诚挚推荐 ‖20岁，青春不再来30 Is Not the New 20: Why You Should Read The Defining Decade

Don't be defined by what you didn't know or didn't do. Right now, you are deciding your life.

When I was in my twenties, I saw my very first psychotherapy client. I was a Ph.D. student studying clinical psychology at Berkeley. She was a twenty-six-year-old woman named Alex.

At our first meeting Alex came in wearing jeans and a slightly rumpled top, plopped straight down on the couch in my office, kicked off her shoes, and told me she was there to talk about guy problems. When I heard that, I breathed a sigh of relief. A classmate of mine had gotten an arsonist for a first client... so a twenty-something who wanted to talk about boys — I figured I could handle that.

But I couldn't.

Alex brought funny stories to every session, which made it very easy for me to nod along and keep pushing off the moment of getting to any real result.

Alex would say, "Thirty is the new twenty," and as far as I could tell, she was right. Work came later, marriage came later, kids came later, even death came later. Twenty-somethings like Alex and me had nothing but time.

But it wasn't long before my supervisor pushed me to start moving Alex's love life along. I refused. I said, "Sure, she's dating right now, she's sleeping with a knucklehead, but that doesn't mean she's going to marry him." And my supervisor said, "Not yet — but she might marry the next one who's just like him. Besides, the best time to work on Alex's marriage is before she has one."

This is what psychologists call an "aha moment." In that instant, I understood that thirty is not the new twenty. Yes, people are settling down later than they used to, but that doesn't mean Alex's twenties were a developmental downtime.

This was a good developmental window for Alex — and there we sat, letting it go to waste. That's when I realized this "benign neglect" is a very real problem, and one with serious consequences — not just for Alex and her love life, but for the families and futures of twenty-somethings everywhere.

There are about fifty million twenty-somethings in the US right now. That's roughly 15% of the population — or 100%, if you consider that no one gets through adulthood without passing through their twenties.

Raise your hand if you're a twenty-something. I'd really love to see some twenty-somethings in here. Great — you all look terrific. If you work with twenty-somethings, if you love a twenty-something, if a twenty-something keeps you up at night — I want to see it. Good, terrific. Twenty-somethings matter a great deal.

I specialize in twenty-somethings because I believe every one of these fifty million people deserves to know what psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists, and fertility specialists already know: that making the most of your twenties is the simplest, and yet the most consequential, thing you can do — it shapes your career, your love life, your happiness, even the whole world.

This isn't my opinion. It's a fact. We know that 80% of life's most defining moments happen by age thirty-five. That means eight out of every ten decisions, aha moments, and experiences that steer your life happen by your mid-thirties.

Those of you over forty, don't panic. We know that the first ten years of a career has an outsized impact on how much money you'll go on to make. We know that more than half of Americans are married, or living with, or dating their future partner by age thirty.

We know that the brain caps off its second — and last — growth spurt in your twenties as it rewires itself for adulthood, which means whatever it is you want to change about yourself, now is the time to change it. We know that personality changes more during your twenties than at any other time in life, and we know that female fertility peaks at twenty-eight, and things get tricky after thirty-five.

So your twenties are the time to get educated about your body and your options. When we talk about child development, we all know the first five years are a critical period for language and attachment in the brain. It's a time when your everyday life has an enormous impact on your future.

But something we hear a lot less about is adult development — and our twenties are that critical period of adult development. That's just not what twenty-somethings are hearing, though. The headlines only describe a shifting timeline of adulthood.

Researchers call the twenties an extended adolescence. Journalists coin silly nicknames for twenty-somethings like "twixters" and "kidults." It's true. As a culture, we have trivialized what is actually the most defining decade of adulthood.

Leonard Bernstein said that to accomplish great things, you need a plan and not quite enough time. Isn't that true? So when you pat a twenty-something on the head and say, "You've got an extra decade to start your life," what do you think happens? Nothing. You've robbed that person of their urgency and their ambition — and absolutely nothing happens.

And then every day, twenty-somethings as smart and interesting as you or your sons and daughters come into my office and say things like, "I know my boyfriend's no good for me, but this relationship doesn't count. I'm just killing time." Or, "Everyone says as long as I get started on a career by thirty, I'll be fine."

But later they start saying, "My twenties are almost over, and I have nothing to show for it. I had a better résumé the day after I graduated." And then they say, "Dating in my twenties was like musical chairs. Everyone was running around and having fun, but then sometime around thirty the music stopped, and everybody started sitting down. I didn't want to be the only one left standing, so sometimes I think I married my husband because he was the closest chair to me at thirty."

Where are the twenty-somethings in here? Do not do that. Okay, that may sound a little flip, but make no mistake — the stakes are very high.

