The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter—And How to Make the Most of Them Now
by Jay, Meg
Published: April 17, 2012
Read: December 27, 2019
Review
As someone just entering my 20s, I really appreciated this book. It really captures exactly what it set out to do: convince me that my twenties matter and avoid the common paths of failure. As a psychologist herself, the author gives very real anecdotes about young people drifting through their lives in both work and love. Although I have heard many of these ideas before, I loved how the author just quickly explained the general idea and then offered a unique perspective weaving it into her sharp point. Excellent combination of data and anecdotes. "Don't be defined by what you didn't know or didn't do, you are deciding your life right now"
Notes
#Book by [[Meg Jay]] Virginia psychologist. Of really successful people old people, consequential experiences that changed course in 20s. 80% of life significant events before 35. Bring that we just corrected. Importance of experience often not clear at time.
Real time
"30 is the new 20s, I'll decide what I want to do" - Your future days are weak, why are we talking about your weekends when you week days are making you so unhappy. Your past can't change unless you bring something new to it.
"The unlived life is not worth examining"
"I finally feel like I'm living my life in real time"
"Love and work, work and love that is all there is"
20s
20s moved marriage and steady job back. New disposable years, Odyssey years. Preadults. 20s don't matter. But it's glamorized so little to remind us anything else does. 20s more educated, but quarter are out of work and quarter part time and average wage is less than past accounting for inflation.
30 is not the new 20s
Everyone wants to be 20 except the 20s. Distraction new drug, free apps and music. 30 might be new 20, but 40 with body aren't new 30. Leaving options open, sucks. "Doing something later doesn't mean doing something better"
20 inflection point, jobs most consequential jobs, relationships might be even more important. Personality changes most dramatically in 20s then anytime before or after. We do pick our family not just or friends. Who am I should be answered with identity capital. Need intentionality to live your life, small effect now but event down the road.
Work and identity capital
Eric Ericson
Changed his last name to Ericson indicating he was her own son (fatherless)
advocated for identity crisis. A period when young people should create then own identity.
Identity capital
Investments we make in ourselves and experiences. Currency we use to purchase what we want from jobs to relationships.
Underemployment
Years of part time coffee shop and ski Lyft
Linked with depression and drinking in 40s
Salary peak an plateu in 40s
Weak Ties
Your strong ties are humogenous and know and get same info as you. Think same about relationships and in same rut
Weak ties makes you explain things without a shared understanding which clarifies your thoughts.
Everyone gets the job because they know someone. Don't feel bad for using your network.
Overall our isolated group can serve to make us more isolated from the world
Ben Franklin Effect, ask for favors to get them on your side, behavior shape attitudes. Why would an older person help in the first place? Altruism linked to health and happiness, reserve of goodwill to young people. If easy of course, long email response a pain or quick chat. Franklin asked for a book, clear request relevant to person.
Unthought Known
Scary to realize your life is up to you, no is gonna save you
Treading water in an ocean with no direction is pretending you have no preference where you end up and pretending you can do anything and are already awesome is fake
Jam Test, 6 flavors or 24. 24 table got more attention, but didn't buy one 3%. 6 30%.
Few 20s with 24 viable options. There is really only 6, don't keep it vague. There are realities.
Not what would you do if you won the lottery? What would you do if you didn't win the lottery?
Things you know about yourself, but forgot. Not knowing what your doing pretends to the the hard partz but wanting something and not knowing how to get it is scary and facing hard work and heartbreak. "But I don't know how to get into a job in that field" "will it work"
My life should look better on facebook
"The best is the enemy of good" -Voltsire
"if we only wanted to do was be happy it would be easier, but we want to happier than other people which is almost always difficult because we think them happen then they are" De Montesque
People think 20s are best years of your life, but really these are some of the most uncertain and difficult times of life.
School had a formula, I want to get an A in my twenties...
Facebook life being evaluated, trying to see their Facebook page as others will. Everyone thinks they are the only ones, they aren't. Females most often use FB for social surveillance.
Study of 400 people looked at FB pages decided the most attractive people have the most attractive friends. World where bride chooses prettiest friends instead of best. Be but seem. Not catching up but keeping up.
Compare her life to one of hundreds of FB acquaintance posting today
Search for glory
Glory alienates is from what is real
Search for glory propelled by tryanny of should, should are oppressive obligations, false dictionary between success and failure. "Not reaching my potential" Or job should be x. My life should be y.
Real Adult life
Person place and thing.
Who with, where, and what we do for a living? We start our lives with what we know about these.
Girl in SF working marketing wants to go home, but everyone tells her to have her adventure. She hoped this was already get big adventure, because then she could go home to Tennessee. Settling down isn't settling
But makes sense to settle down where you want to be. Don't drag out adventure
The customized life
"Person identity not found in behavior but in capacity to keep a particular narrative going" -some sociologist
Dread of doing what had been done before. Often first thing we know about ourselves if what we aren't. Negative identity. Being against things is easy.
Can't pull some great career out of a hat in 30s, start in 20s
Moved from mass production to mass customization. Be your own brand.
