The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

while we were busy making sure we didn’t miss out on anything, we were setting ourselves up to miss out on some of the most important things of all.

I saw that bigness came from investing in what I had, from taking part in what was in front of me.

We might neglect our future selves because of some failure of belief or imagination.

But those phone calls are robbing you of the opportunity to calm yourself down.”

A more expansive sense of interconnectedness rests not on texting best friends at one in the morning, but on reaching out to people that make a difference in our lives even though they don’t have to.

She imagined that people at work either had confidence or they didn’t, so any little thing that went wrong on the job suggested she didn’t. Rather than missteps, her mistakes became statements about who she was. Instead of being seen as feedback about what she needed to learn or about where she was in her career—the beginning—every reprimand indica

I felt a lot of internal pressure to figure it out, but all the thinking I did was really debilitating and unproductive. The one thing I have learned is that you can’t think your way through life. The only way to figure out what to do is to do—something.

Back and forth it goes, as work and love and the brain knit together in the twenties to make us into the adults we want to be in our thirties and beyond.

Twentysomething jobs teach us about regulating our emotions and negotiating the complicated social interactions that make up adult life. Twentysomething work and school are our best chance to acquire the technical, sophisticated skills needed in so many careers today. Twentysomething relationships prepare us for marriage and other partnerships. Twe