Hard Truths For The Twenty-Something Years in Dr Meg Jay’s ‘The Defining Decade’
During our parents’ time, the average 21 year old was married and caring for a new baby. They usually held down a single career; young parents focused on making money and building a family.
Twenty-somethings moved from being sons and daughters to being husbands and wives. They had to grow up and take on responsibility fast.
Yet, in a single generation, the twenty-something years turned from being defined by responsibility and adulthood into one defined by experimentation, drifting, and non-commitment.
New York Times columnist David Brooks deems it the ‘odyssey’ years — a time for twenty-somethings to go to school, try out different working or living environments, maybe fall in or out of love.
The twenties have become an extended adolescence. Twentysomethings are now referred to as ‘twixters’ or ‘kidults’.
Not so. Enter Dr Meg Jay’s stern, warning to us all NOT to squander your twenties in her book The Defining Decade.
20’s Is The New 30’s. Or Is It?
There are fifty million twenty somethings in the United States (alone), most of whom are living with a staggering, unprecedented amount of uncertainty. Many have no idea what they will be doing, where they will be living, or who they will be with in two or even ten yearsT
Dr Meg Jay in The Defining Decade
The Defining Decade is essential reading for anybody in their twenty-something years.
Adulting Is Hard, And You’re Not Alone
Through her experience as a clinical psychologist and lecturer working with twenty-somethings, Dr Jay shares stories about twenty-somethings struggling with issues a lot of us identify with:
● I don’t know what I want to do, so I should go and ‘find myself’, right?
● I can screw around in my twenties, cos it gets better in my thirties, right?
● Will I make it in life?
● My life should look better on Facebook, right?
In many of these stories, I saw either myself, or people who I know.
There was the chronic job hopper.
The woman stuck in a ‘meh’ relationship just because she thought she couldn’t influence that decision.
The coffee barista waiting for the right opportunity. The guy who stressed out picking a direction for his life, so he opted not to choose and drift along.
In their stories, I felt like I was having a one-to-one conversation with Dr Jay, raising these adulting issues with a trusted mentor. She navigates these sometimes emotionally charged conversations with her clients with tact and backs it up with sound neurological and psychological research.
The book is career consultant, love doctor and life coach all rolled into a no-shits-given-about-your-feelings package. It is a clarion call to give a shit about your twenties and not drift around.
Reading The Defining Decade will sting. It may make you go ‘oh shit that’s me!’
Her message is sometimes a bitter pill to swallow, but is a sharp call to us to not waste our twenties partying or drifting along life.
I highlight four key lessons I personally resonated with in The Defining Decade.
1. Our twenties is a critical period for adult development
Contrary to the thirty-is-the-new-twenty culture, the twenty-something years matter.
From The Defining Decade:
● Twenty-something jobs are the most professionally and economically consequential even though they may not look (or feel) so good.
● Twenty-something relationship choices may be even more important than your choices in work.
● Twenty-something years are biologically some of the healthiest and most fertile years of your life.
The twenties are an inflection point — the great reorganisation — a time when the experiences we have disproportionately influence the adult lives we will lead. Even a small shift can radically change where we end up in our thirties and beyond.
Biologically speaking, the frontal lobe of the brain does not fully mature until sometime between the ages of twenty and thirty.
The frontal lobe is where we train our brains to move beyond problems that have one correct answer like in school to more ambiguous situations like where to live, who to partner with or which job to take.
Dealing with the ambiguity of adulthood comes with practice and experience. Start learning them as soon as possible; ideally during your twenty-something years.
2. It’s the people who you rarely know who are more likely to change your life
Saying yes is how you get your first job and your next job, your spouse and even your kids. Saying yes means you will do something new, meet someone new and make a difference.
Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google
Don’t discount people you have met but don’t know well.
In sociology professor’s Mark Granovetter’s study of social networks and how networks led to new jobs, he found more than three-quarters of new jobs had come from contacts who were rarely seen and not close friends and family.
In fact, this entire concept is what LinkedIn is built on.
Close ties provide familiarity and support, but it’s people outside our close friends who help us access something fresh. They force us to change how we talk and what we know.
People outside our inner circles change our lives. Don’t discount people dissimilar to yourself.
3. Just do something, don’t think so much
Making a choice about something is when the real uncertainty begins. When we make choices, we open ourselves to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier not to know, not to choose and not to do.
In our twenties, we often feel that we need to have it all figured out.
That scares us. We see life as a binary choice; if we step through the wrong door, we’re doomed to failure.
So we don’t make a choice.
Dr Jay makes a fine distinction between making intentional choices in life and not making a choice — allowing yourself to drift aimlessly.
Yes, you won’t have it all figured out. And you probably won’t have it all figured out even in your thirties or forties.
But you need to get moving. You need to make an intentional choice.
Don’t think so much. Go and do.
4. Life always looks better on social media. People post their best sides, hardly average or bad days of their lives
When was the last time you posted something on social media that didn’t show you at your best?
We always want to put our best foot forward on social media.
We wonder why we scroll through social media and see everyone living the high life. You wonder, how are they always travelling? How are they always happy?
Why do good things happen to others so often? When’s my turn? Is my life supposed to be better?
Remember, people rarely post their average, or bad days on social media.
But we forget this. We use social media to compare. We use social media to answer the unspoken question
“Just how, am I measuring up to others?”
In closing:
As I closed off this book, I felt like my head and heart was hammered into a pulp.
If I haven’t taken my twenties as seriously as she portrays it, does this mean I’m doomed to failure?
Not so. As Dr Jay put it in one of her interviews with the National Public Radio:
Maybe your defining decade will be 30 to 40. Time may be a bit more of the essence but that can be good. Often our 30s are when we really feel the urgency to go out and get the lives we want. If what you’re really asking is whether it is too late for you, then the answer is absolutely not. I wrote a book and gave a talk for 20-somethings because those are the years when we start grappling with questions about work and love and I wanted people to have good information as soon as possible.
There’s hope for us who missed the clarion call. But don’t tarry!
The twenties are a confusing period of our lives.
We move from being told what to do to figuring out what to do.
We move from having a single, clearly defined objective to feeling like our goalpost is constantly moving.
We move from knowing what each new year would expect in school, to a complex web of uncertainty every week at work.
We move from structured education where targets, time blocks and schedules are clearly defined to this mass of uncertainty.
We learn that problems and life decisions aren’t necessarily always clearly in black and white, but more shades of grey.
Adulting is hard. And it’s okay to be figuring things out.
This book is my go-to book for a dose of hard talk. Recommended reading for any twentysomething entering the world of work or anyone feeling confused about this stage of their lives. Dr Jay urges us to not waste our years drifting along in life. Instead, make intentional choices — be it in life, relationships or in your career.
Your twenties matter. Don’t waste this period of your life.
You can buy The Defining Decade on Amazon
