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Ask HN: Cognitive decline making my work low quality?

4 points by throwawaydeclne 10y ago

I'm 37 or 38 now. I feel like my mind has got progressively less capable in the last say, five years. I can't work out whether this is a perception thing, or associated with my health, or something to do with my working environment or lifestyle. I was just posting this to see if anyone had similar experiences or advice to help me work out why. Typically I have an hour in the gym in the morning doing cardio. I start work at 9am, and typically finish at 7pm. It seems right now I have lost all my rigour. I find myself in a codebase trying to work something out for an hour where it feels like it should be a simple thing I should be able to grasp in five minutes. I constantly have to flip back and forth to remember things. Five years ago I was TDD all the way. Now I find myself writing no tests, fiddling with my code because I don't feel I can work out how any outcome is reached so I tweak, deploying, retry. It all feels very inefficient and stupid. At the moment I've got about 10 different projects on at the same time at work, and I typically switch projects when interrupted by others, it isn't possible to plan. I try to keep a task list but it soon ends up with 30 red items on it, and there's so many tasks I've forgotten them.. However I'm a lot slower than I used to be. I lack motivation unless I have a bit of modafinil, but that doesn't really push the needle anymore and I'd have to have 100mg or more to really increase my speed, and that makes me even more scatterbrained in the evenings. I am trying to write my own SAAS in spare time which goes a bit technically better but there's still not much pride or rigour. If I compare this to 5 years ago, my mind would be clearer, I'd be unleashed upon a codebase and could understand it quickly. I'd build tests and have pride in what I'm doing. I'd have a plan for systems. I'd be able to build pictures of systems in my head. Right now I feel slovenly, stupid and slow.

vog 10y ago
You might want to prefix your title with "Ask HN:"
- throwawaydeclne 10y ago
  Thanks for your help. This is the sort of small mistake I make so many times each day.
dfraser992 10y ago
I will be 47 soon and have noticed the changes you speak of in the last 7 years - 40 was well, ok..., but when 44 rolled around.... For me, the burnout/depression I was going through 38-44 was a big factor. Recovering from that took some time and then I got the "real" flu as in "lay in bed for 3 weeks, can't get up, thought I was going to die due to adrenaline rushes". That took a big physical toll and again, it took more than a few months to feel like I was back on-line. So I'd check that first - your physical and mental health. It sounds like you are stressed despite the exercise or just plain doing too much? It does sound like too much task switching, at least for me. Assuming you are a Type 5 personality on the Enneagram (the stereotypical IT person), you're reporting common behaviors when Type 5s are under stress. I ignored my burnout for far too long unfortunately because I was so driven; it wasn't like I immediately hit a wall but I was going down a hill that got steeper and steeper until it turned into a cliff. Modafinil helped for awhile, but I stopped - it was only a band-aid and I did not want to become reliant on it. A Red Bull is sufficient these days; I think the B vitamins are more the reason than caffiend (I am immune to that after all these years). But that is just me. I am taking a multivitamin regularly now, CoQ10, and a few nootropics, they seem to help. So I'd suggest you think along those lines. But at a higher level of abstraction... do you care that much anymore? Perhaps you're running into the beginnings of a midlife crisis? I have finally realized I don't. IT/development is finally tedious and boring, so I'm going back to school to get a degree in "data science". It is technical, but it's different. And I'm trying to do more creative stuff, like screenplays - all the things I promised myself I'd get to at some point while I was wasting my youth making money for --other-- people. If you have 10 different projects to deal with at work, then that is at least 4 too many, IMO, though I don't know how large they are.
- throwawaydeclne 10y ago
  Thanks for your considered and personal reply. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Glad you have resolved your own issues. I certainly do feel stressed, like there are too many tasks, and like I'm switching tasks. The work I'm doing currently is because I was interrupted from work I was doing previously and switched - and that was work I was doing previously I was doing because I was interrupted etc and the stack probably goes down about ten deep. I didn't take modafinil today thinking that it perhaps wasn't helping me think clearly which has helped a little, but I will look into CoQ10. I think perhaps the modafinil compounds the issue a little, I've been taking it for so long I no longer notice the uplift. Perhaps it is time to let me head get used to normality. Your points about not caring, midlife crisis... you might be right. How much I care varies from repulsion to OK. I feel you about wasting time making money for others, it is a source of pain for me. It's that mental thing; the feeling like there is a kind of spongy mist where there used to be clarity that blocks my ability to see. I wish you lots of luck with your new degree, it sounds like a great idea.
sharemywin 10y ago
You might want to take a break from your Saas program for a while. I have trouble sleeping which I feel causing me to have problems concentrating in the afternoon. Or maybe go on a vacation and get away from working for a while.
- throwawaydeclne 10y ago
  Thanks for your reply. Not bad ideas. I would love a long vacation, though money would be a problem. Have one planned for next year.
  - sharemywin 10y ago
    take the 3 days off during thanksgiving or Christmas week. http://www.tripstodiscover.com/14-of-the-best-places-in-the-u-s-to-spend-thanksgiving-weekend/ http://www.tripstodiscover.com/14-of-the-best-places-in-the-...
JamesBarney 10y ago
Many people would be surprised what depression feels like, and how much influence it has on cognitive abilities. The hippocampus is very involved with attention, focus, and memory and it atrophies with depression. Sometimes depression can cause pseudo-dementia which looks just like dementia except it's fixed just like depression.(One persons IQ fell from 130 to 70, and rebounded up to 115 after being treated with anti-depressants.) You are doing a lot of stuff. Just reading about it stressful. And just because you don't feel sad I wouldn't rule out depression. If you do have depression then when you slow down in life, and take an SSRI you'll find that you're memory starts improving dramatically and you'll feel like your old self. If that doesn't work then the other option is seeing a neurologist and getting a very expensive battery of tests with the very probably outcome "Hmm you seem fine".
- throwawaydeclne 10y ago
  That's an interesting thought. I am seeing my doctor soon so I might raise this with them to see if this is something that is plausible. I don't feel in touch with myself enough to know if this is going on. It feels like it might ring a bit true, although that's not 'how I think of myself'. Thanks for your reply.