Strategies for successful aging Pianist Arthur Rubinstein did not retire from stage performances until the age of 89. How did he keep playing for so long? He selected a small number of pieces to play, practiced them frequently to optimize his skill, and compensated for a loss in muscular speed by playing slow passages more slowly than he had in his youth (thus making the fast passages seem faster). These are the three strategies of Baltes’s selection, optimization, and compensation model of successful adult aging.