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

As a twentysomething, life is still more about potential than proof.

The frontal lobe is where we move beyond the futile search for black-and-white solutions as we learn to tolerate—and act on—shades of gray.

Goals direct us from the inside, but shoulds judge us from the outside. Goals feel like authentic dreams, while shoulds feel like oppressive standards.

This gives millions of young people unfettered access to the internet—and to comparisons and distractions and porn and online shopping and hate speech and fake news and the list goes on—with little information about, or maybe even regard for, the consequences. No one really knows what the effects of all this will be. As the first generations of dig

William James, the father of research psychology in the United States, said, “The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.” Knowing what to overlook is one way that older adults are typically wiser than young adults. With age comes what is known as the “positivity effect.” We become more interested in positive information, and our brains reac

Contrary to what we see and hear, reaching your potential isn’t even something that usually happens in your twenties—it happens in your thirties or forties or fifties.

“I want to be reaching my potential.”

Ian was on a sneaky search for glory. He suffered less from the tyranny of the should than he did from the tyranny of the should-not. Unlike Talia, his life wasn’t about getting A’s or even the need to realize his potential, at least not in any mainstream way. Conventionality wasn’t his niche. Ian’s search for glory was the lure of being different,

Ian pretended that not knowing what to do was the hard part. But, somewhere inside, I think Ian knew that making a choice about something is when the real uncertainty begins. The more terrifying kind of uncertainty is wanting something but not knowing how to get it. It is working toward something even though there is no sure thing. When we make cho