The Subtle Decline to Neverland

and more reasons for everyone writing daily.

Mind and Body are two beautiful gifts we all have been given but they are as perishable as the fruits on your table (thankfully not as quickly, though). They will take their own time to wither away, but there are some habits that you can adopt that can make the inevitable decline even slower and more graceful.

Let me elaborate a bit more on the mind part in today’s piece.

Aging is defined as the process of growing old. It brings along with it a whole cohort of friends like cognitive decline, slowness in thinking, difficulties in sustaining attention, holding information in the mind, or even word finding. Extend these difficulties to your profession, and you might see the handicap you have to sustain professionally or compete effectively in any domain with every passing year. 

And in case you assume that aging may apply more to 60+ year-old folks, then let me inform you that your thinking abilities peak around 30, and from that point onwards, it’s a subtle decline to Neverland. It picks pace in the 60s but the downward move has begun in case you are 30+. 

In case you don’t believe me, then I have a set of questions to ask you -

• Can you sustain your attention for long without getting mentally fatigued?

• Can you avoid distractions or do you give in to them easily?

• Can you focus on your study/reading material for hours?

• Can you learn new skills as gracefully as you once did?

• Can you soldier through your to-do list/chores?

But you could do all of this and more when you were young. You could go through dense study material for 10 hours on a stretch and crack a grueling exam the next day. You could focus on the content of a talk for 3 hours straight and take notes after notes without any distractions. You could spend 6 hours in school, 3 hours with a tutor, 2 hrs playing your favorite sport, 1 hr running around, and still be left with enough mental energy to play around at home with your parents and not let them sleep till the cows come home. 

It wasn’t just physical stamina, it was mental agility that carried you through the day. You were fluid in your thinking and could easily shift from one level of difficulty to another, without dropping the ball or breaking things. That’s the reason why kids learn languages so easily in early childhood. A young brain absorbs everything and cements it in the subconscious mind.

I picked up Snooker as a sport in my early teens and the game has stuck with me since then. In fact, I have gotten better at it, though I am not winning any tournaments as I did in my club in those days. But if I tried picking up a new skill-based sport/game today like chess, I will struggle at it big time. I even remember playing a video game on my Xbox and giving up after failing to clear a level after 45 minutes of trying. It was a frustrating experience and I have never played that game again in the last 10 years.

My mind isn’t as nimble as it used to be. And I have reasons to believe that the same is the case with you.   

Now that I have your attention, let me give you some good news (especially if you are 30+)

The beauty of our brains is that it is plastic i.e. they can be molded and stimulated to create synaptic connections through practices that could allow you to retain your cognitive powers for much longer. But that requires you to become conscious about filling your life with practices that make your mind work to stretch its limits.

Before I share with you one of these practices, it’s important to clearly understand that what we do in the course of our daily lives may not be challenging for the mind as much as it may be challenging for the body. Sleeping less than 7-8 hrs, commuting for 1-2 hrs, sitting all day long, staring at a screen mostly during work, dealing with toxic people in case you do, working under pressure to deliver before your deadlines, late nights under bright lights — these are all stressful to the body and it may tire you out by the end of the day. 

They are important because they bring food to the table, allow you to enjoy the perks of life, allow you to make friends and build memories, provide you a platform to pursue life goals and provide the best to your dear ones, and so much more. 

But the question is —- did it challenge/engage your mind? Did you provide enough time to absorb what you were learning so that the subject gets enough time to settle down in your subconscious and take a good hold in there? Did you provide enough room to make sense of the noise you're bombarded with daily? Can you see things clearly? Can you make choices clearly? Can you learn effectively and retain knowledge?

Read further if NO is your answer.

The mind needs time to settle all the chaos circling around like a typhoon between these ears.  And to be able to do so needs the practice of calming down and thinking. Thinking isn't what comes to mind automatically. What’s going on in your mind is a kind of mental wandering. 

We let our minds get clogged with busyness, moving from one task to another, ticking off things on the checklist for the day, surviving what the day brings, reacting to events more than responding, and getting consumed by the mistakes of the past and the anxieties of the future. And this dance goes on for all our waking hours. 

Inside this mental wandering, it becomes easy to lose the sense of self, which leads to a loss of vitality and purpose. I had a friend recently admit to me about feeling lost, burnt out, and with no achievement or possession giving her the satisfaction that thrilled her just a few years back. 

This isn’t the case with her alone. It’s a feature of the modern world we live in. 

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We don’t celebrate the small wins like we once did, only because these wins look so much smaller than the colleague next to you with higher pay or your friend who is in the Bahamas right now on a yacht sipping Moet Hennessy Champagne. 

