As a child I was obsessively aware of other people's opinions of me, so I was afraid to make mistakes. Today, I am much better at putting myself in the learning mindset because I have learned a basic truth: learning is essentially the same as temporarily making a fool of myself, but in a safe place. That's how we all learned to walk, talk, and read, after all. If we can learn such complex skills as those then we can surely pick up a lot more skills, with effort.
I wish I had understood that as a child. I tried to learn to dance and act, but I mostly failed because I didn't really put myself out there. I did learn to sing thanks to choirs. I got into computers partly because all my mistakes were completely private.
There's no reason I can't continue to learn new skills. I just need to shed my ego and try things without reservation.
In other words, you can only learn to do by doing. However, I don't agree with the "safe place" bit. Sure, some things require a safe setting to practice in because of the danger the real thing entails, but that's not most things. You need to meet reality as it is and as you are--that's when the gears really click into place and you begin to grow. It's why pretense will always stifle learning because you're too busy shutting yourself off from a real encounter. It's a retreat from reality and into the blinding comfort of the ego. Indeed, humility, so often confused with modesty, is actually the honest appraisal of the self, strengths and weaknesses, and the willingness to examine them as fully as necessary. Those who lack humility ultimately lack the courage to go out and to gladly be subjected to all the feedback, good and bad, constructive or not. I have found that it profits a person immensely to stop trying to appear smart and to be fully honest and open to being affected, changed and improved. It's the only way to learn and to learn about yourself. Only then can the hunger of ignorance be fed with knowledge and understanding and the shackles of error and confusion be broken.
I'm almost 64. I will get my CSP (Certified Scrum Professional) certification soon. I am learning Python and taught myself Java at 52-54.
I can run circles around some of my younger associates in terms of critical thinking, design thinking, and integrative thinking. My job requires this and I do it whenever needed.
I think a lot of people can relate to this. I was always afraid of asking questions when surrounded by people more knowledgable than myself. I didn't want to appear stupid, or ignorant by not knowing something I assumed I should have already learned. I later realized that it makes so much more sense to bite the bullet and ask the question the first time. The longer you go pretending to know something, the more embarrassing it becomes when you have to eventually ask what it is later. The people who do this are the ones who appear knowledgable in later situations.
It's been said, "You learn nothing from succeeding".
To grow, we must learn how to fail well. I agree; the goal is to succeed or fail egolessly: efficiently and productively, without regret, even do it eagerly as one explores a new path... then failure becomes merely a lesson in what not to try, before you try again.
I see it was a matter of how you view your self-worth in the face of a mistake. Society in general likes to put one down for making a mistake regardless of how small or insignificant.
And one's inner dialogue tends to be the nastiest critic and chips away at motivation when learning something new.
It doesn't help that many humans tend to put down others more easily if they perceive them as weak regardless of similar or different identity. Being of the same age, gender, ethnicity, etc. doesn't matter. And people strive really hard to reframe their perspective to view others as weak too.
> Or perhaps children are simply less inhibited and aren’t so scared about making mistakes.
Struck a chord there - because I had come to the same conclusion of sorts, about my ability to practice activities in public.
Riding a bicycle is a fairly hard thing to learn and very easy to practice (from my experience), but learning to do that when everyone around is falling off them was much less of a struggle than trying to learn ice skating in my mid thirties, when everyone at the "cheap skate night" is just gliding by with no effort.
There's a certain embarrassment which distracts from the task at hand. And being good at several other things, which are more immediately satisfying to do also factors into the decision to spend time learning something new which you'll never be as good as the ones who started when they were 5.
Right now, I'm struggling to learn enough spanish to converse with my kid & observing language learning first-hand, in third person. The words just come out without any particular boundaries in production - grammar, conjugations, gender, whether it is the right word.
Everything is optional and the only discouraging response is skipping the conversation and trying to ignore it.
