It seems like once you hit a certain age, the passage of time hits warp-speed levels of fast.
My years as a child, teen and 20-year-old felt like they lasted the longest, as I experienced so many amazing events during my upbringing. But as soon as I hit 30, the years just began blending as life just sped on by. There have been some monumental changes that have occurred during my seasoned years—I’m grateful to still be relatively healthy, staying busy with a rewarding career, having a steady income and being a part of a strong social circle.
As I near the end of my 30s (which has gone by much faster than I expected), I’m now in the mindset of a pre-planner, ready to set myself up for greatness in my 40s. You can never start too early when the time arrives for you to start putting the many things in practice that can make your older years infinitely more rewarding.
To set me up for success, I asked ChatGPT and Gemini a simple question: “What are the 7 main things everyone should learn after they're 40?” The life lessons they supplied me with gave me a new outlook on life and the best ways to thrive in my later years.
ChatGPT’s sage advice
These are ChatGPT’s four pointers on how everyone should live through their 40s:
- How to manage your money for the long game: Learn how much you actually need to live well, how compound growth works, how to avoid lifestyle inflation, and how to prioritize retirement savings, emergency funds, debt reduction, and appropriate investing. Lesson: After 40, financial freedom often comes less from making more money and more from keeping enough of it.
- How to choose your relationships: By 40, you should start recognizing the difference between people you know, people you like, and people who genuinely make your life better. Invest in the friends and family members who reciprocate. Stop chasing people who repeatedly demonstrate that they don't value the relationship. Lesson: Your social circle becomes increasingly important because you're no longer just accumulating experiences — you're deciding who gets to share your life.
- How to handle change and uncertainty: Careers change. Parents age. Children grow up. Relationships evolve. Technology transforms industries. Your priorities can change dramatically, too. Learn how to adapt without constantly feeling like you're starting over. Lesson: You don't need to know exactly what the next 10 years look like. You need to become comfortable figuring things out as they happen.
- How to enjoy your life without waiting for "someday": A surprisingly important lesson: stop postponing everything good. Don't automatically assume you'll travel when you retire, pursue hobbies when you're less busy, or spend more time with people you love when work slows down. Build enjoyable experiences into your current life. Lesson: Retirement isn't guaranteed, and neither is perfect health, unlimited free time, or having the people you love around forever.
My bank’s financial adviser has been ringing my phone off the hook lately (and I’ll admit to not returning his call yet…). So that first tip stood out to me as a clear sign that I need to sit down with him and have a conversation about setting myself up for a good financial future.
I have a pretty solid group of friends and family members that improve my life as much as I hope I do theirs. There are certainly a few people I know who value the money and gifts I give them over a casual chat over the phone and random hangouts with no strings attached—those are the ones that I’ll have to keep a distance from as I get older.
The words “change” and “uncertainty” are a part of my industry, so I’ve gotten used to that. What I have a harder time dealing with is the changes that hit me in my personal life. I know I’ll have to get over their mindset, as my relationships may change for the worse and my priorities expand (especially if I ever have a family). I’m guilty of putting off my friendly get-togethers for weeks on end—I’ll be sure to make a habit of following up on them more frequently and actually being in attendance more often than not.
Gemini’s useful counsel
And here are the three most useful bits of life advice that Gemini provided me with:
- Strength Training and Mobility over Pure Cardio: Muscle mass naturally decreases by 3% to 8% per decade after age 30, and joint stiffness accelerates if neglected. While cardio is great for heart health, prioritizing resistance training and mobility work (like yoga or dedicated stretching) protects bone density, keeps your metabolism active, and prevents back and joint pain.
- Deepening Sleep Architecture and Stress Recovery: Sleep isn't just about feeling rested; it is the brain’s primary mechanism for clearing cellular waste and regulating hormones. After 40, your body becomes less forgiving of chronic sleep deprivation and unmanaged stress. Learning proper sleep hygiene, managing cortisol levels, and incorporating daily recovery practices directly affect long-term cognitive health.
- Cultivating "Beginner’s Mind" (Neuroplasticity): Cognitive flexibility requires deliberate effort as you age. Picking up entirely new skills—learning an instrument, mastering a language, or taking up a complex hobby—forces the brain to build new neural pathways. Staying a beginner keeps your mind sharp, resilient, and adaptable.
Gemini’s advice proved to be as eye-opening as ChatGPT’s. Switching my focus in the gym, making more of a concerted effort to develop a healthy sleeping regimen and going out of my way to acquire new skills are three other facets of my coming 40s that I need to adopt.
Once I finally reach that age, I’ll definitely zero in on those tips—I’ve been meaning to learn Japanese and finally get over my fear of roller skating by actually getting proficient at it, so those are two goals I’ll look to achieve in my 40s.
The takeaway
ChatGPT, Gemini and the additional advice of the people I know who are currently in their 40s & have lived through them already gave me a wealth of useful information to incorporate into my life. Those tips had a clear focus on maintaining one’s physical health for the better, being financially competent, being comfortable with periods of uncertainty and more.
With all those words of wisdom for anyone about to approach their 40s, I now have a clearer picture of what I should and shouldn’t do by the time I exit my 30s.
Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Subscribe to Tom's Guide on YouTube and follow us on TikTok.
More from Tom’s Guide
- Snapchat launches its own AI — and says Snap Intelligence will 'anticipate your needs'
- ChatGPT is now my go-to for recommendations — 7 prompts I use to find new movies, music, games and more
- I asked ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini what’s happening right now — some of the answers were shockingly outdated
