🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. The Defining Decade is about telling people in their twenties how important is to be intentional with all your choices during this time.

2. The book covers topics from career, love, and battling personal struggles as a 20-year-old.

3. The book also displaces the myth that your twenties don’t matter, and that if you spend time focusing on doing the right things during this decade then you can set yourself up to have a prosperous and fruitful thirties, forties, and fifties.

🎨 Impressions

I really enjoyed this book. It was the wake-up call that I needed and reinforced some of the thoughts I had in the back of my head already. I enjoyed the aspects about being intentional about who you date because everything and everyone is a learning experience. I also loved the chapters about careers and building an identity capital. For the past five months, I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on YouTube and that’s helped build my identity capital of someone who is a competent YouTuber. That means I’ve leveled up my video and production skills which has given me confidence about where my life is headed. I also learned the importance of establishing a career in the workplace.

If you asked me in January what I wanted out of my next job, I would’ve said a very easy 9-5, but now I want to be somewhere where I can build a sustainable career.

This book essentially gives you the wake-up call/kick up the butt you need to get your life together and start focusing on making positive changes in it.

How I Discovered It

So many of my peers have recommended and talked about this book, but my friend Polo gifted this to me on my 25th birthday.

Who Should Read It?

Anyone who is in their twenties. I can definitely see the value of someone reading this in their early twenties and then again in their mid to late twenties. Your life and values change so much during this time, so it’s important to make sure you’re staying on top of your life.

☘️ How the Book Changed Me

💡 How my life / behaviour / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book.

• This book has made me think about being more intentional about the choices I make across my life. Often times in our twenties, we think the choices we make have no long-term impact, but this book shows that it does. If you choose to use your time working in coffee shop jobs and not chasing after your career then you risk falling behind the 8-ball later in life. Your decisions now have a seismic impact for the rest of your life whether we like to believe it or not.

• I think this book also reinforced the idea that you need to be a doer rather than a thinker when it comes to your twenties. I’ve fallen into the trap before of talking about the stuff that I want to do or the job that I want, but failing to act on it because of the work I would have to do, or it not feeling like a dream job. Instead, I would’ve been better off just doing the thing and learning from there. I’ve taken that strategy to YouTube and it’s paid dividends as I’ve slowly increased my subscribers.

• I also think that with dating it reinforced the mindset I already had which is to be intentional with it. In our modern age, hooking up and situationships have been the norm, but doing that in your twenties is wasting away your prime dating years. Instead, you could use that time to focus on deep meaningful connections.

✍️ My Top 5 Quotes

• “Doing Something later is not automatically the same as doing something better.”

• “You can’t think your way through life. The only way to figure out what to do is to do something.”

• “Best time to work on your marriage is before you have one.”

• “Feeling better doesn’t come from avoiding adulthood, it comes from investing into it.”

• “Naturals, are myths. They may have some inkling of talent, but they have also spent ten thousand hours perfecting their craft.”

📒 Summary + Notes

Overall the book paints a very clear picture on why your twenties matter. The book has three main sections that serve as the building blocks for your twenties. They are Work, Love, and The Brain and Body.

Work Section:

You need to build Identity Capital in your twenties and you can only do that by taking action and doing work. If you take that action while also having that identity crisis then you’re setting yourself up for success and building a stronger identity for yourself.

You will probably need to take a job that may not have everything you need at the moment but that helps build your skillset and capital for a new position.

Wasting your twenties working fluff jobs (Coffee shop or bs jobs) can have a huge negative impact in your 30s, or 40s, when it comes to earning potential and quality of life.

You’re not a failure or settling by going back home. You can take all the experiences that you’ve learned and take them home.

Social Media causes so much comparison which can ruin us, so it’s best to be aware of that and limit it.

We have to be aware of when we are searching for glory. We know we are searching for glory when we start saying shoulds or supposed tos. That’s not healthy because goal setting comes from within. We don’t usually reach our potential until we are in our 30s, 40s, or 50s.

Weak ties can often be your greatest strength in your 20s. They are the ones that can help connect you to opportunities or jobs because weak ties compared to strong ties are not in your immediate circle. Weak ties are exposed to a network of people far outside your normal circle. Chances are your strong ties always know the same type of people that you currently know.

Love section:

It’s important to be intentional about who we date in our 20s.

This time is important to understand if the people we choose to let in our life will be compatible or not. Think long-term with your partners. Is the future there, or are you there for comfort?

We can’t choose the family that we are born into, but you can choose the family you want in the future. Think about that when you’re dating and investing time into someone. Is this someone you would want to start a family with?

It’s important to have routine talks with your partner about long-term plans and the state of the relationship.

Be aware of Co-Habitating which is moving in before you get married. It’s very easy to assume marriage is the next step once you move in, but ask yourself and your partner how the relationship is going, and what the goals are, and have gut-check moments with yourself. The best time to work on your marriage is before your marriage.

Studies have shown that after the age of 25, one’s age at marriage doesn’t predict divorce.

You can always change your perceived mate value, what you thought you were in the past is no longer the case when you get older as you build a stronger identity and new experiences for yourself.

It’s important that when you’re in a relationship you make thoughtful decisions with your partner. Couples that do that are reported to be more dedicated, satisfied, and more faithful. The core of it is to have honest and open conversations with your partner.

Studies show that the biggest change in marriage happiness is not before or after marriage but rather before or after kids

It’s important to have long-term talks with your partner with the context of kids in mind. Those answers will better shape if the person you’re with is compatible with you.

The Brain and Body Section:

The twenties are the best chance to go about creating the change in yourself because your frontal lobe is still developing. The Frontal lobe is the area of the brain that makes important decisions.

We become what we see and do every day.

Twenty-year-olds who actively engage with their brain are better off. People who engage with good jobs, relationships, and the real world are learning the language of adulthood.

Our phones are taking more time away from us than we notice. Phones and social media are so new to us that we don’t know the full effects of it. Be aware of that and learn to be present in your current life.

Twenty-year-olds who don’t feel some level of anxiousness at their jobs are usually overconfident and under-employed.

We are more likely to remember highly negative moments, that’s why we know where we were when Kobe died or when COVID shut everything down. That’s why in work we will remember negative moments a lot more than positive moments.

Tough days at work will happen but you need to adopt a growth mindset to overcome them. Know that the bad days will come, so you need to view it as harsh wind blowing by instead of thinking you’re constantly going to get fired all the time.

We also think that all of our co-workers have the it factor or are naturals at the job but in reality, that’s not the case. There are no naturals at the job, instead, you only get to that point by putting hours and hours into your craft.

Also, that confidence in work will only come by having real-world and challenging experiences in the workspace. You need mastery experiences, which are actually lived moments of success especially when things seem difficult. You need to show yourself that you can tackle and solve the problem with as little help as possible, that’s the only way you can build that competence. So when bad things happen at work you can call back on those experiences to help ease your worry.

Most people won’t hit their stride in their jobs until their 30s, 40s, or 50s.

Social Investment Theory - Becoming involved with the world around us is how we grow. The commitments we make to work, love, and to the world trigger the personality maturation that so many 20-year-olds need.

Feeling better doesn’t come from avoiding adulthood, it only comes when you invest into it.