you speak can accelerate your path to where you want to be.
Instead of
The Defining Decade: Why Your
Twenties Matter and How to Make
the Most of Them Now by Meg Jay
This book directly challenges the thirty-is-the-new-twenty culture. Through
research and anecdotes from her time as a clinical psychologist, Meg Jay
advocates for being intentional about how you spend your twenties.
Buy this book on Amazon(Highly recommend)
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Key Takeaways
Identity capital
“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.”
In your twenties, take the job with the most identity capital. It’s easy to get
lost focusing on your degree and job, but remember that other forms of
identity capital, such as your network, how you solve problems, and how
working right out of college, you might travel the world for a year.
In doing so, perhaps you lose a year of income and experience in the
workforce, but you gain a new ability to connect with and relate to others
that will serve you throughout your career. Taking an identify-capital
focused lens can help you make decisions that might seem risky or
unconventional in the moment, but yield unexpected fruits in the long-run.
Power of weak ties
“Information and opportunity spread farther and faster through
weak ties than through close friends because weak ties have
fewer overlapping contacts. Weak ties are like bridges you
cannot see all the way across, so there is no telling where they
might lead.”
“Whether we are talking about career ideas or our thoughts on
love, we have to make our case more fully. In this way, weak
ties promote, and sometimes even force, thoughtful growth and
change.”
While we spend most of our time and energy developing the relationships
with our closest friends, it’s often the weak tie relationships (e.g., going to
the same university or working for the same company) that open up the
biggest opportunities in our careers. Whereas our close friends have similar
networks to us, our weak tie relationships open up doors to entirely new
networks, which can help us tap into opportunities we did not even know
existed.
Weak tie relationships are also beneficial because they require us to
articulate who we are, what we’re about, and what we want in a much more
thoughtful way than we need to do with close friends. Because of this, the
weak ties in our life often lead us to think more deeply and grow as people.
Ben Franklin effect
“He that hath once done you a kindness will be more ready to
do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged.”
Upon first meeting people, Ben Franklin found ways to have the person do
him a small favor. He did so because he understood that if people do you
one favor, they are more likely to do you another in the future. You can
employ this understanding of how people operate when first meeting new
people, and it can help you build deeper, more helpful relationships.
The difficulty of happiness
“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
When assessing or pursuing our own happiness, we often do so by
comparing ourselves to other people. This comparison-focused mindset
makes it challenging to be happy because every person we meet will be
doing better than us in at least one respect. If instead, we focus internally
on our needs and situation without a comparative lens, we might find that
happiness is right in front of us.
The tyranny of the “should”
“Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds are paralyzing
judgments from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams
while shoulds feel like oppressive obligations. Shoulds set up a
false dichotomy between either meeting an ideal or being a
failure, between perfection or settling. The tyranny of the should
even pits us against our own best interests.”
Goals are the visions we set for ourselves, whereas “shoulds” are the
obligations we feel based on pressure from others or an externally-directed
narrative about what life should be. If we go through our days focusing on
the “shoulds,” then we are bound to feel constrained and oppressed by the
burden of life. But if we focus on the dreams we set for ourselves and the
people we’d like to become, then we can avoid the tyranny of the “should.”
Tell a good story
“One thing this has taught me is that a good story goes further
in the twentysomething years than perhaps at any other time in
life. College is done and résumés are fledgling, so the personal
narrative is one of the few things currently under our control. 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.”
In our twenties, we are evaluated by the story we tell others and the
potential that story conveys rather than our direct experience. If you learn to
tell a compelling personal narrative, you will inspire others to believe in you
and your potential, which will accelerate your personal and professional
success.
Living with your partner
“It is the couples who live together before being clearly and
mutually committed to each other who are more likely to
experience poorer communication, lower levels of commitment
to the relationship, and greater marital instability down the
road.”
People in their twenties often choose to live with their partner to save
money or to test out how it would be to live together. However, if you move
in together without clearly stating that you are doing so as a next step in
your evolution of a longer-term commitment, then you often face worse
communication and lower levels of stability down the road. In short, moving
in together is only a good test if you first recognize your commitment to one
another.
Dating and working down
“Twentysomething women and men who are dating down—or
working down, for that matter—usually have untold, or at least
unedited, stories. These stories originated in old conversations
and experiences and, so, they change only through new
conversations and new experiences.”
If the stories you tell about yourself reflect the experiences you had in your
adolescent and are not updated for your new beliefs and values in
adulthood, you might find yourself “dating or working down” to your
adolescent self. In doing so, you will likely end up disappointed and not
having the dating or work life that reflects the person you want to be.
The dangers of neuroticism
“Neuroticism, or the tendency to be anxious, stressed, critical,
and moody, is far more predictive of relationship unhappiness
and dissolution than is personality dissimilarity. While
personality similarity can help the years run smoothly, any two
people will be different in some way or another. How a person
responds to these differences can be more important than the
differences themselves. To a person who runs high in
Neuroticism, differences are seen in a negative light. Anxiety
and judgments about these differences then lead to criticism
and contempt, two leading relationship killers.”
Neuroticism, one of the Big Five personality traits, is correlated with higher
levels of relationship unhappiness and dissolution. When we have a high
level of neuroticism, we will see our differences with our partner in a
negative light, leading to judgments and criticisms that will kill our
relationships. On the other hand, if we have differences with our partners
and low levels of neuroticism, we will likely be able to navigate these
differences through an openness and understanding that will allow the
relationship to endure.
On being criticized
“When twentysomethings have their competence criticized, they
become anxious and angry. They are tempted to march in and
take action. They generate negative feelings toward others and
obsess about the why: “Why did my boss say that? Why doesn’t
my boss like me?” Taking work so intensely personally can
make a forty-hour workweek long indeed.”
In our twenties, many of us are terrible at taking criticism. If a boss or
partner challenges our abilities, we often take that personally and obsess
over what the person said. When we do this, we are less likely to take in this
feedback and improve and more likely to become resentful, which will
ultimately make our relationships worse and lower our chances of success.
Growth mindset
“Those who use what is called a growth mindset believe that
people can change, that success is something to be achieved.
Maybe it’s not the case that any person can be anything, but it
is still true that within certain parameters, people can learn and
grow. For those who have a growth mindset, failures may sting
but they are also viewed as opportunities for improvement and
change.”
Adopting a growth mindset is one of the most empowering things you can
do to accelerate your personal and professional success. With a growth
mindset, you see failures as opportunities to learn and grow, rather than
reflections on your incompetence or the way in which the world is rigged
against you. And when you are oriented towards learning and growth, you
will improve over time and not fall into the trap of becoming bitter and Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday
resentful with the world.
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie

Take responsibility for your life
“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.”
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in
Life and in the Markets by Nassim Taleb
Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You
Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t
Know by Adam Grant

Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to

Your life is not predetermined. It is up to you to figure out what you want and
Take Action by Simon Sinek
pursue it aggressively. To do so, you need to be intentional, take action, and
continue pushing forward even when life becomes incredibly difficult. At Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing
every moment, you can decide to settle or make your life what you want it to Your Humanity By Kim Scott
be.
Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by
David Goggins
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