The Defining Decade by Meg Jay: Book Summary

Author: Meg Jay
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Link: Amazon

Work

Identity Capital

When you think about "Capital" most people will think about the money invested into businesses by the owner's and directors to fund business activities where profits alone aren't enough. Identity capital is similar in that they are investments you make in yourself that over a long period of time become part of who you are as a person. Some of the capital is made up of things you have done and some is about who you are. What have you done that would go on a CV? That's identity capital. Where are you from, how do you solve problems, how do you look? They're all identity capital. The only way to build this capital is by doing something, you can't increase your capital by thinking alone.

Weak Ties

As humans we love to be part of a community or a 'tribe'; it makes us feel safe and in years gone by being a member of the tribe meant you were likely to survive. In more recent times being part of a tribe can hold you back. With closeness and protection comes comfort and when we are comfortable we don't have anything forcing us to grow or do better. An inner circle of friends is great for support but they don't tend to offer any improvement when it comes to job, relationship or any other opportunities. These opportunities are far more likely to come from weak ties we have formed with people that are too different or too far away to be close friends but ones we can call on for something fresh and new.

When asking a weak tie to help you seek a favour that you can reciprocate down the line and know what you want. Remember, you aren't close friends you have a weak tie. Don't waste time exchanging pleasantries that neither of you will find fulfilling, instead research how they can help with your issue and formulate a succinct but appealing request, that way the only thought for them is whether to say "yes" or "no", they don't need to think if they have time to read your request first.

The Unthought Known

When we become adults we become the makers of decisions. In childhood and adolescence many decisions are made for us by teachers, parents and family members but once you are an adult you can make every decision for yourself, and that can be scary. Decision making isn't a choice, it has to be done. If you spend your life putting off decisions you will stagnate and be swallowed by the world. You have to take charge and do something. A lot of the fear in decision making comes from sayings like "follow your dreams" that offer no answers when it comes to finding what your dreams are, in a world full of possibilities who knows what your dream is. Spoiler alert: you do! Unthought knowns are the dreams and truths we lose sight of over time either through life getting in the way or you burying it in fear of what others may think. The easiest way of finding your unthought known is to ask yourself "what would you do if you didn't win the lottery?" Essentially what would you do if you had to earn money your whole life? This question makes you think about what you're good enough at to support the life you want and what you might enjoy enough to be working at it for the next 40-50 years.
The other issue a lot of twenty-somethings find with decision making is that if the decision ends up making their life worse than before they think of it as a failure rather than as a lesson, as experience.

My Life Should Look Better on Facebook

Many social media platforms are used by twenty-something year olds to find other people and see what they are doing. What many fail to realise is that their news feeds are filled with highlights, very rarely does anyone show their true life on Facebook or Twitter, they are simply showing what they want you to see. They want to seem successful, fun, happy. The truth is you can't tell anything about a person's life from their social media profile.

When you see something good on Facebook, such as someone sharing a new job or photos from a recent holiday you can think "that should be me" or "I should be doing that" or "I should be closer to where they are in life". These 'shoulds' are damaging, they are nothing more than surface level judgements without the facts or context. Thinking your life 'should' be a certain way is only going to lead you to disappointment. Instead of thinking what your life 'should' be, think about how your you want your life to be and set out the process for making that happen in the future.

The Customised Life

When looking at ourselves it is very easy to see what we are not rather than what we are and it's easier to say what we don't want to be rather than what we do want to be. "I don't want a 9 to 5 office job" and "I don't want to work for other people all my life" are common thoughts that twenty-something year olds have but they don't help us to see who we are, they only help us to see what we aren't. But you can't build an identity on what you don't want, you have to look at what you do want. Often when faced with 'claiming' something and saying you 'want' it people think that's the end, you can only have one thing. What they don't realise is you're allowed to claim it and use it as a starting point. Then once you're started you can claim what you really want and not feel like you've 'settled'.

Love

Being in Like

When thinking about relationships a lot of people have 'deal breakers' or things they have to have in a partner otherwise the relationship will end. These 'deal breakers' are often superficial things that ultimately have no real say in whether you will be happy in a relationship. More often than not the real crux of happiness comes from similarity in personalities. Personalities aren't always obvious and are difficult to categorise leaving many people confused over how to compare their own personality with others. There are 5 main factors that describe how each person interacts with the world:

Openess
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Aggreeableness
Neuroticism

By examining these 5 factors in yourself you can find whether you sit on the high or low side of each factor. Definitely worth giving this a try.

