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

by Meg Jay

Even as they feel pressured to get out there and live their best lives, many are unsure about whether their government—or their planet—will survive. More twentysomethings than ever before have friends who have killed themselves or who have overdosed on drugs. Some wonder if it makes sense to bring children into the world anymore.

More and more, they hear the American Dream is a fantasy, and they wonder if their lives matter and if there is a way up and out.

I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean. Like I could swim in any direction but I can’t see land so I don’t know which way to go.

I am constantly comparing myself to people with much better lives.

“hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper.”

Research on underemployed twentysomethings tells us that those who are underemployed for as little as nine months tend to be more depressed and less motivated than their peers—than even their unemployed peers.

I have seen how this happens. I have watched smart, interesting twentysomethings avoid “real jobs” in the “real world” only to drag themselves through years of underemployment, all the while becoming too tired and too alienated to look for something that might actually make them happy. Later, such work is even harder to find.

Eventually, Betsy came to therapy to examine why she was drawn to this sort of man again and again. “I don’t date men,” she said grimly, “I foster them.”

Tired and hopeless at age twenty-five, Ian said he felt like he was treading water to stay alive.

There is a certain terror that goes along with saying “My life is up to me.” It is scary to realize that you can’t just wait around, that no one can really rescue you, and that you—and only you—just have to do something.

“I feel like such a failure,” Talia continued. “In school there was a formula. It was pretty easy to figure out what to do and where you stood. You’d know you were living up to your potential. Sometimes I think I should just go back to graduate school for my PhD because it would sound better and I could get A’s again. I don’t know how to get an A in my twenties. I feel like I am failing for the first time.”

We are comparing other people’s edited shots with our own unretouched lives. We are comparing the good things people make public with the not-so-good things we keep to ourselves. We are bombarding our brains with information that—in milliseconds—will likely make us feel bad.

Distinctiveness is a fundamental part of identity. We develop a clearer sense of who we are by firming up the boundaries between ourselves and others. I am who I am because of how I am different from those around me. There is a point to my life because it cannot be carried out in exactly the same way by any other person. Differentness is part of what makes each of us special. It is what makes every life a unique adventure.

An identity or a career cannot be built around what you don’t want.

A job in an office isn’t looking so bad, especially now that I realize I can’t even get one.”

Amid the details, a protagonist needs to appear. A good story needs to take shape. Otherwise, résumés are just lists, and lists are not compelling. But what is a good story?

How does what you did before relate to what you want to do now, and how might that get you to what you want to do next?

I know that the way to live a good life is to pursue things that are not only interesting to you but that make sense.

This has left many wondering if marriage is becoming a luxury not everyone can afford.

Many high-functioning clients are what therapists sometimes call YAVIS: They are young, attractive, verbal, intelligent, and successful.

That’s because online dating isn’t online dating; it’s online meeting. Dating apps are simply yet another place—like a bar or a club or an ultimate Frisbee game or a picnic—where you might come across someone new. They may be innovative mediums for “putting yourself out there” but, just like when you sit down on a barstool, it is who you are that matters most.

But what people say they are “looking for,” as Mashable puts it, often has something to do with what they think they can get—or what they think they deserve.

“Or I feel like I have to go online and get some attention from someone just as proof that I’m desirable. Maybe that’s better than hooking up, but in a way it’s the same…”

Being smart in school is about how well you solve problems that have correct answers and clear time limits. But being a forward-thinking adult is about how you think and act even (and especially) in uncertain situations.

I do not need to put everything up online because I know I am having fun and it is so shallow to feel a need to show the world what I am doing.

Whether you spend three hours a day smoking or on Instagram, it is time not spent on activities that might be better for your brain or your body… or for your life.

As twentysomethings, time is one of your most valuable resources, and how you spend it matters, both in the here-and-now and in the there-and-then.

Her boss sounded more like a movie character than a real person. But he was a real person, and so was Danielle. We all have these stories.

The brain feels shocked—and endangered—so it “takes a picture” in order to be more prepared in the future.

Younger adults, however, are more likely to find negative information—or the bad news—more upsetting and more memorable than positive information—or the good news.

our attitudes and reactions are the last of our human freedoms.

But twentysomethings who hide out in underemployment, especially those who are hiding out because of a lack of confidence, are not serving themselves.

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.

A relationship to come home to or a job to be proud of may seem elusive, but just working toward these things makes us happier.

Regardless, in my experience, getting a job is usually where “getting along and getting ahead” begins.

She taught me not to confuse feminism with not being allowed to want a family. She taught me that feminists want families too. That’s how you make more feminists.

In recent years, the biggest increase in motherhood has been among women with more education. While the percentage of women without a college degree who become moms has held steady, the percentage of mothers with college or graduate degrees has grown. Thirty years ago, only about 65 percent of women with PhDs, like me, had children; now that number is up to 80 percent.

Your twenties are not the time to rush out and have a baby you’re not ready for. But they are the time to educate yourself about your body and your options.

There is something profoundly sad about seeing an eighty-year-old grandmother come to the hospital to meet a grandchild. It is crushing to realize there won’t be many sunny days at the lake with Grandpa or holidays spent in Grandma’s loving presence.

We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination.

the brain has difficulty keeping time across long, unpunctuated intervals. We condense unmarked time. The days and years pass, and we say, “Where did the time go?”

most noticed was that, for him, it was as if there was nothing between the ages of twenty-eight and eighty-five. Life consisted of being twentysomething or nearly dead. There was no mention of what might go on in his thirties or forties or sixties or seventies, much less the idea that he might want to be around—and well—for it. He could not imagine himself as anything other than a twentysomething whose life revolved around his friends, but the rest of his life was going to come all the same.

I thought if I didn’t participate in adulthood, time would stop. But it didn’t. It just kept going. People around me kept going. Now I see I need to get going—and keep going.

I want to enjoy my twenties but I want the happy ending too.

If I got caught on a peak in a late-afternoon lightning storm, it wasn’t going to matter whether I meant to get off the mountain sooner or even whether I was a really nice person. Adulthood is sort of like that. There are things that just are what they are. The smartest thing to do is to know as much about them as you can.

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.