Next month sees the release of clinical psychologist Dr Meg Jay’s The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them. From the title, it isn’t difficult to guess her message: that 20-somethings need to climb the ladders into good relationships, careers and housing prospects.
Fortunately, 20-somethings are agile, ‘They don’t have a mortgage, a partner, a kid. I realised that a little work could go a long way.’ Moreover, she says, there are neurological consequences — good ones if we take the right path, bad ones if we don’t. This is neuroplasticity, and Jay does not want wayward 20-somethings to become set in their ways. Her TED talk on the topic has notched nearly eight million views.
However, my first thought on reading the press release is that Millenials have it tough enough: with the worst economy in 80 years, most are having to deal with crushing student debt, housing and job issues. They hardly need to be told that the first 10 years of their career has an exponential affect on how much they will earn throughout the rest of their life (and anyway, 10 years is a heck of a long time by anyone’s standards in today’s tech times).
Apparently 50% of Americans are married, living with or dating their future partner by 30. The other 50%, caught in our modern-day instant gratification culture (nearly 80% of Millenials have been ghosted, according to a survey by PlentyofFish), doesn’t need to hear this, frankly. And enough of the fertility facts.
Dr Meg Jay isn’t taking into account what happens during our 20s: life.
A few years ago, I interviewed a fun, witty 30-something who owns a very cool fashion shop, popular with stylists and celebs. Afterwards, she asked me to delete her comments about her 20s: that she frittered them away, partying in Ibiza. I complied with her wishes, but thought that she probably developed her sense of style in bohemian Ibiza.
If we spent our 20s thinking strategically – how is this job/lover/friend going to help me progress? – as Dr Meg Jay suggests, perhaps the 80% of life’s most defining moments that happen before 35, wouldn’t actually happen. We’d either panic that we couldn’t tick off the boxes in a decade or tick them off and wonder what’s next.
Sometimes, thinking strategically simply means editing the past when we need to.
