At 72 years old, I am more fit than I was at 30, and just as sharp cognitively. Of course, when I was 30, I was a slovenly layabout living on coffee cake.
So I’m 40, and what strikes me about aging is just the degree of discipline I’ve developed over the years/decades. This always seems to be a forgotten advantage of getting older: the increasing level of self-control. Learning a new skill might be harder, but picking up a new habit is easier. This is coupled with more regulated moods and accumulated wisdom in planning one’s activity and thinking.
Having kids puts that virtue to the test. As a father, your job is to impose that discipline and self-control over a people teeming with energy and turbulence. If you’re too young, you’ll likely crack and run away. But with this honed fortitude pushing back against the chaos, you can get that yin-yang balance of healthy family life.
At 60, I was forty-fifty pounds overweight, got out-of-breath walking upstairs, and spent weeks in a walking boot because of plantar fasciitis - but I could still out-code my younger peers. At 68, I've lost forty pounds, my walking pace is generally under 16 minutes per mile, I biked 160 miles in two days in the Poconos, and I am still able to out-code my younger peers.
Decline is not necessary to such an extent, but you have to take charge of our fitness in ways that you didn't need to when you were much younger.
I think so - in that I know more strategies for good code now. Of course, at 25, I was coding in assembly, and counting bytes to make sure everything would fit on a 1K ROM. I haven't had to do that in a long time.
This is why holing up young people in Universities until their mid twenties is a travesty. If academia is for you, great, but everyone else should be starting their career at 20.
At 72 years old, I am more fit than I was at 30, and just as sharp cognitively. Of course, when I was 30, I was a slovenly layabout living on coffee cake.
That's the benefit of loafing about earlier in life. Gives you the opportunity to have an incredible comeback in the third act.
Seems like good advice for the youth
So I’m 40, and what strikes me about aging is just the degree of discipline I’ve developed over the years/decades. This always seems to be a forgotten advantage of getting older: the increasing level of self-control. Learning a new skill might be harder, but picking up a new habit is easier. This is coupled with more regulated moods and accumulated wisdom in planning one’s activity and thinking.
Having kids puts that virtue to the test. As a father, your job is to impose that discipline and self-control over a people teeming with energy and turbulence. If you’re too young, you’ll likely crack and run away. But with this honed fortitude pushing back against the chaos, you can get that yin-yang balance of healthy family life.
At 60, I was forty-fifty pounds overweight, got out-of-breath walking upstairs, and spent weeks in a walking boot because of plantar fasciitis - but I could still out-code my younger peers. At 68, I've lost forty pounds, my walking pace is generally under 16 minutes per mile, I biked 160 miles in two days in the Poconos, and I am still able to out-code my younger peers.
Decline is not necessary to such an extent, but you have to take charge of our fitness in ways that you didn't need to when you were much younger.
But can you out-code yourself at 25?
I think so - in that I know more strategies for good code now. Of course, at 25, I was coding in assembly, and counting bytes to make sure everything would fit on a 1K ROM. I haven't had to do that in a long time.
This is why holing up young people in Universities until their mid twenties is a travesty. If academia is for you, great, but everyone else should be starting their career at 20.
Or earlier