214 - Coming Into One's Prime

Happy dissatisfaction as a useful heuristic

In sport, there is the idea of coming into one’s prime: the point at which one reaches the optimal combination of physical prowess and mastery of one’s craft. One might increase mastery subsequently, but due to an event greater level of physical decline, the peak of one’s prime has passed.

One of the things that I love about my work is that I feel like I am always coming into my prime. I get to continually learn and develop. Life changes mean that I operate within different parameters. Having become a parent, I have to be much more effective and judicious with my time. But I see that as part of levelling up, rather than any kind of passing my peak. Doubtless some day, age and infirmity may inhibit my capacity such that I have at that point passed my prime. Until that point, I get to be happily dissatisfied that my prime is always ahead of me.

I realise it is so important to feel this way. The times in my life when I didn’t feel this way were times when I had plateaued and should have been changing things up. There is a useful heuristic in this. That in cognitive, as opposed to physically impacted, endeavours one should feel like one is coming into one’s prime. And if that feeling is absent, that’s a signal to change things up to an environment where one does feel that way.