[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Aging and learning. Does it become more diff...
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Ask HN: Aging and learning. Does it become more difficult?
I have to deliberately force myself to learn new things. It could
be anything new for me. I find that as I age I have to stop myself
from hardening in my ways. I have to constantly be on guard to not
fall into my comfort zone. It was much easier to pick up new things
when I was younger. What are your suggestions on how to make it
easier to learn new things? Edit: I'm 30
Author : imheretolearn
Score : 15 points
Date : 2022-08-13 17:58 UTC (5 hours ago)
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| It's interesting how what we believe about our brains can
| actually influence how we end up using them. I subscribe to the
| neuroplasticity theory -- that your brain adapts to whatever
| you're doing the most. So some pathways become super-familiar
| (and harder to break out of) -- but you can start a new pattern
| with consistency. (One way people do this is with a carefully-
| chosen new routine.)
|
| As far as aging goes, its impacts are more diverse than I
| thought, according to a really interesting book called "The
| Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the
| Middle-Aged Mind." Aging brains really haven't been studied until
| recently, and newer research (cited in the book) suggests that in
| some ways the brain improves at certain kinds of thinking during
| aging. (A rough model is that you spend your youth acquiring a
| raw mass of experience, and as you age it gets consolidated into
| actionable chunks.) So while you may have trouble recalling
| specific facts, aging brains also out-perform when it comes to
| synthesizing existing information and extrapolating solutions.
|
| That's just one example from the book. Basically, aging brains
| are a lot more interesting than we give them credit for.
| rwky wrote:
| I find I just learn differently than when I was younger. At
| college I could just sit there listen to the teacher and absorb
| everything. It made doing tests which just require knowing stuff
| without needing to apply that knowledge easy.
|
| These days I'd fail miserably at that but now I can read
| something and figure out how to apply that knowledge to something
| pretty easily. Which I think is the better option.
|
| Try changing how you try learning new things, if you used to read
| things try videos or working through examples.
| miesman wrote:
| Pick things you're passionate about.
| cc101 wrote:
| I believe that we learn by applying and adapting the models
| implicit in things we already know to new situations. The older
| we get the more models we have for forming the foundations for
| new ideas. Beginning a new learning project might benefit from
| asking ourselves what is this like, how is it similar, and how is
| it different. Keeping this model in the back of our minds as we
| learn may help.
| tragictrash wrote:
| There is a physiological change that occurs in the brain as you
| age. It is more difficult to learn as you get older.
|
| Lots of people never stop learning until they die. It's just not
| as easy. Some people do better than others.
|
| 30 is not that age.
|
| You ever consider you may be burnt out?
| maxrf wrote:
| would you mind explaining that a little more please. my
| understanding is that 'slowdown' only has to do with the ease
| of using existing 'understandings' rather than an inherent
| ability to 'learn' (new organisations that work). I'm way past
| 30, the biggest barrier I find is letting go of things that
| were 'easy' and reorganising understanding in new ways.
| borroka wrote:
| Let me answer with a passage from the biography of Federico
| Fellini ("Federico") written by Tullio Kezich, which has become a
| ray of light for me.
|
| "He [Fellini] lived inside things with indomitable curiosity and
| perpetual openness, surrendering himself to what Dostoevsky calls
| "the river of life," in the serene understanding that it always
| takes you somewhere."
| notjustanymike wrote:
| Your interests change over time, which can dramatically impact
| what you learn. It thought from 20-30 I'd be focused on tech
| forever, but now I'm 40 I gravitate towards the nuance of
| conversation. I suspect further changes and by the time I'm 70 I
| won't shut up about grandfather clocks from the 18th century.
|
| So it goes.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| When I was in my 20s, I would learn something about everything.
| Now at 30 I can learn everything about something.
|
| I think the easiest way to learn new things are two simple steps:
|
| 1. Always be reading. 2. Teach yourself how to learn
|
| There's many great books on the latter topic. Once you get the
| basics and understand the different modes of your brain and the
| importance of rest, anything is possible.
| omitmyname wrote:
| which books you could recommend?
| jmartin2683 wrote:
| No. If anything, I find it to be much easier to learn anything
| that extends what I already know, and being older you (hopefully)
| just know more. You have a much more solid base to build upon
| quickly and easily.
| clintonwoo wrote:
| You didn't share how old you are, but I'm almost 30 and felt like
| before while working a highly demanding job my memory and mind
| was slightly affected. Just from sustained pressure over time.
|
| Almost 1.5 years after quitting my mind feels just like it did
| when I was 20. Only difference is now just a different
| personality from being older I'd say. I'll be soon beginning a
| new job though so wish me luck!
| markus_zhang wrote:
| 40. Yeah gonna be more difficult when you have kids. I guess one
| trick is to limit what I'm learning e.g. never learn two things
| simultaneously. Another thing not to overlook is the decay time
| of one learning session: I have to keep the sessions close enough
| so that I don't lose everything I learned from the previous one.
