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From Strength to Strength is another interesting book that I have just read. Sort of the type of book one read when they are approaching mid-life. The whole book is mainly about just one basic simple principle, that your brain function will deteriorate as you age. Those things that you find easy when you were younger will gradually become more of a struggle as you age.
There are just two graphs in this book that matters. The first one shows that you will reach your peak about 20 years after career inception on average. This applies to high-skill professions and the decline come sometime between late thirties and early fifties.
The other graph demonstrated that our Fluid intelligence will deteriorate much earlier and our Crystallized intelligence will last longer. Fluid intelligence is defined as the ability to reason, think flexibly, and solve novel problems such as reading, mathematical ability and innovators. Crystallized is defined as the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past. The main idea of this book is to telling us to repurpose our professional life to rely more on crystallised intelligence so that you peak will come later and your decline will happen much, much later. The book gave plenty of example of each from musicians that losing the peak performance as they age to actuaries that could not keep up with the new comers.
This should affect certain profession more than others but as a general rule of thumb, one should pivot to use crytallized intelligence as the wealth of knowledge and experience as you age will be become more apparent as an advantage. Examples were the great composer Johann Sebastian Bach and Charles Darwin. Bach pivot from a great composer and innovator when young to an instructor or mentor when he aged. He aged gracefully and happily. Charles Darwin peak in midlife as an innovator and then hit the wall, he became despondent and depressed. He viewed his life in decline and his life ended in sadness.
I think this applies to everyone to a large extent. Some just try to hold on to the same job or role even as they age and are no longer as sharp as before. Some decline might be noticed and some not or are just tolerated.
The conclusion is that one should start thinking about their career if they want it to last longer. If your job requires you to be creative, innovative and requires alot of brain power like mathematical calcuation (fluid intelligence), then might a good time to plan ahead to repurpose your career so that it can last longer. Or even better, achieve another peak.
