Coming Soon- Your Professional Decline

Jason Kottke
22 Jul 2025 14:58:27 PDT

I stumbled across this July 2019 article by Arthur C. Brooks about professional decline and it gave me lots to think about: Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think. One of the takeaways is that different stages of your life require different approaches; I liked this anecdote:

Recently, I asked Dominique Dawes, a former Olympic gold-medal gymnast, how normal life felt after competing and winning at the highest levels. She told me that she is happy, but that the adjustment wasn’t easy — and still isn’t, even though she won her last Olympic medal in 2000. “My Olympic self would ruin my marriage and leave my kids feeling inadequate,â€ she told me, because it is so demanding and hard-driving. “Living life as if every day is an Olympics only makes those around me miserable.â€

I wasn’t aware of the formal concept of crystallized intelligence, but I was talking to my therapist last week about exactly this:

A potential answer lies in the work of the British psychologist Raymond Cattell, who in the early 1940s introduced the concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence. Cattell defined fluid intelligence as the ability to reason, analyze, and solve novel problems — what we commonly think of as raw intellectual horsepower. Innovators typically have an abundance of fluid intelligence. It is highest relatively early in adulthood and diminishes starting in one’s 30s and 40s. This is why tech entrepreneurs, for instance, do so well so early, and why older people have a much harder time innovating.

Crystallized intelligence, in contrast, is the ability to use knowledge gained in the past. Think of it as possessing a vast library and understanding how to use it. It is the essence of wisdom. Because crystallized intelligence relies on an accumulating stock of knowledge, it tends to increase through one’s 40s, and does not diminish until very late in life.

Anyway, the piece is interesting throughout and one I’ll be returning to as I ponder whatever’s next for me.

P.S. I included the illustration by Luci GutiÃ©rrez from the article because I think it perfectly captures the gist of it. That’s me on that 50 stair!

Tags: Arthur C. Brooks Â· Luci GutiÃ©rrez Â· working

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