Learning a language (spoken, not programming) is similar. If you're willing to sound like an idiot with a bad accent, constantly messing up words and parts of speech, it's easy to get immersed. If you're self conscious it's significantly more difficult.
Children are used to being bad at stuff, they don't expect to be good straight away.
Adults avoid stuff they can't do and also expect to be better at stuff because they're adults. I teach clay craft/pot throwing - for some reason adults think they can come along and make/throw a vase on their first go. Like expecting to rock up and make a wedding cake with no prior experience at baking.
I'm self taught, my first timers manage pots at a level that took me about a year to achieve.
We see first hand at painting sessions the birth of inhibition in art - parents who tell their child the painting they're doing is _wrong_ because the adult thinks they (the adult!) can do it better. The child isn't allowed space to simply express, to learn the movements of the brush and feel of the paint, to make "mistakes".
I'm 36 and only weeks ago started skiing. My way of dealing with the "embarrassment" of face planting the snow a lot, though I can't say I ever consciously chose this, is to make sure I'm the one doing most of the laughing.
My belief is this: given how much I've learned from my mistakes, I think it would be wise to make quite a few more. Hopefully new ones.
Some kids are less inhibited and scared but some aren't and they need active help to get through the anxiety. I think there is a genetic component at play because how else is that learned behavior.
It struck a chord with me too. I'm finding in my 30's a lack of fear (or an ability to manage it) that I didn't have when I was younger that makes me want to seek out new experiences and learn new things more in some ways than I did when I was in my teens and 20's (and more "pliable"). This research makes me feel good about my chances and about the benefits that could come with learning new things.
I cannot resist from a sarcastic comment. I find it cute when Americans claim they are "learning a foreign language". Currently I live in a 5th country. Each of them had completely different language, only two were from the same language family. I had no knowledge of English until I had been ~18.
I am 33, and I have paid a lot of anecdotal attention to what seems to keep my brain fresh, i.e. able to still learn new skills at a rapid clip. Just by way of credentials: I was a successful lawyer for a few years of my 20s (rising to level of federal law clerk), but then taught myself to program and have been working as a professional programmer since shortly before my 30th birthday. Even though I am on the older side of the programmer market, my career has been great, and I've been able to rapidly rise in the ranks. I also know a fair amount about design and business strategy now.
The secret seems to be: Practice. If you want to be able to do new things, you need to always be doing new things. I am always trying to learn something new - mentally and physically. For example, I am very right-side dominant in my body, but I have lately been trying to open more doors with my left hand, throw stuff at the trashcan with it, etc.
Always be doing at least one new thing in your life if you want to be doing new things for the rest of your life. It is OK to fail at a new thing! You just have to admit failure, pat yourself on the back for your courage, take stock of what went right and wrong, then pick a new new thing to do.
Relatedly, I have noticed that some people who I considered much smarter than me as a teenager often no longer appear to be, and I believe it is because they stopped trying to grow new types of skills and thus let their brains stagnate.
It is hard to do unfamiliar things, but so worth it.
I'm 31, and I started learning to draw a bit over a month ago. Progress is slow, but it's been visible.
The kicker was when I realized that talent doesn't really exist; talent is built. The sort of people who are "naturally" talented at drawing and arts are likely to be people who are naturally more intuitive (rather than analytical) and will spend lots of time just grinding away at things instead of trying to understand them intellectually until they don't need to understand it anymore. Sort of like a physically fit person would just climb over an obstacle while an analytical but untrained person might get stuck trying to figure out a "smart" solution.
I consider myself much more of an analytical person, which is partly why I am learning to draw. I want to strengthen my intuitive side as well.
It doesn't hurt that the theory of drawing (which includes the physics of light, human psychology and understanding of form) is actually quite interesting. Practicing my muscle memory today also lead to a small epiphany when I realized that instead of focusing on making an ellipsis with my pen, I have to focus on my shoulder muscles and get them to move my arm elliptically and drawing then simply happens.