We don’t spend time having conversations to learn, explore, or debate. We have conversations to finish conversations because there is another chore waiting for your attention.

We have allowed ourselves to get lost in the maze, and it feels ok because millions of others are with us there. They too are busy, chasing dreams, ending conversations, jumping from one thing to another. Not many seem to be holding their calm and serenity like Buddha once did. Not many take time out to process and verbalize their thoughts like Mahatma Gandhi once did.  Not many see things clearly as Warren Buffet continues to do even today, in his 90s. 

Anurag Sharma makes a very profound statement in his book ‘Book of Value’ - “People become less intelligent and less rational when they are part of any human aggregate, whether a committee, jury, assembly, or crowd.”

It’s time to wake up and shake up a few things before you get lost in the race forever. And the best part is, it plays a very critical role in slowing down the cognitive decline that’s inevitable.

Let’s look at something as basic as ‘thinking’. 

Thinking happens when you can pull a thread and see where it goes, and how deep it goes. Oxford Dictionary defines it as “the process of considering or reasoning about something.”

Considering something requires one to see the subject matter with all clarity, understand the pros and cons, contextualize the nuances, assess the tradeoffs, and compare and rank the options. There is so much just to the consideration bit, unless of course, it doesn’t matter to you. In that case, you might just make a random pick and move on e.g. socks while dressing up.

But how about considering the route to reach the airport in 30 mins, given that Google Maps shows 45 mins on the app? Now this would narrow down your attention to making critical decisions on a live basis, you will have cleared the multitude of thoughts from your mind to think of only one goal i.e. reaching the airport. Every left or right turn will present a tradeoff and you would take a call accordingly. Every red or green signal is an invitation to act accordingly.

That's what happens when you are in an intense situation. But life need not be a dash at all times. It is a slow gradual progress toward achieving every milestone. And every day presents an opportunity to assess a whole bouquet of choices and trade-offs too. And making the right call on a consistent basis is all that makes the difference between a life well lived and a life that could have been. 

This opportunity is available to all. It just requires some time off from the busyness of life, a pen, and paper, and the will to face your demons and start jotting down the thoughts in your mind. And in case your mind isn’t comfortable with an open canvas, then you can provide it with a guided path to walk on. 

I begin every single day by asking myself a few simple questions -

• What did I learn yesterday? 

• What was the crazy thing I did?

• What was the generous thing I did?

• What was the most amazing thing from yesterday?

• What was the stupid thing I did?

• How am I better today than yesterday?

These questions are enough to get me journaling every single day. I could produce my answers to these questions from the last 3 years, for any specific day you want. But I am not writing answers to these for anybody, but for me. I am not even publishing my newsletter for anybody, as much as I do it for myself. 

If I have a thought, and if I want to pull that thread for as long as I can, so that I can think through the subject, understand it deeply, cement it in my subconscious, make it a part of my mental framework, use it as a tool in decision making - then the only way around it is to write. For myself first. 

Else I am just skimming through one book to another, one youtube video to another, one lecture to another, one day to another. But there is no one life to another. This life is all I have. And hence I want to make every day count.

And the only way to do so is to stop everything for some time and ASK myself questions that would make me think. Questions that would make me mindful of my choices, demeanor, and values. Questions that would nudge me into getting better on a daily basis. 

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Jordan Peterson passionately states in an interview “Thinking makes you act effectively in the world. It can make you win battles in the world. If you can think and speak and write you are absolutely deadly. Nothing can get in your way. So that's why you learn to write. Get your words together. It’ll make you unstoppable”

Paul Graham goes even further to establish the importance of writing -

Writing is a beautiful habit that formalizes your thinking. It integrates your personality with the problems at hand or the goals you are pursuing. It stretches the mind to come up with ideas or solutions. It clears the fog and makes you see ahead clearly. It centers you and leads you on a path of moderation and balance.

In short, it keeps you sane, productive, effective, and happy. I would go as far as to call writing ‘therapeutic’ in many ways.

And if you could just spend 15-30 minutes daily doing so, odds are in your favor that your mind will be engaged and challenged enough, which in turn could do wonders for your sense of purpose and vitality.

A smile on your face and vigour in your soul is the added bonus you could enjoy for a very long time to come.

As for aging and cognitive decline, they will continue their march. But your defenses will be rock solid to delay their onslaught or inevitable victory.

And the fight will be a great one. So buckle up and get ready ✏️

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Wishing you all a fantastic weekend.

Sending you loads of love and luck🧿

Manish