Good News! Your Productivity Tanks as You Age

As if you needed more discouraging news, here’s this: Your professional decline looms closer than you think. That’s the conclusion Arthur Brooks, a professor at Harvard and former president of the American Enterprise Institute, reached after studying research on career accomplishment. According to the research he cited in The Atlantic earlier this year, our success and productivity increase for about 20 years after the start of a career. Then, like a short airplane ride to a nearby city, our descent begins much sooner than we expect. It doesn’t just happen to athletes: Even scientists, artists, tech workers, air traffic controllers, and umpires experience a drop. Research indicates that among scientists, major discoveries continue to increase into one’s late 30s and then b