If you're interested in learning to draw yourself, check out drawabox.com
Yes, always be trying to do at least one new thing. At the moment I'm on a new old thing, enhancing a Web site with very slightly more daring CSS, and also getting better performance from my solar-powered RPi2 than I seem to be able to get from CloudFlare's state-of-the art monster operation! B^>
I'm 30 and a senior developer. But I started out with an English degree and had planned to be an academic. In the intervening years I have been a technical writer, a business analyst, a QA and even had a ill-judged stint as a recruiter. Oh, and I was a UX designer for a year, albeit not a very good one.
Now I am thinking of becoming a lawyer or civil servant, but worry that I may no longer be mentally agile enough to learn a new skillset. So I'm very glad to read this article!
Incidentally, as someone heading the opposite way to yourself, do you have any advice / warnings for a developer thinking about law?
The secret is definitely to practice, I've found an even bigger shortcut is to convince/pay/beg an expert to be your coach or mentor. And once they are your coach, demonstrate that you respect their feedback by obeying when they tell you to update your approach.
As I get older it gets much much harder to feel stupid at something new when you know what it feels like to be very good at something else. This I feel is the key reason people stop picking up new skills, it feels miserable to be back at a beginner level and so much more satisfying to do something you’re proficient at.
However, if you can recognize this and reset your expectations then you will probably find you have extensive general skills to bring to bear around learning and self discipline. Those skills will make the actual learning process overall much quicker compared to learning your first few major skills, it just might not feel like it.
Actually I read your opening line the opposite way you intended, and agreed with my version of it!
I find myself less stressed by inevitable failures as I know that I have already proved myself in a number of ways, so anyone who infers idiocy from my learning stumbles may themselves be the idiot... %-P
One issue I'm having when learning new things (at 41) is memory. I don't feel less sharp than before, but I have a harder time to recall things that I studied a few months before. For instance, I regularly take coursera classes but one year later, I don't remember much. I'm trying to take more notes, hopefully it'll help.
Are you absolutely certain it was better when you were younger? I don't remember much from high school or college, especially for the classes where I crammed the night before exams.
If you do remember your studies better from youth, consider that a high school or college course is typically several months' worth of daily classes, while a Coursera class is maybe 10 hours total where your brain thinks you're vegging out at home alone watching TV. If you could somehow spare a full-time semester today at 41, I bet you'd retain a good amount of what you learned.
Do you exercize? At 25 my memory was great even after a week of sitting on my ass, but now that I'm 31 my memory goes straight to Hell if I don't break a sweat at least twice a week.
I think the article paints too rosy a picture for older minds.
Yes you can learn things as you get older but the bar for your achievements gets lower and lower as you age.
Let's take chess: There are no cases of a novice starting to learn at the age of 25 and becoming a grandmaster. You need to do some of that deliberate practice at an early age. I suspect the case is the same for math,programming, violin playing etc.
It is not just the case of kids having more time to dedicate to a skill/hobby because there are people of independent means who pursue chess at an adult age and still fail to advance.
As you get older your ability to truly master a skill declines.
That does not mean that you can't become a productive programmer at age 60 or 70.
It just means that you will not achieve Bill Joy || Fabrice Bellard || John Carmack levels of proficiency and I suppose that is ok. :)
I doubt there are many cases of people starting to run at 25 and becoming Olympic sprinters either. And for the majority of us, that's ok. Learning when one is older is a quality of life issue. It's not about being the best at anything, but rather expanding one's horizons, keeping life fresh and interesting, finding something to challenge oneself and providing motivation and fulfillment. Those opportunities are available to almost anyone who is healthy regardless of age. Mastery is secondary, and it's a bit defeatist in my opinion to not start something new simply because it can't be mastered. Many activities can be enjoyed without achieving full proficiency.
> Let's take chess: There are no cases of a novice starting to learn at the age of 25 and becoming a grandmaster. You need to do some of that deliberate practice at an early age. I suspect the case is the same for math,programming, violin playing etc.