| bobjordan wrote:
| From 30-47 I have only found it easier to learn new skills. I'm
| 47 now and even in the last 10 years, I learned a lot. Like, how
| to build a full stack web app which I've used with our customers
| for a few years, to deliver millions per year in sales. I became
| an expert on at least a dozen programming tech acronyms to get
| that done. Also, I learned 2D/3D mechanical CAD design, I learned
| circuit design and PCB layout (fusion 360/solid works/eagle,
| etc), and I became fairly fluent in Mandarin including some
| literacy with hundreds of characters. I was naturally interested
| in those areas because it helped my business and directly
| improved my life to learn them, but I still had to force myself
| to continue and I think everyone does at some point. Of course,
| this is all anecdotal, but I don't expect age related decline
| should be happening for most people at age 30 unless there's some
| underlying physical health issues.
| spookybones wrote:
| How many do you juggle at once? I'm learning Japanese, but I
| find it eats up a lot of my webdev, fitness, and reading time.
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| Remember why it was that it was easier to learn new things when
| you were younger, yes there is a certain biology for it. (Side
| note: I'm pretty sure I heard Andrew Huberman talk about this and
| he recommended Choline as a supplement to help get your levels to
| similar to someone younger, no idea how correct this is, i've
| made a note to read more into it myself)
|
| But I would say, it is that sense of wonder and imagination that
| you lose when you are older, you've seen stuff, even interesting
| stuff becomes 'oh just another interesting thing, much like this
| other thing i saw before'.
|
| What you need to do is optimise things for novelty, interest,
| excitement and challenge rather than for outcome. As you get
| older, you likely have things you want, these will become goals,
| but these will be based on what you already know and your
| supposed path to them will also be best on your current
| knowledge. The problem is, that won't even get you to anywhere
| interesting, it might not even get you to that 'goal' because the
| world is way more complex than you think and you begin to think
| you know as you get set in your ways.
|
| When you did interesting things, when you learned the most, it
| was when you didn't know any better, you didn't know what you
| were doing, you need to get rid of that idea that you know, you
| need to accept you don't get out of your comfort zone and do
| things, try things, optimise for that novelty rather than an
| outcome and you might find something interesting and that is
| where you will learn the most.
|
| If you really want to learn, change your goal from achieving
| things and outcomes, to seeking out novelty, things that
| interesting/excite you and anything that is a little bit
| challenging for you. It will put you back in that space again, or
| at least as much as you can be.
|
| I found this talk interesting on this subject: It talks about
| lessons learned from AI and machine learning that show this to be
| a valid path. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI&t=1s
| master_crab wrote:
| More prosaically: Having kids makes learning many things
| difficult from a time perspective -- and they tend to show up
| exactly when people imagine they are suffering from age related
| declines.
|
| On a positive note, they do give you other perspectives. So it's
| not all bad.
| swatcoder wrote:
| I was better at unpracticed memorization and recall when I was
| younger. Some decades later, I feel worse at that but better at
| identifying implicit patterns and synthesizing novel insight
| across domains.
|
| So no, I wouldn't say I've found learning more difficult. I just
| recognize there are different things to learn.
|
| My suggestion would be to reassess what you think "learning"
| means, because you're probably already doing a better job of it
| than you're giving yourself credit for.
|
| It sounds like you want to learn explicit material like a student
| might. That's fine, but at some point I would imagine your head
| will get a bit overcrowded with disjoint, received details. If
| you've emphasized that sort of learning in the past, you might
| just be sort of topped up and need to change gears to a more
| sophisticated kind of learning.
| zcw100 wrote:
| Biologically, maybe, but only a little and it won't explain the
| feeling that it's a lot. I don't think it has much to do with any
| age related cognitive decline and mostly to do with more
| responsibilities, more things competing for your time and an
| objectivity that causes you to have different priorities.
|
| As I've gotten older I've only had more and more things competing
| for my time. I have a family, a home, hobbies, etc. I just can't
| devote hours and hours of uninterrupted time. With experience
| there's a lot of "ain't gunna need it" and if I do I'll learn it
| then. I've got plenty of stuff that I sank tons of time into in
| my younger years that only faded into memories and didn't turn
| out to be very useful.
|
| As far as tech goes you'll see enough stuff come and go that
| sinking that much time into it will feel like a waste. Remember
| SOAP, SOA, XML, XSLT, EJB, CORBA, MapReduce, Mesos, Java Applets,
| etc? A lot of what you're doing now is going on that list.
| codingdave wrote:
| Yes and no, depending on what you are learning.
|
| I'm 50, and finding it easier than ever to learn. (Mostly.) For
| most new topics, and in particular new tech skills, there is some
| similarity to something I've learned before. I just need to adapt
| my perspective and learn some new details.
|
| Sometimes I end up wanting to learn something truly new that does
| not match any prior knowledge. That can be hard. And I can
| sometimes feel like I don't want to bother. But such a scenario
| is the exception.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-08-13 23:01 UTC)