[velcro]

Comments so far are sort of singling out the "negatives" i.e. make it seem like 40yo just don't want to put in the time anymore (for one reason or another) but the article also mentions stuff like:

- At 40+ you're more judicious about where you put your energy

- In your 40s, you have some accumulated wisdom: you recognize patterns faster and are more willing to change course

Do I have the blind faith to grind it out 5+ years in a stagnating startup on an off chance it might take off someday - especially if I've done that before? Looking for a better way is not always a bad thing. On another hand - my 20yo self wouldn't have believed my 40yo self - some things you just have to live through.

[mijustin]

I'm the author of the post. I think you've discerned the central tension I was exploring here.

Part of what I'm identifying is a simple truth: in your 40s, you don’t have that same kind of “raw firepower” you had when you were younger.

That doesn't mean you can't still be ambitious or leverage your accrued wisdom, network, and resources to launch a company; it just means the dynamics are different.

[QuantumGood]

Generalizing always misses things. I'm 65, and until recently, sometimes worked 15 hour days with no breaks. I value "being able to work" increasingly more with each passing year.

It's possible only because I've a had a lot of years to learn and experiment with how to have MORE "firepower". I had so many health issues when I was younger, I couldn't accomplish much. It affected my life goals and perspective tremendously. At the same time, if I don't do enough things right now, I suffer faster. Even with my issues at a younger age, I could get away with much more when I was younger.

[spondylosaurus]

As the saying goes... work smarter, not harder :)

[spondyl]

I'm only 30 and honestly, sometimes I sit down at a side project and think "How the heck did I just sit here and grind out this entire desktop application" when now I'll struggle to work on it for an hour at a time.

Part of it is motivation in that it went from being a personal project I use to something others primarily use but I also constantly ask myself "Is this really what I want to spend my time on" which was never really a thought back then when it was just fun (and something I needed)

Not exactly the same but echoes of the raw firepower thing where it's easy to fully commit if you either have nothing else or you're fully sure of your dedication otherwise you're sort of one toe in the pool and aren't sure whether to save your energy

[light_hue_1]

> Part of what I'm identifying is a simple truth: in your 40s, you don’t have that same kind of “raw firepower” you had when you were younger.

I wish this self-harming myth would stop being repeated as a "simple truth". It's a simple falsehood. It comes from a 100-year old idea about scientific productivity, that science (and specifically mathematics) is a young person's game. This has been widely debunked for many decades now.

The reality is that a lot of people use this myth to not admit the fact that they burned themselves out and lost their drive. Then they don't take care of their mental health and use this unscientific nonsense as the excuse for why things went wrong.

I see it in colleagues all the time in science. Some burn out, others get far better, smarter, and can get things done that they couldn't have a decade before. It has nothing to do with wisdom, network, resources, etc.

[Dalewyn]

>On another hand - my 20yo self wouldn't have believed my 40yo self - some things you just have to live through.

As Otto Von Bismarck once said: "Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others."

[velcro]

Sure - and Plato once said: "Quotation marks are always a sign of absolute truth."

[drewcoo]

He also said "What we learn from History is that no one learns from History."

He was the Prussian friggin' Yogi Berra.

[fijiaarone]

How old was Bismark when he said that?