Most perfect information games are _extremely_ memorization biased. A huge part of gaining the initial skill to compete at a decent level is memorizing thousands of positions, openings, and mistakes by other players. It's only after that that the real play begins.
So it's no surprise that older people who don't have the time to invest into this cannot reach the upper echelons. At 25, over a third of your intellectual life is already gone. The raw time you have to learn the basics and experiment at the upper levels is cut in a third.
Bill Joy himself only started programming in graduate school.
It's true that as a general rule, if you haven't revolutionized (or greatly impacted) your field by age 30, you're likely not going to ever do it.
However, that doesn't mean that the mind of people over 30 doesn't work as well. It may just be that people have different personality types, some people don't care that much about revolutionizing the world, and those who do care do not require all that long to do it.
So by age 30 or so, you're left with two self-selected groups: those who passionately wished to change the world and those who focused on some other priority in life instead.
I don't know if you can surmise that older people can't become grandmasters. I doubt that older people have the time that younger people do to practice. Also, as the article talked about, older people are less likely to be vulnerable (ie temporarily look dumb) in order to get better.
So I think, there isn't enough data to conclude that someone older can't be a grandmaster. Though, most people won't be a grandmaster either way, so there aren't that many data points to go off of.
I think that becoming a "grandmaster" of anything is probably outside of the scope of this research as that is a whole other bucket of worms (probably).
And who knows how the prevailing wisdom that you can't teach an old dog new tricks affected the number of people who chose to try to become a grandmaster? Maybe your priorities change when you are older and it has nothing or less to do with raw ability?
Doesn't the level of grandmaster evolve over time - it is essentially a competition between players who are getting better and better?
That means you're not asking whether a 25 year old can achieve a static goal(e.g. read 50 books), but you're asking them to successfully compete with everyone else, which includes other 25 year olds but with 15+ years of experience.
When I reached my early 30's I felt I was getting old.
Looking back I believe this is because I was indeed just past the age of physical prime and could feel the slight slowdown.
When I reached my early 40's all that went away and I kept forgetting I wasn't in my 20's. (although I certainly am not). I didn't feel "old" anymore, but did start to realize life was short and think more about the future.
I don't know if starting to feel "old" in early 30's is common or not. But 30's is a great decade. You certainly aren't "old" at that time relatively, no matter how much you suspect it. I didn't care so much for the 20's. You are still a kid in many ways with kid habits and not as much control over yourself as you learn later, but you don't know it. Or at least I didn't.
Eh, for me the health problems started once I turned 30 (I'm now in my mid-30s). So yeah, I feel a little old, because I get little reminders multiple times throughout the day. Nothing too bad, at least not yet, but enough that I suspect in ten to twenty years I'll be one of those with more serious problems.
Also even though I'm still pretty darn smart, my mental retrieval speed seems to be a lot slower than it used to be. Has made interviews in particular harder to get through.
However, on the plus side, I didn't really start getting comfortable in my own skin until my thirties either. Started figuring out how to talk to people without getting nervous or assuming they're judging every little thing I say and do, started dating a lot more (even though I was in much better physical shape a long time ago I was too self-conscious or kept making excuses not to take chances back then), and figured out some activities I really enjoy that I probably wouldn't have even attempted in my teens and twenties, so there's that.
Resonates with me. Either we aren't ready for society in our 20s or society isn't ready for us. Either way, I think there's a missed opportunity there for a better use of that decade.
I think the single largest obstacle for the older mind to learn is time. A lot more responsibilities curtails your ability to spend as much time as you want to learn a new skill.
One thing I've been trying to do lately is constantly be learning a new juggling trick. For years I just did what I could already do (which wasn't much, but 100% more than people who don't juggle at all), but I've been enjoying breaking down coordination barriers with new tricks (even simple ones) that are similar to things I have done but just different enough to mess my mind up.
