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Comment by robotnikman | Hacker News Reader

I feel like one of the secrets to living longer is to have a reason to get up every day, a purpose to fulfill in life. And this guy certainly has one.

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> a purpose to fulfill in life

I add like to sense of stability there as well. If there is the nature unpredictability involved, waking up everyday is quite a challenge. Unless you consider unpredictability into your framework, getting paid to do things you love doing can be quite difficult. The person has achieved the highest accomplishment in his field, he has tenure and thus from the outside perspective he is living a much more stable and routine life.

I mean it’s not that interesting to write about the 100 year olds who have no purpose and just putter around. Might be skewing your conclusions a bit.

Someone mentioned a paper a while ago examining whether retirement was actually what caused death, rather than retirement being caused by ill health. Perhaps someone here can link it.

This study [1] seems to suggest that there are quite a few negative effects that can be associated with retirement itself rather than age alone. But the effects are rather small and it also seems like they can be offset by maintaining a social life and physical exercise after retirement. So yeah, being alone on the couch all day is bad for physical and mental health. But that holds for any age, retirement only exacerbates it for some people.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/27751397

Maybe "The Mortality Effects of Retirement" ? https://www.nber.org/bah/2018no1/mortality-effects-retiremen...

There are a couple other versions of this full paper

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24127/w241...

https://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp_2016-7.pdf

one thing i remember pretty vividly about my grandfather is that he started to age in front of my eyes after he retired. It's ironic that people are almost encouraged to wind down at a point when they need an active life the most to fend off senescence.

Look up Blue Zone groups. Researchers study groups of people that live the longest and how they live. Of course diet and exercise is a big component, but a reason to live is another. There are other interesting factors as well.

The Japanese have a word for it, Ikigai.

Not necessarily. I have grandparents who just sat there for 40 years after retirement not doing anything.

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