Story
She was an admissions officer, a good story goes further in 20s then at any other time. 20s more about potential then proof. Admist the details and resume a story and narrative should appear. HR says obviously working here isn't a dream, but there should be a better reason you wanna work here than you want a job. Obviously it will change. But when it does, you can be more confident you can.
Love: an upmarket conversation
"Most important decision about Happiness we make is who we marry" Biggest tragedy is that this isn't taught. We have to go downstream to comedy or talk shows to learn about it. - David Brooke's
Today's 20s spend most time single ever.
Marriage isn't dying
but Americans most marrying nation is Western world
50% of Americans marry by 30, 75% by 35, and 85% by 40
Despite news, behind closed doors, she had never met a 20 year old that didn't want to get married or give committed relationship.
Marry is so much risk compared to work. Lives deeply interwoven with one person.
Divorce often hurts kids, there is no trickle down happiness
Ask 40 year olds about most difficult experience, many were about bad marriages.
Marrying later is only better until 25. Pool of singles shallows over time.
Age 30 deadline
"I better not be alone at 30." Overnight we feel behind.
Clients in 20s say they aren't allowed to take relationships seriously and aren't allowed to plan their babies like their careers
Careers in 30s just a few years old switch to caring so much. Musical chairs in 20s, then in 30s you rush to sit down.
Early in her career, she thought 20s like her had nothing but time. Everything happens later now right. Real life hadn't started yet. But, best time to work on marriage is before you have one.
Picking family
Lowest and highest clients don't get best career. Highest functioning clients are YAVIS(young, attractive, verbal, intelligent, success). Verbal let's you parlay bring talkative into success status.
"Beauty is a greater recommendation then any letter" - Aristotle
Two paths into therapy, some isolated thing is bad. Even though everything seems great, they are so sad.
Success in 20s can be more about survival and successfully hiding troubles, they are good at falling up.
Resilience is very likable.
Some people fall up so far they feel like an imposter.
Girl without family, cries when she had to fill out emergency contacts or holidays.
"How can you be so ambitious about work, but not relationships"
When you get married, you get to choose your family.
Marriage seems now about individual bonding, but also about family bridging.
Saying in psychotherapy says the slower you go the faster you get there, let us see assumptions.
Cohabitation event
Couples who live together before marriage are more likely to wind up divorced.
Sliding not deciding, it just happens and easier so we live together. Women say they want better access to love and men want better access to sex.
Not treated very seriously, more intersection between college roommate and sex partner. Super fuzzy.
It's preengagement not premarriage that causes the effect. Think it's low cost, low risk, but actually hard to leave, balance too high. Consumer lock in, sunken cost fallacy, switching and setup costs, getting married seems easier than getting divorced
What should you do
Can do wider variety of activities than dating and sex
Don't move in together before engagement or at least talking about commitment level
Dating down
She was a professional, and let guys choose her instead of her choosing them
Was with anyone that showed interest
Didn't even cross her mind to tell others, shame
She was teased for not having sex, and even in college. Held her nose and jump into deep end of sex. She wanted to be wanted. Not having someone is like everyone didn't like them. Need to shift from being wanted to wanting
"most difficult thing to cure is a patient's attempt at self care"
"Every problem was once a solution", sex and sad music made you feel better once and now make you feel worse
College is when we start making a narrative, romantic stories untold often about shame and loop silently.
Personality can change, but not as fast as your story. They must be revised, we often have adolescent stories.
Being Liked
"People love people who are like themselves"
many man who go to therapy, are sent by their girlfriend
"I want someone more like myself" " I like my girlfriend because we have good sex and she's pretty...."
Traveling in third world country is closest thing to being married and having kids.
Similarity is essence of compatibility
Need to be in like, alike in ways that matter to have same reactions and genuinely liking what he other person is.
Opposites attract maybe for hookups.
Studies find that people who are similar in intelligence, socioeconomic status, education, attractiveness, age, ethnicity, values, religion, attitude are more likely to be satisfied and less likely to seek divorce
Not just any similarity, obvious criteria like education and religion is more a deal breaker than a match maker that makes us happier like personality. Personality is harder to see.
Matching personality like big 5. Not about who youare, but are how you are. Half is genetic. Personality relatively stable over time.
Openness
Low practical, convential, rational
High open, adventures, insightful, intelligently curious
Conscientious
Low careless, prone to addiction, easy going, spontenous
High controlling, disciplined, responsible, through
Extreversion
Low shy reserved worry cautious aloof
High enthusiastic, talkative origin novelty seeking
Agreeable
Low suspicious, uncooperative
High compassionate, understanding, cooperative, trusting
Neuroticism
Low secure, emotional resilence
High moody, tense, worried, negative
Tend to dislike people on extremes from our own
More common to get a divorce because people don't change and it was expected
Being on high end on neuroticism is toxic for relationships, far more predictive of unhappiness than personality dissimilarity
What we need in marriage changes over time? Young couple create shared vision. When life becomesMore complicated, diversification of skills can be helpful
The brain and the body
Forward thinking
Brain builds from bottom to top and back to front which shows how primal it is evolutionary.
