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How to Deal With an Aging Brain?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm sure this is something all older Slashdotters are aware of: as I get older my once-sharp brain is, well, getting worse. In particular, I'm not able to remember things as well as I once did. As a geek my capacity in this area was always what defined me as a geek. Nowadays things seem to go in OK, but then leak out. A few weeks later I've mostly forgotten. So, I ask Slashdot: how do you cope with your mind getting older? What's your trick? Fish-oil? Brain Training on the DS? Exercise? Or just trying harder to remember things?"
Simply take yourself out of situations where it matters ;p
Seriously though.. where I work a lot of the "older guy's" tend to migrate into roles where they don't need to keep mountains of info bouncing around their head all the time. Roles where people come to them for guidance and advice.. but don't expect them to know the ins and outs of the systems. Let the young guys be the walking encyclopedias while you chill-ax into retirement.
The notion that memory == intelligence is just wrong. Just get over it, and let a computer do all the memory for you. Use your brain for what it's uniquely qualified to do.
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
I use to be very anal about remembering every detail. As I've gotten older I'm less concerned with this. I use technology (Outlook calendar/tasks, smartphone, Google Calendar for personal) to remember less and remind me when needed. I only concern myself with concepts and only sweat the details when it comes to actually doing the job.
I feel far less stressed out than I did when I'd try to remember every little ol' thing simply because I thought I needed to be a pedantic nerd. As a bonus I'm realizing there is more to living contently and I feel I have more time to spend on other things.
On top of it all I also make sure to leave the damn things at home when I'm going to do something and don't want distractions. Work can pay me 24/7 if they want me to be available 24/7. Otherwise when I'm not at the office I don't really care.
I do still take the time to know the important things: Birthdays, anniversaries, etc..
No sig for you!!
I bet this suggestion gets ignored completely! This IS Slashdot after all!
Bah!
Absolutely! I'd add:
Do this for 40 years, and you'll be just as sharp at 50 as you were at 20. In other words, if you didn't get into the habit of doing this as a kid, you're probably fscked.
I started on a very, very cool tech R&D project in April at the age of 50. It's one of those things that is so involved that when anyone starts working there their brain swells up for the first month as it is filled up.
I have said many times why couldn't I be like 30 or 40 when my brain worked better and come across something like this?
I make up for the slowly decreasing short term storage by making a lot of notes. Make short term notes for what you are doing now. Then after the rush is over take a few minutes to flesh them out a little in case you have to do it again in a month and have forgotten what you did. It's not unmanly to make notes if it helps you kick the young whippersnapper's butts.
Don't multi-task as many things at once. This helps even the young. I used to work on six systems at a time. Now I do like two and get them right. If you're going to do things over and over take the time to script and automate if there is a ROI. Share the scripts, etc. with others to help save everyone time.
I draw on my 29 years of professional technical experience. I use the professional maturity gained over the years to spend an appropriate amount of time carefully crafting an important email or document. It ends up saving time in the long run.
Over the years you learn what works in business and what doesn't. Tech knowledge is important but learning how people and business works is important too.
I use my 29 years of IT experience in so many different things to my advantage. Last week I reduced a problem down to system tuning. I used those old skills and made a lot of people happy. In the old days system tuning was a way of life. Younger people who haven't dealt with low horsepower and don't do know things like that.
Use your experience with people and maturity gained over the years. I've got a deck of punch cards of assembly code on my desk to remind me how good I've been over the years. Today people can hardly imagine using assembly much less reading a dump. Might just have to do some of assembly in the future to get stuff to run faster.
is that why you're always misplacing your keys and finding the phone in the fridge?
people become senile as they get older because the brain, like the rest of your body, deteriorates with age. how much it deteriorates depends on how you live. unfortunately, as many people get older they become less and less active, and it becomes a vicious cycle.
if you learn to place chess when you're young, and you never stop playing chess, you'll still be able to play quite well even in your old age. you won't be as fast as you were in your mid-20's, but you'll probably still be fast in your mid 80's as you were in your mid-to-late-30's. as long as you keep your brain active, the areas that you use regularly will not degrade very much. so yes, in theory if everyone remained active in their golden years, their brain will still function quite well in all the ways "that matter." but that's not how things are in reality.
in reality people become less active, both physically and mentally, as they age. they don't push themselves as hard mentally, and they also stop stretching their mind/creativity. senior citizens also tend to be less socially active, and a lack of regular social interaction/stimulation can also lead to mental decline.
it's got nothing to do with performing menial work for others. neurological degradation is not the same as becoming wiser. nor is becoming more and more useless the same as becoming sager.
Something younger technical people forget is that managing a group of people requires more skills than knowing how to obfuscate a perl script.
If technical people are great problem solvers they could apply the skills, allegedly learned doing "fun" stuff, to the problem of implementing productive teams of techies.
This nonsense about management being a dead end for techies needs to be put to rest frankly, a good manager will enable technical people to do their job by isolating them from all the bullshit that comes from higher hierarchical levels while at the same time setting realistic objectives for all the parties involved. Having being a techie should be a great plus for somebody managing other techies, not an artificial hindrance.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.