The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now

by Meg Jay

A long run of easy successes creates a sort of fragile confidence, the kind that is shattered when the first failure comes along. A more resilient confidence comes from succeeding—and from surviving some failures.

The real challenge of the twentysomething years is the work itself. Ten thousand hours is five years of focused, full-time work (40 hours × 50 work weeks a year = 2,000 hours a year × 5 years = 10,000 hours) or ten years of less-targeted work (20 hours × 50 work weeks a year = 1,000 hours a year × 10 years = 10,000 hours).

A great relationship or a job to be proud of may seem elusive, but just working toward these things makes us happier. Twentysomethings who experience even some workplace success or financial security are more confident, positive, and responsible than those who do not.

Be ruled by time, the wisest counselor of all. —Plutarch, historian To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.

Present bias is especially strong in twentysomethings who put a lot of psychological distance between now and later. Love or work can seem far off in time, like the way that Rachel tossed marriage and kids decades into the future. The future can also seem socially distant when we hang out with people who are not talking about it either. Later can even feel spatially far away if we imagine ultimately settling down in some other place.

The problem with feeling distant from the future is that distance leads to abstraction, and abstraction leads to distance, and round and round it goes. The further away love and work seem, the less we need to think about them; the less we think about love and work, the further away they feel. I started to sketch out a timeline to bring the future closer and to make Rachel’s thinking more concrete.

“I always begin with the last sentence; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.

There is no formula for a good life, and there is no right or wrong life. But there are choices and consequences, so it seems only fair that twentysomethings know about the ones that lie ahead. That way, the future feels good when you finally get there. The nicest part about getting older is knowing how your life worked out, especially if you like what you wake up to every day. If you are paying attention to your life as a twentysomething, the real glory days are still to come.

The future isn’t written in the stars. There are no guarantees. So claim your adulthood. Be intentional. Get to work. Pick your family. Do the math. Make your own certainty. Don’t be defined by what you didn’t know or didn’t do. You are deciding your life right now.