Ages You Will Peak At Certain Things Throughout Your Life

There’s a time for everything and the different peaks stretch from our early years right into our eighties. For example, we are best at languages as kids but better at math in our 50s and enjoy the best mental health in our eighties. Here’s what ages you will peak at certain things throughout your life:

• Learning a language – 7 or 8. We’re best at picking up a second language before we reach puberty.

• Brain Power – 18. According to a study published in 2016, which got people to equate a number with a certain symbol, then quizzed got to pair them from memory, 18-year-olds had the sharpest grey matter.

• Attractiveness  – 23. That is if you are a woman. Men find women most attractive when they are 23, and that doesn’t change much as men get older. Women, on the other hand, change the age they prefer men to be as they age themselves, generally finding men the same age or slightly older more attractive.

• Life satisfaction – 23. There are several peaks for life satisfaction but 23 is the first.

• Strength – 25. Your muscles reach their peak at 25, and stay on track for the next 10 or 15 years.

• Settling down – 26. This is the age you are most likely to have met the partner you will settle with and, if you get married between 28 and 32, you are less like to divorce.

• Salary – 39 and 48. On average women’s salaries peak at about 39 and that is because many see their pay slow in their 30s as they have families. Men’s wages, however, continue to rise and peak at about 48.

• Understanding emotions – 51. In a recent study, scientists gathered about 10,000 people, showed them pictures cropped tightly around the subject’s eyes, and asked them to describe what emotion the person pictured was feeling. They found ability to read how others feel maximizes in your 40s and 50s.

• Math skills – 50. That’s the age we can solve mental arithmetic the quickest.

• Life satisfaction 2 – 69. The same German study that pinpointed 23 as the happiest time found there was a slump in middle age which picks up again at around 69.

• Vocabulary peaks – 71. It may not be so easy to learn a new language after grade school, but we keep learning more vocabulary in their late 60s and early 70s.

• Happiness with body – 74.  Two thirds of people over 65, surveyed by Gallup, said they were happy with the way they looked. Men’s self-confidence about their looks peaked in their 80s while women was at 74.

• Mental wellbeing – 82. Researchers at the National Academy of Science asked people to picture a 10-step ladder, with the best possible life on the top rung and the worst possible life on the bottom rung, and place their life on it. The oldest group — 82- to 85-year-olds — gave the highest average rung number at about 7.