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A review by toggle_fow
The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter - And How to Make the Most of Them Now by Meg Jay
3.0
As a twenty-something who is trying her best but increasingly freaking out about how quickly life is passing me by, I expected this book to give me an ulcer and a stress hangover. And yeah, it was kind of stressful, in the way that facing the undefined vastness of your future life always is, but it didn't honestly pressure me any more than I am already pressuring myself.
This isn't a book that tells an already-hustling twentysomething the secret key to landing their dream job in the midst of an unfriendly economy. It's not a book that tells an already-hustling twentysomething from an underprivileged background and with no support network how to jump start their dream career in a field that requires a graduate degree for an even entry-level position without burying themselves in $200k of debt or health problems from lack of sleep.
The Defining Decade is a book that tells stagnating twentysomethings who are just ignoring their opportunities that the good life they want comes from being intentional, not just letting life happen to you accidentally day by day. INTENTIONALITY is definitely the underlying basis of the book's thesis. Plan for things. Go after goals. Hustle. This is, I'm sure, good advice, but I wonder whether the kind of twentysomethings Jay is writing to typically read self-help books about improving their lives.
The advice about intentionality wasn't overly impactful to me, since I stress myself out about that kind of thing on the regular. Intentionality is my middle name. What I found most valuable was the middle part of the book, the chapter about "calming yourself down."
You can't help but feel like a freak when you're crying every day at work, when you hate waking up alive every morning because it means going to work again, when you develop a weird PTSD-like reaction to your boss's voice. I don't know about you, but my thoughts tend to loop around like this: This isn't how life was meant to be, right? Am I doing this all wrong? This stage can't last forever, can it? Please tell me it ends. Did everyone else go through this stage? How can everyone else be so calm and happy and assured when I constantly feel like I'm just five seconds away from losing it?
This section on calming down described my own feelings in more accuracy than I would have thought possible, and helped me feel not alone. Jay's philosophy of focusing on day-by-day small accomplishments, working 10,000 hours to confidence, gave me hope that the terror does have an end.
I'm not sure who this book is for, exactly, because it seems like there are more people who will fall outside its realm of influence, either by circumstance or by self-selection, than people who it will apply to. But even though it seemed like only parts of it were useful, I came away feeling encouraged rather than torn down, which was more than I hoped for.
This isn't a book that tells an already-hustling twentysomething the secret key to landing their dream job in the midst of an unfriendly economy. It's not a book that tells an already-hustling twentysomething from an underprivileged background and with no support network how to jump start their dream career in a field that requires a graduate degree for an even entry-level position without burying themselves in $200k of debt or health problems from lack of sleep.
The Defining Decade is a book that tells stagnating twentysomethings who are just ignoring their opportunities that the good life they want comes from being intentional, not just letting life happen to you accidentally day by day. INTENTIONALITY is definitely the underlying basis of the book's thesis. Plan for things. Go after goals. Hustle. This is, I'm sure, good advice, but I wonder whether the kind of twentysomethings Jay is writing to typically read self-help books about improving their lives.
The advice about intentionality wasn't overly impactful to me, since I stress myself out about that kind of thing on the regular. Intentionality is my middle name. What I found most valuable was the middle part of the book, the chapter about "calming yourself down."
You can't help but feel like a freak when you're crying every day at work, when you hate waking up alive every morning because it means going to work again, when you develop a weird PTSD-like reaction to your boss's voice. I don't know about you, but my thoughts tend to loop around like this: This isn't how life was meant to be, right? Am I doing this all wrong? This stage can't last forever, can it? Please tell me it ends. Did everyone else go through this stage? How can everyone else be so calm and happy and assured when I constantly feel like I'm just five seconds away from losing it?
This section on calming down described my own feelings in more accuracy than I would have thought possible, and helped me feel not alone. Jay's philosophy of focusing on day-by-day small accomplishments, working 10,000 hours to confidence, gave me hope that the terror does have an end.
I'm not sure who this book is for, exactly, because it seems like there are more people who will fall outside its realm of influence, either by circumstance or by self-selection, than people who it will apply to. But even though it seemed like only parts of it were useful, I came away feeling encouraged rather than torn down, which was more than I hoped for.