Back and bottom is emotional
Prefrontal, executive functioning center, rational thought balances, tackle uncertainty and plan
Without prefrontal better at technical stuff, but bad at social and creating long term plans
Frontal lobe matured between 20-30.
Many clients confused by being validitorian, but no idea about who to date. Different skills, dealing with Uncertain situation.
Phineas Gage got a rod through his frontal lobe and couldn't do long term plans. In life, he worked as a horse driver with a regular routine. Social recovery worked out.
By 20s, brain biggest but refining connections. Before 18, neuron overload but inefficient. 2 periods for language first then for adulthood. After growth spurts, brain prunes. Never again will it be so easy to change who we are. Neuron survival of the busiest.
Calm yourself
"When we try new things, we don't know what we are doing. That's the biggest challenge"
New jobs at bottom of latter won't have freshman class to huddle in. Now it matters.
20s who don't feel incompetent and anxious are usually overconfident or underemployed.
Brain is designed to pay special attention to surprising things so we can learn. Also designed to remember highly emotional events.
More vivid memories come from early adulthood then any other time
The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
Eventually become less leaf and more tree says problems can be solved or at least survived
20s often want to change their feelings by changing their jobs. It would just confirm fear you didn't belong.
Sustained stress, suppressing feeling just leaves you stressed, control attitudes and reactions, reevaluate based on facts
People with some control over their emotions report greater optimism, purpose, Life satisfaction and relationships
Calling mother is 'borrowing an ego" letting someone else's frontal lobe do the work. Robbing someone from calming themselves.
"Inaction breeds fear and doubt, action breeds confidence and courage. If your want to conquer fear, don't sit home and think about it go or and get busy" Dale Carnegie
Mistakes become reflection of who you are. Confidence or not. Fixed vs growth mindset.
Fixed mindset feel threatened by hard work. Give up. Think about school with stress and shame. Growth mindset try harder. And grow strength.
This girl got Growth mindset about school, but not work.
Confidence comes from the outside rather than inside. Real confidence comes from mastery experiences which are real lived moments of success of something difficult.
Confidence is self efficacy or self trust. Comes from getting difficult job done many times before and serving failures.
10000 hours, naturals are myths. 5 years of focused work.
Difference between having a feeling and how you respond to it.
Do people change after 30?
Relatively stable. But how much? Can be relatively fixed or small changes.
Personality changes more during 20s then at any other time in life
Therapists with older adults said it was like an examiner finding old problems. But 20s you can actually change, now at stake.
Life transplant can give you a brain transplant.
Employed 20s happier than unemployed.
As 20s, studies show life starts to feel better as we become more conscientious, agreeable about life, more responsible, socially competent, confident and comfortable
Investments we make drive personality changes, Goals are building blocks of personality
Of those single in 20s (dated or hooked up without commitment) 80% dissatisfied with dating and only 10% didn't want partner. Especially bad for men causing significant drop in self esteem.
Can't join world until man, but can be man until you join the world.
Motherhood
Mother's now older and more educated. Average age of motherhood is 25. And 1/3 over 30%. Women outnumber men in workplace.
20s survey saying top priority said 51 being good parent, 30 good marriage, 15 high paying job, 9 free time, 1 fame
Fertility stats
Older sperm correlated with cognitive disability, so men and women should think about time of kids.
Decide definitely before 35, availability heurstic gives people impression older women can have babies because in news
Women Fertility: Peaks in 20s for women, starts dipping in 30s, 35 drops considerably, 40 plummets. Due to endocrine system and egg quality. 1/2 as fertile at 30, 1/4 at 35, 1/8 at 40.
Anatural, having sex around cycle gives 20-25% each try. 4-5 months when young. 5% at 40, 3 41, 2 42.
1/4 35 and 1/2 after 40 miscarriage.
Cost of fertility intervention 25k 20, 35k 35, 100k 40, 300k 42.
Past 35. 90-95% failure rate putting sperm in vagina .
IVF implanting also fails 80-90%. Some clincs don't even do it for 42 and over because it lowers their advertised rate
Half of childless couples aren't childless by choice
Affects relationships when sex becomes fertility test
Postponing marriage pushes timelines together and creates a more stressful marriage
Parents pulled two ways at once, having grandparents failing health as you have toddlers or 20s, and peak careers.
Moving Story of man who feels like he wanted his 20s and felt like his life didn't start until he settled down
Do the Math
Brain has trouble keeping time by long unpunctuated intervals
During 20, we lose those huge milestones that happen in clockwork
Few 20s really think about retirement
Carson used VR to show their future self or current self, seeing future made people gave twice to retirement
Present bias, hyperbolic discounting
"You have plenty of time, it will work out" "YOLO" now or never behaviors that don't make us happy like multiple sex partner, no job. "Why would I want 10 more years for being old" big difference between having life in 30s and starting life in 30s
20s who live beyond time usually aren't happy
Epilogue
"Best part of being my age is knowing how my life turns out" - Scott Adams
Daunting to think our life matters, idealize d to think it doesn't matter
The real glory days are yet to come
Have to make a hike before a certain time, she asks someone if she will make it, he says " You haven't decided yet"
"Don't be defined by what you didn't know it didn't do, you are deciding your life right now"