The Brain and The Body

Calm Yourself

Twentysomethings are biologically more susceptible to taking difficult moments harder than older adults. This is because their brains react more strongly to negative information, leading to feelings of anxiety and anger, but it is possible to change the way you feel about these triggers. William James, a research psychologist once said "the art of being wise is knowing what to overlook." If we are able to overlook some of the negative triggers in our lives we can be calmer and come to more reasonable conclusions to why we are being criticised or how to improve (if necessary).

Outside In

There are two types of mindset in people; fixed and growth. People with fixed mindset believe that everything is either black or white, you're either smart or stupid, rich or poor, good or bad and that's how it is. People with growth mindset believe you can change, you can grow. It's not about believing "anyone can achieve anything", it's more you can learn and grow. Having a fixed mindset can be very problematic for people especially when starting new jobs or meeting new people. It's very easy, in these situations, to think "I don't have what it takes to work here" or "I don't belong here" when what you don't realise is that nobody had "what it takes" to work at a company on their first day, but you can learn what it takes, you can learn how to be an effective employee.

Confidence literally means "with trust", in essence to have confidence in something you trust yourself to do it well. The only way to truly trust yourself is to have prior experience of you doing the job, you aren't born with it. So rather than thinking "I can't do this" think "I haven't done this before, but I want to learn how" and over time you will learn how and your confidence will increase. Don't think that easy wins will bring confidence, confidence is gained when you have to put in effort and where you have done most of the work, you can't have help from others. Think about climbing a mountain. Before you have climbed a mountain you won't be very confident but through effort you can complete it. Think now of whether you would have the same confidence growth if someone carried you all the way the first time. You need to struggle but complete the challenge to gain confidence and trust in yourself.

Getting Along and Getting Ahead

If you want to make positive changes to your personality in your 20s you need to get along and get ahead. Don't shy away from adulthood, instead invest your time now into adulthood. Start working towards what you want your life to be like, you will feel more confident and happier. People who don't do this end up feeling stressed or angry. You don't have to achieve exactly what you want but just taking some steps towards it can be all it takes to feel happier and more accomplished.

Setting, and achieving, goals can be seen as your building blocks. The goals you set today will have a direct influence on who you become in your future. Work towards nothing now and you'll have achieved little in the future.

A lot of getting along and getting ahead can be thought of as "just starting". Rather than picturing the future and dreaming of what it may be like you need to take action and make positive moves towards what you want to achieve. There is a great subreddit called r/juststarting that is full of people who are taking this advice and sharing their experiences.

Do the Math

It's very easy to get caught in the trap of thinking you have lots of time to achieve something in life but in reality this isn't normally the case. As humans we tend to forget about how much time "the journey" takes. So many people can think of targets such as "married by 28, parent by 30" but don't realise that at 26 years old that only gives you 2 years to get married meaning you probably need to find someone 'marry-able' very quickly (if you haven't found them already). Doing the math like this can make you realise quite how soon you need to start moving on a goal to make it achievable. Even when you think about buying a house people think "I want to own my own home by 25" but often don't truly think about how much time they will need to save for a deposit which means the 25 year target is impossible by the time they actually think about the realities of their goal.

You can use 'the math' to help you in the short term. You may find it difficult to think about what you want from life in the next 5 years but you might find it really easy to say "I want to retire by 60 and be living in Spain coming to the UK occasionally to see family. Working that back to now you can create a checklist of goals;

Marry someone who wants to live in Spain after retirement
Work out how to get the money to move to Spain (pension, property)
Start a family
Buy a house in Spain
Retire before 60

With this checklist you can start to see what needs attending to first and what you need to do to achieve each step, and roughly how long you have to do it.

Epilogue: Will Things Work Out for Me?

There are no guarantees in life. There is no answer that can be given to "will things work out for me?", no one knows. This is what makes life so scary but also what makes action so necessary. You need to claim your life, live intentionally and start deciding your life. Use the tips from this book as a guide but find your own way too.