Here are a few:
I expected The Defining Decade to be cliché and full of ‘carpe diem’ sentiments. I’m so glad to say that I was wrong. To simply say it was life-changing would not suffice. My copy is saturated in highlighter and ink. Everything was relevant. Everything was helpful. Everything in that book spoke to me in a way that no book, parent, friend, or advisor ever has. Though I’d been trying to get my life together, I started trying harder. I gained a new perspective. I made myself a timeline. I recommended your book to all my twentysomething friends and even lent out my copy, scribbles and highlights included. I just finished the book last week and I finished it feeling relieved almost. You are speaking directly to a generation that is often spoken down to or dismissed.
—Tessa V., Istanbul, Turkey
I’m sure you’ve heard it so many times, but I feel that this book was written about me.
—Oded W., Tel Aviv, Israel
This book absolutely nails what it’s like to be a frightened, confused, despairing twentysomething fed useless platitudes about how the world works from movies, newspapers, friends and even parents.
—Michael S., Calgary, Canada
Reading your book was like having someone read a transcript of the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, etc. bouncing through the chamber inside my head.
—Laura S., Los Angeles, USA
Your book speaks to me and about me beat for beat. This is exactly the book I need at this point in my life.
—Krishna D., Sydney, Australia and Jakarta, Indonesia
So the question is—why haven’t these twentysomethings felt spoken to before?
Maybe we can point to current cultural conditions where twentysomethings are mostly patronized and dismissed, and where their identities are often more about being other people’s children than they are about being their own people. But it probably also has something to do with the fact that, as a therapist who specializes in young adults, I get to see a side of twentysomethings that most people do not.
I worked with my first twentysomething psychotherapy client in 1999, and for more than fifteen years I have listened to twentysomethings all day, every day, behind closed doors. Today’s twentysomethings may be pegged as oversharers but what they post on blogs and on social media is far more curated than what they say in my office. So I know some things that most people don’t about twentysomethings—and I even know a few things that twentysomethings don’t know about themselves.
It may sound counterintuitive but, like most people, 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. I firmly believe that clients—and readers—don’t fear being asked the tough questions; what they really fear is that they won’t be asked the tough questions. When twentysomethings hear what I have to say, the most common reaction is not, “I can’t believe you said that.” It’s, “Why didn’t someone tell me all this sooner?”
Well, new reader, here goes.
Your twenties matter. Two-thirds of lifetime wage growth happens in the first ten years of a career. More than half of us are married, or dating, or living with our future partner, by age thirty; seventy-five percent of us by age thirty-five. Personality changes more during our twenties than at any time before or after. The brain caps off its last growth spurt in the twenties. Fertility peaks in our late twenties and early thirties. Our social networks—and the opportunities they bring—are widest and most diverse in our twenties and narrow as we age.
Altogether, eighty percent of life’s most defining moments take place by age thirty-five so, whether you are twenty or twenty-nine, or somewhere in between, consider the next ten years of your life your defining decade. No, life is not over at thirty or even forty, nor is it ever too late to claim your life. But if, as William James said, intention is the result of attention and choice, it is never too early to start paying attention either.
So, twentysomethings everywhere who want to be more intentional—and parents or bosses or teachers or anyone else who wants to listen in—this conversation and this book are for you.
PREFACE
The Defining Decade
In a rare study of life-span development, researchers at Boston University and University of Michigan examined dozens of life stories, written by prominent, successful people toward the end of their lives. They were interested in “autobiographically consequential experiences,” or the circumstances and people that had the strongest influence on how life unfolded thereafter. While important events took place from birth until death, those that determined the years ahead were most heavily concentrated during the twentysomething years.
It would make sense that as we leave home or college and become more independent there is a burst of self-creation, a time when what we do determines who we will become. It might even seem like adulthood is one long stretch of autobiographically consequential experiences—that the older we get, the more we direct our own lives. This is not true.
In our thirties, consequential experiences start to slow. School will be over or nearly so. We will have invested time in careers or made the choice not to. We, or our friends, may be in relationships and starting families. We may own homes or have other responsibilities that make it difficult to change directions. With about 80 percent of life’s most significant events taking place by age thirty-five, as thirtysomethings and beyond we largely either continue with, or correct for, the moves we made during our twentysomething years.
The deceptive irony is that our twentysomething years may not feel all that consequential. It is easy to imagine that life’s significant experiences begin with big moments and exciting encounters, but this is not how it happens.
Researchers in this same study found that most of the substantial and lasting events—those that led to career success, family fortune, personal bliss, or lack thereof—developed across days or weeks or months with little immediate dramatic effect. The importance of these experiences was not necessarily clear at the time but, in retrospect, the subjects recognized that these events had sharply defined their futures. To a great extent, our lives are decided by far-reaching twentysomething moments we may not realize are happening at all.
This book is about recognizing those defining twentysomething moments. It’s about why your twenties matter, and how to make the most of them now.
INTRODUCTION
Real Time
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today And then one day you find, ten years has got behind you No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
—David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright of Pink Floyd, “Time”
Almost invariably, growth and development has what’s called a critical period. There’s a particular period of maturation in which, with external stimulation of the appropriate kind, the capacity will pretty suddenly develop and mature. Before that and later than that, it’s either harder or impossible.
—Noam Chomsky, linguist
When Kate started therapy, she had been waiting tables and living—and fighting—with her parents for more than a year. Her father called to schedule her first appointment, and both of them presumed that father-daughter issues would come quickly to the fore. But what most struck me about Kate was that her twentysomething years were wasting away. Having grown up in New York City, at age twenty-six and now living in Virginia, she still did not have a driver’s license, despite the fact that