The Defining Decade
By Meg Jay
In your twenties should you just travel the world, spend all of your money on bad decisions, and make even worse ones in who you date? Or should you take advantage of your youth, invest in your future, and achieve your goals faster than adults way older than you? These questions are at the core of Dr. Meg Jay’s The Defining Decade. Dr. Jay is a clinical psychologist who reveals the anxieties and fears of growing up she has heard from countless millenials in her practice. She preaches taking advantage of this weird limbo time period of your twenties, and not to wait until you’re thirty like society tells you to. Dr. Jay takes a look at Work, Love, and the Brain and the Body in a book that makes you ask yourself all of the hard questions you’ve been ignoring.
“Forget about having an identity crisis and get some identity capital. Do something that adds value to who you are. Do something that’s an investment in who you might want to be next.”
Thoughts
My new grad book club at work read this book, and although I was a little unsure of facing some of these hard questions (self-help books always make me feel like that) I am glad I did. It was a great read that touched on a lot of the anxieties we were all facing starting a new job, and subsequently career, with no rule book. For me personally this book helped to make me aware of the choices I was making at a macro level. At times I feel like I make split second decisions and go with the flow whenever it takes hold of me. As I am learning with adult life, a lot about becoming an adult is embracing ambiguity, not making any major decisions too frequently if you can avoid it, and starting to think about how decisions today impact so many things down the line. They don’t teach you this in school. If nothing else this book can help you quiet your nerves as you navigate the reality that your life won’t be perfect. But that is OK. Your goal is to continue to evolve and adapt to your surroundings. Your goal is to make yourself a little bit better every day. Your goal is to invest in yourself and be 100% selfish with your time. If that means skipping a night out researching a field, industry, or skill you are interested in then do your thing. After all it’s your life isn’t it?
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