Crisis

Evil

The Evil Twins (#1 and #2) have been counseling me through a bit of a personal and professional crisis. "Professional" because my work is involved, but mostly "personal" because it's about getting old. I feel like I am racing against the clock to accomplish things in life, but the clock is quickly running out.

I've been thinking about a paper that I read some time ago. Among other things, the paper discusses "Why Productivity Fades With Age." (Focus of the analysis is on scientists, specifically: mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and biologists. I am none of these things officially, but I was educated as a computer scientist, so I still naturally identify with the scientific crowd.) There are some startling data points in this paper, including:

* Nearly a quarter (23.6%) of all scientists make their most significant contribution in their career during the five years around age 30.

* Two-thirds (65.0%) will have made their most significant contribution before their mid-30's.

* 80% will have done so before their early 40's.

Check out the histogram below. Notice the very steep drop-off once you pass the peak.


The study also took a brief look at non-scientists as well. Check out the graphs for jazz musicians, painters, and authors.

Other interesting tidbits from the paper (and my own Googling) include:

* Orson Welles was a mere 26 when he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane, which many consider to be the greatest movie ever made.

* James D. Watson made the greatest discovery in biology in the 20th century at the age of 25, winning the Nobel Prize for it. (Co-discovered the structure of DNA with Francis Crick.)

* Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect, a paper that was published when he was 26 years old. (Einstein published his paper on general relativity when he was 36, although he had done work on the topic earlier in his life. Still, 36 is not that old.)

* Alan Turing, often considered to be the father of modern computer science, was 24 when he submitted his momentus paper, "On Computable Numbers." This paper provided a formalization of the concept of the algorithm and computation (The Turing Machine).

Well, my mid-20s are already long gone, but I feel like I still have some productive years left. I'd say 8 more years. I told the Evil Twins that I'm giving myself til age 40 to accomplish all the major things that I want to. After that, it's fading into post-40 obscurity whether I like it or not.

I also talked to Lil' A about this yesterday over 3 martinis. We decided that we need to make it onto the 40 Under 40 list.