I'm 42, I'm finishing my game development degree, doing my ham radio license, and I was never so sharp as now in my life. Maybe as younger hacker, I could learn harder, but i used to have much less focus and waste much more time than now. Now I know myself, I know how I learn and what I want to learn. What works for me: I study always from 7 until 8:30. To be able to do that. I wake up 5:30, do my sports and then start to study. I'm blessed to have a wife and kids that just support me to be "weird" and hungry for learning and knowledge. I dropped as well my workload to be able to spend as much time as I can learning.