The Defining Decade: Why your twenties matter – and how to make the most of them now by Meg Jay. 

4/5 rating. 273 pages.

Book #60 of 2020. Read August 21, 2020.

This should be absolute compulsory reading for all twentysomethings.

Meg is a clinical psychologist for young people and pulls from her meetings with them, her own life, and studies to show why our twenties really matter. In popular media and thought, the twenties have become a time where people are expected to have no worries, only have fun, and not think about the future. Unfortunately, this is not the way to set up the rest of your life to be happy and successful. This leads to so many of us being underwhelmed and often lost.

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

“The twenties are an up-in-the-air and turbulent time, but if we can figure out how to navigate, even a little bit at a time, we can get further, faster, than at any other stage in life. It is a pivotal time when the things we do—and the things we don’t do—will have an enormous effect across years and even generations to come.”

Meg does a beautiful job of explaining ways to cope with the issues we come across in life. As I can attest, life becomes confusing, it’s easy to feel lost. But it’s important, as Meg says, to make goals, move forward in our life and not waste our twenties.

“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.”

Quotes:

“We think that by avoiding decisions now, we keep all of our options open for later—but not making choices is a choice all the same.”

“These are the years when it will be easiest to start the lives we want. And no matter what we do, the twenties are an inflection point—the great reorganization—a time when the experiences we have disproportionately influence the adult lives we will lead.”

“Likewise, in the twentysomething years, even a small shift can radically change where we end up in our thirties and beyond.”

“About two-thirds of lifetime wage growth happens in the first ten years of a career.”

“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.”

“Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job, and your spouse, and even your kids. Even if it’s a bit edgy, a bit out of your comfort zone, saying yes means you will do something new, meet someone new, and make a difference. —Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google”

“He that hath once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.”

“It’s good to be good. There is a ‘helper’s high’ that comes from being generous. In numerous studies, altruism has been linked to happiness, health, and longevity—as long as the help we give is not a burden.”

“Twentysomethings like Ian were raised on abstract commands—’Follow your dreams!’ ‘Reach for the stars!’—but they often don’t know much about how to get these things done. They don’t know how to get what they want or, sometimes, even what they want. As Ian put it to me, almost desperately, ‘My mom goes on to me and everybody else about how great I am and how proud she is of me, and I want to say: For what? What exactly stands out about me?’”

“Unthought knowns are those things we know about ourselves but forget somehow. These are the dreams we have lost sight of or the truths we sense but don’t say out loud. We may be afraid of acknowledging the unthought known to other people because we are afraid of what they might think. Even more often, we fear what the unthought known will then mean for ourselves and our lives.”

“When we make choices, we open ourselves up to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier not to know, not to choose, and not to do.”

“‘If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.’ —Charles de Montesquieu, writer/philosopher”

“In my experience, these are the most uncertain and some of the most difficult years of life.”

“‘Being against something is easy,’ I said. ‘What are you for?’”

“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 want leap over those who can’t.”

“Inaction breeds fear and doubt. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” —Dale Carnegie, writer and lecturer

“Even simply having goals can make us happier and more confident—both now and later. In one study that followed nearly five hundred young adults from college to the mid-thirties, increased goal-setting in the twenties led to greater purpose, mastery, agency, and well-being in the thirties. Goals are how we declare who we are and who we want to be. They are how we structure our years and our lives. Goals have been called the building blocks of adult personality, and it is worth considering that who you will be in your thirties and beyond is being built out of the goals you are setting for yourself today.”

“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” —Leonard Bernstein, composer

“[John Irving] says, ‘I always begin with the last sentence”; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.’ That sounds like a lot of work, especially compared to the fantasy that great writers sit down and just go where the story takes them. Irving lets us know that good stories, and happy endings, are more intentional than that.”

“MOUNTAINS DON’T CARE.”

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