As an engineer you are trained to optimize. As you get older you optimize for the fact that you're more experienced and hence a better decision maker and you ha

As an engineer you are trained to optimize. As you get older you optimize for the fact that you're more experienced and hence a better decision maker and you have less patience for routine everyday tasks. You choose to take on work that differentiates you based on your experience. You ability to analyze a problem never goes away. You may take a little longer than before, but that doesn't make a difference and if push came to shove, you could always perk up for the moment. So you're like a processor that can go turbo at 1.8GHz but most of the time you're running steady at 400MHz and your ability to execute multiple instructions per clock is much greater than your younger peers. So you're low power, long battery life and can speed up for short bursts of time.