Jay

20 Quotes From "The Defining Decade" That Will Make You Take Your 20s A Lot More Seriously

Why is it so bad to be disillusioned about your 20s? Because what you do now will have an exponential impact on the rest of your life. Your brain is going through its last growth spurt. The first 10 years of your career impacts your financial growth for t
Brianna Wiest
September 6, 2016
“Twentysomethings who don't feel anxious and incompetent at work are usually overconfident or underemployed.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“How do you get the happy ending? John Irving ought to know. One of my favorite authors, Irving writes these multigenerational epics of fiction that somehow work out in the end. How does he do it? He 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.

Most 20 something's can't write the last sentence of their lives. But when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their 30s or 40s or 60s -or things they don't want- and work backward from there. This is how you have your own multigenerational epic with a happy ending. This is how you live your life in real time.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“Traveling in a third-world country is the closest thing there is to being married and raising kids. You have glorious hikes and perfect days on the beach. You go on adventures you would never try, or enjoy, alone. But you also can't get away from each other. Everything is unfamiliar. Money is tight or you get robbed. Someone gets sick or sunburned. You get bored. It is harder than you expected, but you are glad you didn't just sit home.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“Our 20s are the defining decade of adulthood. 80% of life's most defining moments take place by about age 35. 2/3 of lifetime wage growth happens during the first ten years of a career. More than half of Americans are married or are dating or living with their future partner by age 30. Personality can change more during our 20s than at any other decade in life. Female fertility peaks at 28. The brain caps off its last major growth spurt. When it comes to adult development, 30 is not the new 20. Even if you do nothing, not making choices is a choice all the same. Don't be defined by what you didn't know or didn't do.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“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.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“Knowing what to overlook is one way older adults are typically wiser than young adults. With age comes what is known as "positivity effect". We become more interested in positive information, and our brains react less strongly to what negative information we do encounter.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“Doing something later is not automatically the same as doing something better.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“Feeling better doesn’t come from avoiding adulthood, it comes from investing in adulthood.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“Confidence doesn't come from the inside out. It moves from the outside in. People feel less anxious--and more confident--on the inside when they can point to things they have done well on the outside. Fake confidence comes from stuffing our self-doubt. Empty confidence comes from parental platitudes on our lunch hour. Real confidence comes from mastery experiences, which are actual, lived moments of success, especially when things seem difficult. Whether we are talking about love or work, the confidence that overrides insecurity comes from experience. There is no other way.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“What no one tells twentysomethings like Emma is that finally, and suddenly, they can pick their own families - they can create their own families - and these are the families that life will be about. These are the families that will define the decades ahead.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“The lottery question might get you thinking about what you would do if talent and money didn't matter. But they do. The question twentysomethings need to ask themselves is what they would do with their lives if they didn't win the lottery.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“Identity capital is our collection of personal assets. It is the repertoire of individual resources that we assemble over time. These are the investments we make in ourselves, the things we do well enough, or long enough, that they become a part of who we are. Some identity capital goes on a résumé, such as degrees, jobs, test scores, and clubs. Other identity capital is more personal, such as how we speak, where we are from, how we solve problems, how we look. Identity capital is how we build ourselves—bit by bit, over time. Most important, identity capital is what we bring to the adult marketplace. It is the currency we use to metaphorically purchase jobs and relationships and other things we want.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“Distinctiveness is a fundamental part of identity. We develop a clearer sense of ourselves by firming up the boundaries between ourselves and others. I am who I am because of how I am different from those around me. There is a point to my life because it cannot be carried out in exactly the same way by any other person. Differentness is part of what makes us who we are. It gives our lives meaning.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“We are led to believe the twenty something years don’t matter, yet, with the glamorization of and near obsession with the twenties, there is little to remind us that anything else ever will. This causes too many men and women to squander the most transformative years of their adult lives, only to pay the price in decades to come. Our cultural attitude toward the twenties is something like good old American irrational exuberance. Twenty-first-century twenty somethings have grown up alongside the dot-com craze, the supersize years, the housing.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“Older spouses may be more mature, but later marriage has its own challenges. Rather than growing together while their twenty something selves are still forming, partners who marry older may be more set in their ways. And a series of low-commitment, possibly destructive relationships can create bad habits and erode faith in love. And even though searching may help you find a better partner, the pool of available singles shallows over time, perhaps in more ways than one.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“As one human resources professional said to me, ‘I wish someone would tell twenty somethings that the office has a completely different culture than what they are used to. You can’t start an e-mail with ‘Hey!’ You’re probably going to have to work at one thing for quite a while before being promoted—or even complimented. People are going to tell you not to tweet about work or put stupid posts on your G-chat status. Not to wear certain clothes. You have to think about how you speak and write. How you act. Twenty somethings who’ve never had jobs don’t know this. Neither do the scanners and baristas who’ve been hanging out at work chatting with their friends.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“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.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“Our twenties can be like living beyond time. When we graduate from school, we leave behind the only lives we have ever known, ones that have been neatly packaged in semester-sized chunks with goals nestled within. Suddenly, life opens up and the syllabi are gone. There are days and weeks and months and years, but no clear way to know when or why any one thing should happen. It can be a disorienting, cavelike existence. As one twentysomething astutely put it, ‘The twentysomething years are a whole new way of thinking about time. There’s this big chunk of time and a whole bunch of stuff needs to happen somehow.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“For the most part, "naturals" are myths. People who are especially good at something may have some innate inclination, or some particular talent, but they have also spent about ten thousand hours practicing or doing that thing.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“I wasn't scared of losing my past. I was scared of losing my future.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
“Survivors create survival mechanisms. Mine is pushing through. I push everything to the side, out of my line of vision, out of my mind and I focus relentlessly on my goal. Not sure what you’d call it, but who cares? I’m a fighter and that’s enough. I live each day happy to wake up each morning to my children’s bright eyes and warm cheeks. If pushing through gives me more days with the family I’ve created, with my writing, with my loves— fine by me. Call it what you want. I call it living.”
— Rachel Thompson, Broken Places: A Memoir of Abuse