Outside of things like dementia and Alzheimer’s, retired people don’t have a problem with learning they have a problem with patience. The older you get the less you see a return on changing how you do something because generally you’ve gotten really good at what that something is in that specific workflow. Just as a for instance somebody who’s been quickly writing emails and notes on a desktop computer isn’t going to want to take the time to do that task on what for them would be a slower medium, for instance a touchscreen, because they don’t know how to use it quickly yet. Not that they can’t learn how to use it but because the time taken to do that will be much much longer than the task. (This is also why UI changes irritate people so much.)
How annoyed would you be if something that normally takes you 30 seconds all of a sudden is going to take you 15 or 20 minutes until you can relearn how to do it faster all over again?
That brain plasticity goes away is a myth. The only reason it’s easier to learn when you are young is having time to devote to it.
This doesn’t explain why retired people struggle with extremely basic learning.
Outside of things like dementia and Alzheimer’s, retired people don’t have a problem with learning they have a problem with patience. The older you get the less you see a return on changing how you do something because generally you’ve gotten really good at what that something is in that specific workflow. Just as a for instance somebody who’s been quickly writing emails and notes on a desktop computer isn’t going to want to take the time to do that task on what for them would be a slower medium, for instance a touchscreen, because they don’t know how to use it quickly yet. Not that they can’t learn how to use it but because the time taken to do that will be much much longer than the task. (This is also why UI changes irritate people so much.)
How annoyed would you be if something that normally takes you 30 seconds all of a sudden is going to take you 15 or 20 minutes until you can relearn how to do it faster all over again?
I thrived while unemployed, is all I remember, until it caught up of course.