to get worse at it to have the new cases start to dry up.
(I had to take a break writing this comment to take a call from a lawyer in NJ who wants me to join up and file a summary judgment motion in an APA case pending there. Come argue it the judge wants to see a human. OK, that could be fun.)
On the upside, all the good stuff people have been telling you about the grandparent gig is true.
Let's all pretend to be boomers [on Facebook].
Jammies got laid off last year for being over 40, for sure. We kept the severance package rather than sue. He's changing careers to one with more, uh, crystalized knowledge. (Teaching high school.)
He can warn you of the problem ones before they get to college.
35: I know all the high school math problems.
yes ageism really bites. I mind intensely the assumption -- occasionally voiced out loud -- that I can't go out and report on stuff because of a fixed gulf of incomprehension between me and young people.
I wonder if there are studies of ADD across the lifecycle yet. Somehow i doubt aging brings tranquillity.
It's not possible for me to call any state of mind I experience "tranquility," but I really am much more calm in my forties than I was in my thirties. Possibly this is just a reflection of the increasing age of the youngest member of the household and not my increasing age.
The main downside of aging is that I can't hardly drink if I don't want gastric pain. And if I do drink, it has to be not very much beer.
I can't drink if I want to sleep at night.
Have you tried just drinking until you pass out?
I can fall asleep easily. I just can't stay asleep.
Oh. That's harder to deal with. Drinking lots of water helps you have to wake up to pee instead of having to wake up with a dry mouth.
I guess maybe butt chugging is the solution to gastric problems with drinking.
I'm probably dating myself, but I've never butt-chugged anything harder than pepto.
I guess if you can't keep medicine down.
I should have gone with "Tab" over "pepto" in that joke, I think.
No, much better to go with the pepto because pH levels.
Anyone who can be satisfied with a life that involved being president of AEI is a moral cretin.
Don't butt-chug the cement milkshakes.
It brings all the boys to your parking lot.