> A simple lack of confidence may present the biggest barrier – particularly for older learners, past retirement, who may have already started to fear a more general cognitive decline.
I see this frequently in teaching. It's a horrible downward spiral. And it's been hard for me to learn tact, so I don't add to the problem.
Much of what this article says seems familiar from reading other pieces on this topic, but what was truly new (to me, at least) was the role that exercise/activity in making it possible to anchor and retain what is learned.
[+] [-] hathawsh|8 years ago|reply
I wish I had understood that as a child. I tried to learn to dance and act, but I mostly failed because I didn't really put myself out there. I did learn to sing thanks to choirs. I got into computers partly because all my mistakes were completely private.
There's no reason I can't continue to learn new skills. I just need to shed my ego and try things without reservation.
[+] [-] WalterBright|8 years ago|reply
1. Young people care what others think of them
2. Middle aged people don't care what others think of them
3. Old people realize that nobody thinks about them
[+] [-] danielam|8 years ago|reply
There is no practice life. You learn by living.
[+] [-] epalmer|8 years ago|reply
I can run circles around some of my younger associates in terms of critical thinking, design thinking, and integrative thinking. My job requires this and I do it whenever needed.
[+] [-] mariodiana|8 years ago|reply
When I was 20, I worried what other people were thinking about me.
When I was 40, I didn't care what other people were thinking about me.
When I turned 60, I realized nobody had ever been thinking about me.
[+] [-] jwhitlark|8 years ago|reply
I always thought the corollary was: feeling stupid is ignorance leaving the mind.
[+] [-] DarkTree|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randcraw|8 years ago|reply
To grow, we must learn how to fail well. I agree; the goal is to succeed or fail egolessly: efficiently and productively, without regret, even do it eagerly as one explores a new path... then failure becomes merely a lesson in what not to try, before you try again.
[+] [-] suneilp|8 years ago|reply
And one's inner dialogue tends to be the nastiest critic and chips away at motivation when learning something new.
It doesn't help that many humans tend to put down others more easily if they perceive them as weak regardless of similar or different identity. Being of the same age, gender, ethnicity, etc. doesn't matter. And people strive really hard to reframe their perspective to view others as weak too.
[+] [-] yugoja|8 years ago|reply
I've gone through this as a child and it was paralysing. You always play it safe and that results in you not giving 100%.
[+] [-] gopalv|8 years ago|reply
Struck a chord there - because I had come to the same conclusion of sorts, about my ability to practice activities in public.
Riding a bicycle is a fairly hard thing to learn and very easy to practice (from my experience), but learning to do that when everyone around is falling off them was much less of a struggle than trying to learn ice skating in my mid thirties, when everyone at the "cheap skate night" is just gliding by with no effort.
There's a certain embarrassment which distracts from the task at hand. And being good at several other things, which are more immediately satisfying to do also factors into the decision to spend time learning something new which you'll never be as good as the ones who started when they were 5.
Right now, I'm struggling to learn enough spanish to converse with my kid & observing language learning first-hand, in third person. The words just come out without any particular boundaries in production - grammar, conjugations, gender, whether it is the right word.
Everything is optional and the only discouraging response is skipping the conversation and trying to ignore it.
[+] [-] koolba|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|8 years ago|reply
Adults avoid stuff they can't do and also expect to be better at stuff because they're adults. I teach clay craft/pot throwing - for some reason adults think they can come along and make/throw a vase on their first go. Like expecting to rock up and make a wedding cake with no prior experience at baking.
I'm self taught, my first timers manage pots at a level that took me about a year to achieve.
We see first hand at painting sessions the birth of inhibition in art - parents who tell their child the painting they're doing is _wrong_ because the adult thinks they (the adult!) can do it better. The child isn't allowed space to simply express, to learn the movements of the brush and feel of the paint, to make "mistakes".
[+] [-] TheSpiceIsLife|8 years ago|reply
My belief is this: given how much I've learned from my mistakes, I think it would be wise to make quite a few more. Hopefully new ones.
