Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

I'm a mere youngster at 71. I had to wait until retirement before I could spend the time I wanted on things that interested me. Currently that is the Unix Toolkit. There should be enough there to keep me busy for a while...

If this guy is lucky, maybe he’ll get tenure by the time he’s 120. Then he’ll be set for life!

For anyone else who looks at these people who just are seemingly unencumbered by self-doubt and can&#x27;t relate to them because self-doubt practically has you in a chokehold every day, I have a book suggestion.<p>After feeling stuck for a long time and trying to read my way out of it (swerving between Tim Ferris-esque books about &quot;life hacks&quot; and unhelpful emotion-laden books with banal platitudes), the one book that has really helped me lately is How We Change [0].<p>I am not wont to recommend books, as I get really annoyed by the sort of folks who recommend personal growth &#x2F; self-help books (again, mostly banal platitudes and unactionable faux-insights). I hope my post history shows I am not one of these types of people. However, this book has really helped me turn a corner like no other has.<p>The gist is that when you _don&#x27;t_ pursue something you want to do (e.g. learn Haskell, Unix, or the other wonderful suggestions in this thread and many others on HN) and feel flummoxed at how you continually stymie your own best intentions, you _are_ actually making a choice (i.e., to stay put); it&#x27;s not some bad-faith abdication of agency. When one chooses to stay stuck (or &quot;petrified&quot;, an apt term used by the author), one is actually choosing to preserve a sense of hope for the future; one preserves it from the painful feelings of failure that one anticipates will come due to a lack of faith in oneself to make meaningful progress towards things one deems to be important.<p>The best way out of this trap (besides being aware that you are making a choice, instead of giving up) is to do something extremely simple on a regular basis (daily if possible) that helps you realize you have agency. As goofy as it sounds, I have started a lot of habits because of the &quot;habit tracking&quot; feature in Emacs&#x27; org mode (just to make all of the little marks in the agenda go green).<p>Whether it is meditating for one minute, writing &quot;hello world&quot; is Haskell for the umpteenth time just to write _some_ Haskell each day (even on bad days), or anything else, that will slowly help you feel unstuck.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.harpercollins.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;how-we-change-ross-ellenhorn" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.harpercollins.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;how-we-change-ross-el...</a>

Truly inspiring. I am in my late forties, and I was wondering if I have enough time to learn Haskell, now I have no reason not to.

I just submitted my own doctoral thesis in fluids to Manchester! This is absolutely stunning, and my day (and life) is better for it.

Here&#x27;s an observation: people who&#x27;ve survived longer than most are quick to smile. I like checking out stories about them, because I know I&#x27;ll see an energizing photo of an upbeat person.

Inspiring story, I&#x27;d love to hear more.<p>I was really hoping he would mention having a social life as a secret to longevity, referencing the Harvard study on happiness and living long. [1] He briefly mentions his friend from Canada, I wonder if they still go on walks together or if he passed away and made new friends in the mean time. Getting old is hard because your friends pass away.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.harvard.edu&#x2F;gazette&#x2F;story&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.harvard.edu&#x2F;gazette&#x2F;story&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;over-nearly-8...</a>

wow, an exceptional character<p>what caught my attention is that when asked about his secret to longevity, he said that he eats lots of fruit and takes cold showers<p>not the first time I&#x27;m hearing about cold showers being beneficial; been doing that myself regularly for a few months and I definitely find benefits<p>this is definitely encouraging to continue<p>does anybody have a longer experience with cold showers and can share any findings?

I took cold showers for 2 months in the UK recently but it got too cold... and then, I got a cold! I had to stop (or wanted to)

Wonderful - and even better, thanks to him, I am not middle aged yet <i>and</i> might have time to work on that phd myself :-)<p>good luck to him

I’m on mobile at the moment so will have to watch later, but it looks like this is a video. It maybe should be marked as such

Very inspiring. And here I am at the age of 28, wondering if I&#x27;m too old to get a PhD.

Looks like he had a hell of a good side project during grad school.

This article is so inspiring. I will keep learning new knowledge.

Eat fruit and take cold showers. The last time this was posted, someone said cold showers were the secret to looking young forever.<p>I can&#x27;t find much convincing official research (just blogs) to support that cold showers are beneficial to skincare, but I&#x27;ve been taking them nonetheless, and honestly, my pores have looked better :)

I watch these types of videos and I can&#x27;t help but wonder if we transcended the need for elderly advice or we just grown as a youth centric society.<p>It could also be a matter of language, and words can&#x27;t convey the elders experiences as effectively as it could in simples times, where symbols did not need to account for vastly different experiences. So when someone says &quot;I don&#x27;t regret working hard&quot; in the context of a village, where hard work is essencial, It could mean something else completely to someone who grew up with absent parents, who devoted their lives to work and didn&#x27;t pay attention their children. And theses discrepancies permeates the entirety of the discourse.<p>To rescue the value of elderly advice I suggest more context is needed, at least more than a 4 minutes video could possibly convey.

You can trial the cold shower experience by just a washing your face with cold water after you wake up every morning. Growing up in Bulgaria that was a standard practice for my whole family. It does wonders for the skin and is very refreshing.

Fruit and cold showers!<p>Every interview with a centenarian asks &quot;what&#x27;s the secret of your longevity?&quot; They answer and we all nod and stroke our chins and think <i>maybe there&#x27;s something to that cold shower thing after all</i>. Or whatever. If his secret had been that he drinks three Dr. Peppers a day, or that he does a headstand for five minutes every morning at sunrise, our response would be the same.<p>He no more knows the secret of his longevity than a gambler knows the secret of a hot streak. Like every centenarian, he&#x27;s on the mother of all hot streaks, that&#x27;s all. Our impulse to find some causal agency that we can understand and adopt is no different than a gambler&#x27;s. When he said &quot;fruit and cold showers&quot;, it&#x27;s no different than saying &quot;if I stand on one foot and close my left eye when I throw the dice, I don&#x27;t crap out.&quot;<p>I have to think that he knows this and he&#x27;s just humoring us because he knows we want an answer other than ¯\_(ツ)_&#x2F;¯. After all, we are all just children to him.

[video]