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

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

I stopped thinking about whether what I was doing was below me. I learned to not worry about how to make it to the next level and just focus on the job at hand. If they were willing to let me do it, I was willing to try. I think the fact that I never felt like I was better than those around me, and that I was just focused on learning and getting re

What Franklin is describing is something that social psychologists would stumble upon centuries later: the finding that when we do something nice for someone we tend to like that person even more afterward—and this may lead to another favor down the line. This phenomenon is called “the Ben Franklin effect.”

But it’s just so easy. It’s hard to resist this power handed to me.” “Power . . .” “The power to be desired. The power to feel special.” “And if a man doesn’t want you, you feel unspecial?”

While there, he said, his experiences—and those of others around him—taught him that our attitudes and reactions are the last of our human freedoms.

Identity capital is our stock of personal assets. It is how we add value to who we are, and it is what we have to show for how we have spent our time. These are the investments we make in ourselves, or the things we do well enough or long enough that they become a part of who we are.

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.

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.

If you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves. —Tibetan proverb

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