In a 2019 article, Arthur C. Brooks delivered some bad news: “If your profession requires mental processing speed or significant analytic capabilities—the kind of profession most college graduates occupy—noticeable decline is probably going to set in earlier than you imagine.”

How does a person manage professional decline when it comes for them—and, for that matter, the many other changes that midlife may bring? One idea that Brooks landed on in his research: a reverse bucket list. “My goal for each year of the rest of my life should be to throw out things, obligations, and relationships until I can clearly see my refined self in its best form,” he writes. Today’s newsletter explores the challenges and the opportunities of midlife.

• Why making friends in midlife is so hard: “I thought I was done dating. But after moving across the country, I had to start again—this time, in search of platonic love,” Katharine Smyth writes.
• How an 18th-century philosopher helped solve my midlife crisis: In 2006, I was 50—and I was falling apart,” Alison Gopnik writes.