“Another day, another hobby.”
Are you 80 years old, learning a new language, setting a new personal benchpress record and making TikTok videos? You might be an anomaly in the matrix.
On Thrive Global articles we read:
“50 Ways To Live On Your Own Terms”
– tricks on self-improvement,
“Self-Improvement Take Your Eyes Off Of Yourself”
– advice on not buying into generic self-help books,
“The Self-Improvement Week”
– article on how to manage your time and focus
If You Don’t Improve, You Rot
(And what virtually all self-improvement content doesn’t touch)
If you ever visited a retirement home you will probably have heard the phrase: “We regret what we didn’t do, not the things we did” and admittedly it sounds a bit cheesy, but only when you actually see the regret in the eyes of an over 90-year-old that is simply unable to change anything at this point in their life you will understand what it means.
Improving oneself is not just about getting better, it is essential for maintaining a healthy mind and body.
“Between three days and one week, we start to see the beginning of gingivitis, a form of gum disease.”
Just a few days of not brushing your teeth and you get sick
“You can expect the residual training effect to last around 15 to 18 days, or a little more than two weeks. After that period, if you don’t continue challenging your body enough to maintain those adaptations, your endurance will start to fade. “
Don’t work out for a couple of weeks and your muscles break down
“The pathways leading to the hippocampus degrade over the years. Just like your body, your brain needs regular exercise to stay in top form.”
Stop studying and memorizing and you turn into a vegetable.
“SuperAge” i.e. keeping your mind sharp as you age doesn’t come easy. Pleasant puzzles like Sudoku are not enough to provide the benefits of superaging. Neither are the popular diversions of various “brain game” websites. You must expend enough effort that you feel some “yuck.”
Old-timers especially have a hard time adjusting. Imagine a senior starting an internship or an 80-year-old Fortnite player. We get comfortable with what we have learned. As we progress, we reach a certain status in our fields and carriers. To throttle down requires to let go of entitlement, ego, and safety.
If you have integrity, you already throw excuses right out of the window. You already know age doesn’t matter and neither does your ego.
Level 101
We need to keep moving or we rust. The movie “The Intern” beautifully covers this concept.
Seventy-year-old widower Ben Whittaker, a retired executive from DEX One, applies to a senior citizen intern program after retirement has become too boring for him. He applies to About The Fit, a fast-growing e-commerce fashion startup in Brooklyn.
As we get older, we get busy. Lots of things on our to-do list and of course, we make time for friends and family. There is not much time to explore and discover. This stays in total contrast to the youngest generations. You can’t afford not to learn from them.
Talking to your relatives in their tens is like looking into the future
Keep up with what they are up to and you are back to the future.
Successful people and businesses have something in common: they were at some point called crazy, impossible or straight-up stupid for trying something difficult and outside of the norm.
Virtually all of infamous Bruce Lee’s quotes are about learning and practicing.
Corporate example: bitgrit Inc.
With this mindset, the Japanese data science start-up appointed a 19-year old as CEO and myself – a nomad with no formal education, put the majority of departments under female management, joined forces with Estonian and Indian tech talent including opening offices in these regions and, when there was no suitable event, just straight up created the World Data Science Forum instead of waiting for one to happen. And they do cricket. Right now, they try to save dogs with AI via a freshly launched competition platform.
Conclusion:
Starting a new enterprise can be exciting no matter how experienced you are in the field this venture is in. It’s a new challenge, a new level and you are not alone.
If you look at the work of outstanding individuals such as Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos there is a clear pattern: they all have multiple businesses and keep starting new ones. They are all considered inspirational, driven, young in their minds and of course crazy and childish.
Don’t you want to be a childish billionaire,
shooting the cars you designed cars you into space?
