Have you walked into a room and forgotten why you went there, then immediately wondered if this is how decline begins? I have. Usually I was holding my phone while looking for my phone, which did not improve the mood.
We are quick to compare today's brain with the one we had at 22. That is a fairly unfair contest. At 22, many of us could stay out until 2am, sleep badly and still function. We also made decisions that our current brains would reject within seconds. Speed is not the whole story.
Dr Norman Swan, a physician and science broadcaster, makes a useful distinction between cognitive decline and cognitive change, as he explains in a recent interview with The Guardian. Fluid intelligence, the fast problem-solving kind, tends to peak when we are young. Crystallised intelligence, built from knowledge and experience, can keep improving with age.
In plain language, you may take longer to recall a name but be much better at spotting a bad idea. That counts.
Age panic makes every forgotten password feel like evidence. Yet memory is affected by sleep, stress, depression, alcohol, medication and the sheer quantity of things we ask our heads to hold. A day has 24 hours. Take away eight for sleep, nine for work and commuting, two for cooking and housework, and another two for family admin. You now have three hours left and 47 browser tabs open in your mind. Perhaps the brain is not broken. Perhaps it is busy.
Swan also talks about "scaffolding", the brain's ability to build and use networks that support thinking as we age. Exercise, learning hard new skills, social contact and managing health risks all help. He also argues that mind wandering can be useful because parts of the brain make connections while we appear to be doing nothing.
This is excellent news for anyone who has stared out of a train window and called it wasted time. I personally support any science that gives me permission to sit quietly without turning it into a productivity project.
If you are between 55 and 60, you are in the Mature Middle-Aged Adult Blob. This is often when retirement changes from a distant concept into an actual question. Swan's point is not that everyone must stay in paid work forever. Physical jobs can become impossible, and many workplaces are bad for us. The useful question is what will replace the thinking, people and structure that work provided.
Retirement can include volunteering, classes, a small business, caring for grandchildren, community work or finally learning the piano badly. Your brain does not require a corporate email account. It does need reasons to pay attention.
A sensible brain plan is not complicated:
None of this guarantees that illness will stay away. It does replace vague fear with things you can do now. More importantly, it lets you value the brain you have instead of mourning the speed of the one you had.
What has your older brain become better at?
These posts continue the conversation this one started.
The age you feel inside turns out to matter enormously for health and wellbeing. And it often has very little to do with how old you actually are.
Read more → MidlifeWhat does it mean to reinvent a career in your fifties when hiring systems are trained to filter you out? A practical and honest look at the 49-54 Blob.
Read more → MidlifeWhen the roles that defined you begin to loosen their grip, something uncomfortable and liberating emerges. One of the least-discussed transitions of midlife.
Read more →