5 Reasons Your Forties Are Better Than Your Twenties

How often do you wish you were young again? Fewer lines. Thicker hair. A slimmer waistline. Life would be great if we could just go back and do it all again. But only if we could take the knowledge we’ve picked up with us. Because by the time we’ve reached the end of our forties we’re not just twice as old as early twenty-somethings. We’re also likely twice as wise. Here are five things we know in our forties that we wish we’d known in our twenties. 1. Time Is Limited… And It Disappears Fast When we’re in our twenties, we feel that we have our whole lives still ahead of us and also think that we’re going to live forever. In our forties, we look back and wonder where those years went. A lot of time probably went into playing video games. Some of it was lost on lolcats. Perhaps too much of it was wasted. Forty-somethings know that time is short, and we spend it smarter. We set ourselves deadlines and make sure we meet them. And when we look away from the screen, we make the most of those leisure moments by spending them where they’ll make the biggest difference: with our families and our friends. Once you have kids demanding your attention, time has a whole new meaning. 2. Good Ideas Aren’t Worth The Paper They’re Written On Dorm rooms are bigger generators of great ideas than any Silicon Valley incubator. But you can count on your fingers the number of college rooms that have churned out a Mark Zuckerberg, a Larry Page or a Jeff Bezos. That’s because by the time we’ve reached the end of our forties, we know that ideas are easy. The hard part is the implementation. That requires organization, determination and a host of real skills that are only acquired with practice and time. It’s great to see the passion of a twenty-something. But in our forties we know that if it doesn’t come seasoned with some hard-won experience, it won’t last long and it won’t make an impact. 3. Hard Times At Work Are The Best Times At Work Walk mid-week into a bar visited by ambitious twenty-somethings and much of the conversation you hear will be about their bosses. They’re always terrible. They push too hard, demand the impossible, and have no idea what they’re supposed to be doing. They’re taking the company in the wrong direction and they don’t understand how the firm really operates. Talk to people in their forties, and they’ll tell you it was the first bosses they had in their twenties who were their best. They were the people who pushed them to their limits… and beyond. They showed them what they were capable of doing and proved that they could do much more than they assumed. A tough boss might make a young person miserable now, but they set up much of the satisfaction that will come later in life. 4. Pay Isn’t Everything Twenty-somethings have time and no money; forty-somethings have (a little more) money and much less time. But that money has less value as time goes on. Once you’ve put down your house deposit, can pay the mortgage, put money into the college fund, and are funding the retirement pot, a few more bucks in the savings account doesn’t make a great deal of difference. Personal satisfaction does, and a sense that you’re doing something worthwhile. Twenty-something jobseekers ask how much a job will pay them. Forty-something career builders ask where their job is taking them. 5. Things Get Better Riding a rollercoaster for the first time is terrifying. You don’t know what’s around the next corner or whether you’ll survive the next loop. Riding it the second time is a lot easier. You know that one twist is followed by another and that if you’re upside-down one minute, you’ll soon be the right way up again. By the time you’re in your forties, you’ll have been through enough loops and twists to know that you can survive them… and that between those loops are long, straight, comfortable sections when you can relax and enjoy the view. The twenties are a terrifying, anxious time. In your forties, you might be older, wrinklier and more prone to nap in the afternoon, but that’s only because you’re more content, more relaxed and happier than you’ve ever been.

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