I spent the greater part of my morning adding Fractal Market Analysis into my Early Retirement Masterclass Web App. Even as I've automated the process of rolling out new code into the cloud, half of the time I was trying to cope with some fundamental changes in the way we do software engineering - for example, today I learned the hard way that Github now requires two-factor authentication.
On the other hand, today is a special day for local dividends investors. 28th September 2021 marks the end of dividends season for Q3 2021. If you've been playing the same game as I do, 4.30pm is a great time to look at your bank account, after which you will not see much moolah for the next 6-8 weeks.
The question I want readers to ask themselves is: how long can you do your shit until you start feeling the effects of professional decline?
This is inspired by an article on the Altantic (link).
The gist of the article is that there are two kinds of intelligence.
Your fluid intelligence determines how open you are to new ideas and how quickly you can grasp concepts and manipulate symbols. I suppose getting work done on a web application depends more heavily on fluid intelligence. As time goes by, not only does my productivity drop, until I find a way to hardcode my password into my batch operations, I find myself using authentication tools twice every time I pus my code into the cloud.
The bad news is this: Fluid intelligence also begins its decline when you hit your 50s. It's actually quite scary if you map this to local data as it mirrors a Singaporean's salary decline as well as shown in this super recent Dollars and Sense article here.
Fortunately, there is a way out.
There is another kind of intelligence called crystallized intelligence that continues to grow and develop as you age. If you play a lot of D&D, this is Wisdom rather than Intelligence. Developing crystallized intelligence is like building a dividends portfolio - it pays regardless of your age. Sometimes the older you are, the larger your pay-outs.
The trick in managing your career is to pivot from a high-paying fluid intelligence career before your 50s into an area where you can depend more reliably on crystallised intelligence. Right now I am really curious about Quantum computing, but the paradigm shift is really drastic, I need to move from bits and bytes to the realm of qubits, Hilbert spaces and Bloch Spheres. It's not a game I can play when I hit my 50s. So instead, I'm better off refining my training program, figure out how to present my materials better to rookie investors, and developing a broader helicopter view on personal finances.
This realization about life shows that most PMET folks here are doing well by virtue of their fluid intelligence, to survive deep into your personal Autumn, somehow you will need to monetise your organizational savvy and wisdom which means you need to take on a more mentorship or trainer kind of role. Alternatively, you may need to build up your social networks.
Otherwise, your professional decline is inevitable.
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