When so much gets pushed to the thirties, there's enormous pressure in that decade to start a career, pick a city, find a partner, and have a couple of kids in a very short window of time. Many of these things are incompatible, and as research is starting to show, it's just plain harder and more stressful to do them all at once in your thirties.

The post-millennial midlife crisis isn't about buying a red convertible. It's about realizing your career isn't the one you wanted, that you can't have the child you wanted, or that you can't give your child a sibling.

Too many thirty- and forty-somethings look at themselves, and then look at me sitting across the room, and talk about their twenties. "What was I doing? What was I thinking?" I want to change what twenty-somethings are doing and thinking.

Let me tell you a story about how to do that. It's a story about a woman named Emma. At twenty-five, Emma came to my office because she was, in her own words, having an identity crisis. She said she thought she might want to work in art or entertainment, but she hadn't decided yet, so she'd spent the last several years waiting tables.

Because it was cheaper, she was living with a boyfriend who showed his temper more often than he showed any ambition. And as hard as her twenties were, her earlier life had been harder. She often cried in our sessions, but then she'd steady herself and say, "You can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends."

One day Emma came in, put her head in her lap, and cried for the better part of an hour. She had just bought a new address book, and she'd spent the morning filling in her contacts, but then she found herself staring at the blank space that comes after the words, "In case of emergency, please call..."

She looked at me, nearly hysterical, and said, "Who's going to be there for me if I get in a car wreck? Who's going to take care of me if I get cancer?" In that moment, it took everything I had not to say, "I will."

What Emma needed wasn't a therapist who really, really cared. What Emma needed was a better life, and I knew this was her chance. I'd learned a lot since my time with Alex, so I wasn't about to let Emma's defining decade just slip away.

So over the next weeks and months, I told Emma three things that every twenty-something, male or female, deserves to hear.

First, I told Emma to forget about having an identity crisis and get some identity capital. By "get identity capital," I mean to add value to yourself — to make an investment in who you want to be next.

I didn't know Emma's career future, and no one knows the future of their work anyway, but I knew this: identity capital begets identity capital. Now was the time for that cross-country job, that internship, that startup you want to try.

I'm not discounting twenty-something exploration here, but I am discounting exploration that's meaningless — which, really, doesn't deserve to be called exploration. That's procrastination. I told Emma to explore work and make it count.

Second, I told Emma that the urban tribe is overrated. Best friends are great for giving you a ride to the airport, but when twenty-somethings huddle together with like-minded peers, they limit who they know, what they know, how they think, how they speak, and where they work. That new piece of capital, that new person to date, almost always comes from outside the inner circle.

New things come from what are called our weak ties — our friends of friends of friends. Yes, half of twenty-somethings are un- or under-employed. But half aren't, and weak ties are how you get yourself into that group. Half of new jobs are never posted, so reaching out to your neighbor's boss is how you land that unposted job. It isn't cheating. It's the science of how information spreads.

Finally, Emma believed that you can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends. This was true growing up, but as a twenty-something, Emma would soon choose her own family by partnering with someone to make one.

I told Emma the time to start choosing your family is now. You may think that thirty is a better time to settle down than twenty, or even twenty-five, and I agree. But grabbing whoever you're living with or sleeping with when everyone else starts walking down the aisle isn't progress.

The best time to work on your marriage is before you have one, which means being as intentional about love as you are about work. Choosing your family means consciously choosing the people and things you want, rather than just making things work, or killing time with whoever happens to be choosing you.

So what happened to Emma? Well, we went through that address book, and she found an old roommate's cousin who worked at an art museum in another state. That weak tie helped her land a job there. That job gave her a reason to leave the boyfriend she'd been living with.

Now, five years later, she's a special-events planner for museums. She's married to a man she mindfully chose. She loves her new career, she loves her new family, and she sent me a card that read, "Now the emergency-contact line doesn't seem big enough."

Emma's story makes this sound easy, but that's what I love about working with twenty-somethings. It's so easy to help them. Twenty-somethings are like airplanes just leaving LAX, bound for somewhere out west. Right after takeoff, a small change in course is the difference between landing in Alaska and landing in Fiji.

In the same way, at twenty-one or twenty-five or even twenty-nine, one good conversation, one good break, one good talk can have an enormous effect on the years — even the generations — that follow. Here's an idea worth spreading to every twenty-something you know.

It's as simple as what I learned to say to Alex. It's what I now have the privilege of saying to twenty-somethings like Emma every day: Thirty is not the new twenty, so claim your adulthood, get some identity capital, use your weak ties, and choose your family well. Don't be defined by what you didn't know or didn't do.

Right now, you are deciding your life.