[+] [-] sjg007|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okreallywtf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] expertentipp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevmo|8 years ago|reply
The secret seems to be: Practice. If you want to be able to do new things, you need to always be doing new things. I am always trying to learn something new - mentally and physically. For example, I am very right-side dominant in my body, but I have lately been trying to open more doors with my left hand, throw stuff at the trashcan with it, etc.
Always be doing at least one new thing in your life if you want to be doing new things for the rest of your life. It is OK to fail at a new thing! You just have to admit failure, pat yourself on the back for your courage, take stock of what went right and wrong, then pick a new new thing to do.
Relatedly, I have noticed that some people who I considered much smarter than me as a teenager often no longer appear to be, and I believe it is because they stopped trying to grow new types of skills and thus let their brains stagnate.
It is hard to do unfamiliar things, but so worth it.
[+] [-] chousuke|8 years ago|reply
The kicker was when I realized that talent doesn't really exist; talent is built. The sort of people who are "naturally" talented at drawing and arts are likely to be people who are naturally more intuitive (rather than analytical) and will spend lots of time just grinding away at things instead of trying to understand them intellectually until they don't need to understand it anymore. Sort of like a physically fit person would just climb over an obstacle while an analytical but untrained person might get stuck trying to figure out a "smart" solution.
I consider myself much more of an analytical person, which is partly why I am learning to draw. I want to strengthen my intuitive side as well.
It doesn't hurt that the theory of drawing (which includes the physics of light, human psychology and understanding of form) is actually quite interesting. Practicing my muscle memory today also lead to a small epiphany when I realized that instead of focusing on making an ellipsis with my pen, I have to focus on my shoulder muscles and get them to move my arm elliptically and drawing then simply happens.
If you're interested in learning to draw yourself, check out drawabox.com
[+] [-] DamonHD|8 years ago|reply
Yes, always be trying to do at least one new thing. At the moment I'm on a new old thing, enhancing a Web site with very slightly more daring CSS, and also getting better performance from my solar-powered RPi2 than I seem to be able to get from CloudFlare's state-of-the art monster operation! B^>
[+] [-] wavefunction|8 years ago|reply
If anyone tells you that, I suggest you take a long hard look at who they actually are.
[+] [-] jbreckmckye|8 years ago|reply
Now I am thinking of becoming a lawyer or civil servant, but worry that I may no longer be mentally agile enough to learn a new skillset. So I'm very glad to read this article!
Incidentally, as someone heading the opposite way to yourself, do you have any advice / warnings for a developer thinking about law?
[+] [-] kirse|8 years ago|reply
The secret is definitely to practice, I've found an even bigger shortcut is to convince/pay/beg an expert to be your coach or mentor. And once they are your coach, demonstrate that you respect their feedback by obeying when they tell you to update your approach.
As they say, perfect practice makes perfect.
[+] [-] Allower|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] matt2000|8 years ago|reply
However, if you can recognize this and reset your expectations then you will probably find you have extensive general skills to bring to bear around learning and self discipline. Those skills will make the actual learning process overall much quicker compared to learning your first few major skills, it just might not feel like it.
[+] [-] DamonHD|8 years ago|reply
I find myself less stressed by inevitable failures as I know that I have already proved myself in a number of ways, so anyone who infers idiocy from my learning stumbles may themselves be the idiot... %-P
[+] [-] yodsanklai|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sowbug|8 years ago|reply
If you do remember your studies better from youth, consider that a high school or college course is typically several months' worth of daily classes, while a Coursera class is maybe 10 hours total where your brain thinks you're vegging out at home alone watching TV. If you could somehow spare a full-time semester today at 41, I bet you'd retain a good amount of what you learned.
[+] [-] twoquestions|8 years ago|reply
Copious notes helps too :)
[+] [-] Allower|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sireat|8 years ago|reply
Yes you can learn things as you get older but the bar for your achievements gets lower and lower as you age.
