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

by Meg Jay

Then somewhere around the age of twenty, life opens up, and the syllabi are gone. There are no more sheets of paper to tell you what to do every day, and no more grades to let you know where you stand.

What we hear less about is that there’s such a thing as adult development, and our twenties are that critical period of adulthood. They, too, are a time when we are primed for growth and change, when simple exposure can lead to dramatic transformation.

I don’t know how to get an A in my twenties. I feel like I am failing for the first time.”

Twentysomethings who don’t feel anxious and incompetent at work are usually overconfident or underemployed.

this made me feel so much better

For work success to lead to confidence, the job has to be challenging, and it must require effort. It has to be done without too much help. And it cannot go well every single day. 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 robust confidence comes from succeeding—and from surviving some failures so the successes seem real.