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

by Meg Jay

It may sound counterintuitive, but most twentysomethings feel relieved, and even empowered, when someone has the courage to strike up a conversation with the parts of themselves, and the parts of reality, that they are afraid to talk about.

80 percent of life’s most defining moments taking place by age thirty-five.

Regardless, whether you are twenty-one or twenty-five or twenty-nine, make no mistake: You are somewhere in your defining decade.

For hundreds of years, twentysomethings moved directly from being sons and daughters to being husbands and wives,

glad that's over

The young look older and the old look younger, collapsing the adult life span into one long twentysomething ride.

wow

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.

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.

so relevant rn... preach girl

Some wonder if it makes sense to bring children into the world anymore.

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

good one

We may hear that thirty is the new twenty, but, when it comes to work and love and the brain and the body, forty is definitely not the new thirty.

not making choices is a choice all the same.

it’s the people we hardly know, and not our closest friends, who will change our lives the most.

Twentysomethings who take the time to explore and also have the nerve to make commitments along the way construct stronger identities.

Economists and sociologists agree that twentysomething work has an inordinate influence on our long-run career success.

I felt a lot of internal pressure to figure it out, but all the thinking I did was really debilitating and unproductive. The one thing I have learned is that you can’t think your way through life. The only way to figure out what to do is to do—something.

something i wish i figured out while still in school

life got going when she used the bits of identity capital she had to get the next piece of identity capital she wanted—

while the urban tribe may be the most supportive figures in our twenties, they are not the most transformative.

i recently had a crisis about this

it is the people we hardly know—those who never make it into our tribe—who will swiftly and dramatically change our lives for the better.

Our strong ties feel comfortable and familiar, but, other than support, they may have little to offer. They are usually too similar—even too similarly stuck—to provide more than sympathy. They often don’t know any more about jobs or relationships than we do. And whatever it is they do know we have likely heard by now.

this is my issue rn!!

weak ties know things and people that we don’t know. They have perspectives we may not have considered.

The strength of weak ties is the science of how information spreads. It is about how people who do deserve chances or opportunities let other people help them find those chances or opportunities.

Part of aging well is helping others,

yes queen

twentysomethings who make choices are happier than those who tread water,

The more terrifying kind of uncertainty is wanting something but not knowing how to get it.

indeed

“I get hung up thinking I should know if this is going to work out if I’m gonna try it.”

girl, same

“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.

We are bombarding our brains with information that—in milliseconds—will likely make us feel bad. It takes more than milliseconds, however, to try to correct for how we now feel.

Happiness is when what you think and what you do are in harmony. —Mahatma Gandhi, writer/philosopher

im trying Gandhi, im trying

Part of realizing our potential is recognizing how our particular gifts and limitations fit with the world around us. We realize where our authentic potential actually lies.

our parents tell us more about what we should be like than about what we are like.

mhmm

Goals feel like authentic dreams, while shoulds feel like oppressive standards.

genius

she’d grown progressively bored of spending her weekends talking to people who were drunk.

girl same

an adult life is built not out of eating, praying, and loving but out of person, place, and thing: who we are with, where we live, and what we do for a living.

If he ever chose something to do for work, he didn’t want it to be some same-old, everyday thing; his life should be unique.

ugh i need unique

There is a point to my life because it cannot be carried out in exactly the same way by any other person.

To Ian, claiming was conforming. By starting a career, he imagined he was agreeing to decades of the status quo. Saying yes to one concrete thing felt like saying no to an interesting or limitless life. In fact, it’s the other way around. If Ian didn’t say yes to something, his life was going to become uninteresting and limited.

how i think sometimes

claiming something feels like losing everything else.”

sometimes

As a twentysomething, life is still more about potential than proof.

!!!

Those who can tell a good story about who they are and what they think they want leap over those who can’t.

YAVIS: They are young, attractive, verbal, intelligent, and successful.

YAVISSSSSSS

“When you partner with someone, you have a second chance at family—both nuclear and extended—

‘No one would believe the music I’m listening to right now. No one would believe what’s going on in my head,’”

The most difficult thing to cure is the patient’s attempt at self-cure.

very interestingg

Usually sometime during the twentysomething years, life changes, and the old solutions seem cumbersome and out of place. The things that once helped us feel better now get in our way.

woah

The best time to work on your marriage is before you have one and in today’s world that may mean before—and during—cohabitation.

Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward. —Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher

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.

Twentysomething jobs teach us about regulating our emotions and negotiating the complicated social interactions that make up adult life. Twentysomething work and school are our best chance to acquire the technical, sophisticated skills needed in so many careers today. Twentysomething relationships prepare us for marriage and other partnerships. Twentysomething plans help us think across the years and decades ahead. Twentysomething setbacks ready us for handling difficulties with our spouses and bosses and children.

The jobs we have and the company we keep are wiring our frontal lobes—and these same frontal lobes are, in turn, making our decisions in the office on Monday morning and at the party on Saturday night.

jeepers

Never again will we be so quick to learn new things. Never again will it be so easy to become the people we hope to be. So whatever it is we want to change about ourselves, our twenties are the easiest time to change it. The risk is that we may not act now.

oh my goodness im freaking out