Honestly, I’m not really much of a reader. I can scroll through social media for forever, but I fall asleep after turning just five or six pages of a book. This past summer, however, my best friend was going through a pretty rough couple of months and told me about a book that changed her perspective on life; The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter – And how to Make the Most of Them Now by Dr. Meg Jay.
At first I thought, “Yeah, right.” All self-improvement books are the same- cliché anecdotes about how you’re doing life wrong. I didn’t want to read something that would just make me feel worse about myself. Yet, as she kept talking about the book, it sounded different. It sounded relevant.
A couple days later, I picked up a copy of my own. This time, I didn’t fall asleep after five or six pages.
A lot of people believe that your twenties is a time for exploration, working odd jobs, dating all the wrong people, and for finding yourself. Author Dr. Jay thinks we’ve gone too far with that. Yes, your twenties is a time to find yourself, but to do it in a productive way.
At this age, you’re an adult. You’re already living in the ‘real world’. Dr. Jay disproves the “thirty is the new twenty” culture with a combination of science and true stories of her twenty-something clients. It was easy to relate to the struggles that these people went through, whether it was about their career, relationships, or changing personalities. The book emphasizes that wasting precious time because you think you’re still young can potentially set you up for failure in your 30’s and beyond.
Without giving too much away, this book urges twenty-somethings to work hard now to get to where you want to be in the future. To put things in perspective, 80% of life’s defining moments happen by the age of 35. Why only think about your long-term goals in the future when you have so much time and potential to start working on them now?
The time during your twenties offer endless opportunities for growth and development. You’ll meet people that will challenge your beliefs, and that’s a good thing. Your personality will also reshape the most during this time. With all this freedom and change we’re given in our twenties, it doesn’t seem wise to just breeze through such a pivotal decade of our life without working towards something important.
I’ve watched people work incredibly hard to achieve their dreams, but I’ve also seen people peak in college; confused and unhappy once they left their campus safe haven. Right now, I’m personally somewhere in the middle. There are days where I feel like I have life together and there are other days when I overthink and stress myself out about where I’ll be in five years. I mentioned earlier that I don’t like books that make me feel worse about myself. However, I do value the constructive criticism presented in this book. This book does not bash our generation or call us a wreck. It’s realistic and passionately urges 20 year-olds to value their time and productivity. Dr. Jay points out all of our missed opportunities in the hopes that we ourselves can make a change.
I’m now at a stage in my life where I’m trying to figure out what makes me happy and how I want to capitalize on that. I’m confused about what I want to do with my career, and I haven’t been as proactive with my time as I wish I was to consider my options. Maybe spending scrolling through an Instagram feed full of puppies and the Kardashians isn’t the best use of my time, maybe.
That being said, The Defining Decade inspired me to figure out how I want to make the most of these critical years. We should not just acknowledge that our twenties is a defining decade of our life, we need to act on it to make a difference.