Let's take chess: There are no cases of a novice starting to learn at the age of 25 and becoming a grandmaster. You need to do some of that deliberate practice at an early age. I suspect the case is the same for math,programming, violin playing etc.
Interesting thread on the topic is here: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/who-is-the-oldest-p...
It is not just the case of kids having more time to dedicate to a skill/hobby because there are people of independent means who pursue chess at an adult age and still fail to advance.
As you get older your ability to truly master a skill declines.
That does not mean that you can't become a productive programmer at age 60 or 70.
It just means that you will not achieve Bill Joy || Fabrice Bellard || John Carmack levels of proficiency and I suppose that is ok. :)
[+] [-] michrassena|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karrot_Kream|8 years ago|reply
Most perfect information games are _extremely_ memorization biased. A huge part of gaining the initial skill to compete at a decent level is memorizing thousands of positions, openings, and mistakes by other players. It's only after that that the real play begins.
So it's no surprise that older people who don't have the time to invest into this cannot reach the upper echelons. At 25, over a third of your intellectual life is already gone. The raw time you have to learn the basics and experiment at the upper levels is cut in a third.
Bill Joy himself only started programming in graduate school.
[+] [-] adrianmonk|8 years ago|reply
However, that doesn't mean that the mind of people over 30 doesn't work as well. It may just be that people have different personality types, some people don't care that much about revolutionizing the world, and those who do care do not require all that long to do it.
So by age 30 or so, you're left with two self-selected groups: those who passionately wished to change the world and those who focused on some other priority in life instead.
[+] [-] mangodrunk|8 years ago|reply
So I think, there isn't enough data to conclude that someone older can't be a grandmaster. Though, most people won't be a grandmaster either way, so there aren't that many data points to go off of.
[+] [-] okreallywtf|8 years ago|reply
And who knows how the prevailing wisdom that you can't teach an old dog new tricks affected the number of people who chose to try to become a grandmaster? Maybe your priorities change when you are older and it has nothing or less to do with raw ability?
[+] [-] Sacho|8 years ago|reply
That means you're not asking whether a 25 year old can achieve a static goal(e.g. read 50 books), but you're asking them to successfully compete with everyone else, which includes other 25 year olds but with 15+ years of experience.
[+] [-] newforice|8 years ago|reply
Here's to hoping you aren't in a hiring position.
[+] [-] mythrwy|8 years ago|reply
Looking back I believe this is because I was indeed just past the age of physical prime and could feel the slight slowdown.
When I reached my early 40's all that went away and I kept forgetting I wasn't in my 20's. (although I certainly am not). I didn't feel "old" anymore, but did start to realize life was short and think more about the future.
I don't know if starting to feel "old" in early 30's is common or not. But 30's is a great decade. You certainly aren't "old" at that time relatively, no matter how much you suspect it. I didn't care so much for the 20's. You are still a kid in many ways with kid habits and not as much control over yourself as you learn later, but you don't know it. Or at least I didn't.
[+] [-] cableshaft|8 years ago|reply
Also even though I'm still pretty darn smart, my mental retrieval speed seems to be a lot slower than it used to be. Has made interviews in particular harder to get through.
However, on the plus side, I didn't really start getting comfortable in my own skin until my thirties either. Started figuring out how to talk to people without getting nervous or assuming they're judging every little thing I say and do, started dating a lot more (even though I was in much better physical shape a long time ago I was too self-conscious or kept making excuses not to take chances back then), and figured out some activities I really enjoy that I probably wouldn't have even attempted in my teens and twenties, so there's that.
[+] [-] aklemm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allsunny|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamstockdill|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HarryHirsch|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepGem|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okreallywtf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirimir|8 years ago|reply
I see this frequently in teaching. It's a horrible downward spiral. And it's been hard for me to learn tact, so I don't add to the problem.
[+] [-] andrewbinstock|8 years ago|reply