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Why do you think you are not sharp? I bet your problem is that all of your problems in your current business domain are solved and you are bored, not dull. What

by tmikew 17y ago

Why do you think you are not sharp? I bet your problem is that all of your problems in your current business domain are solved and you are bored, not dull. What is a little dull is reading through lists of academic achievements and future academic proposals or thoughts. It comes across a little like trolling for compliments. I am 44 I have house, wife, 3 kids. When I was 23 I was freaking clueless, though I didn't think so at the time. (There is a good chance I still am clueless) School was easy, Navy was easy, studying and taking tests and getting good scores was easy. I was bored and figured there wasn't much else to be done. I was completely wrong about that. So coming from an old guy. I would suggest dumping your easy job and finding one that is challenging for you. There are plenty of hard problems to solve. All of the sharpest people I know never let go of a hard problem until they figure it out, and they refuse to slog through the easy stuff like some kind of drone. There are surprisingly few people in this category. All of the sharpest people I know read continuously about a wide variety of things, and they build or write about things based on their reading. All of the sharpest people I know put down the keyboard and have some other really interesting thing they do.

jacquesm 17y ago
More from another old guy (44 as well). As to staying sharp: I used to think I used to learn really easily. But then I did some digging and found that in general it took me always at least 3 tries to master some new subject. The first a brush up, look at and small understanding. The second when having to do something in or with it and a slightly deeper understanding. The third when the coin finally drops and I felt that I had mastered the subject. Between the three phases there can be arbitrarily long breaks. When I was young and had few responsibilities it would not take long to get through these three phases because I simply had little else to do. Now that I'm older and have a fair bit of other stuff on my plate I find that the 'breaks' in between last longer. But the actual learning does not, in fact if anything it goes faster. So all this may simply be due to an illusion, where 'wall time' vs 'process time' are further apart than they used to be and you're measuring by 'wall time'. You're probably every bit as sharp if not sharper than you used to be, but you perceive it to be otherwise.

by tmikew 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

More from another old guy (44 as well). As to staying sharp: I used to think I used to learn really easily. But then I did some digging and found that in general it took me always at least 3 tries to master some new subject. The first a brush up, look at and small understanding. The second when having to do something in or with it and a slightly deeper understanding. The third when the coin finally drops and I felt that I had mastered the subject. Between the three phases there can be arbitrarily long breaks. When I was young and had few responsibilities it would not take long to get through these three phases because I simply had little else to do. Now that I'm older and have a fair bit of other stuff on my plate I find that the 'breaks' in between last longer. But the actual learning does not, in fact if anything it goes faster. So all this may simply be due to an illusion, where 'wall time' vs 'process time' are further apart than they used to be and you're measuring by 'wall time'. You're probably every bit as sharp if not sharper than you used to be, but you perceive it to be otherwise.