Advice For Your Twenties: The Don'ts

Called Crazy

It's the Jazz Age of your life, so it's supposed to be fun and glitzy, right? Well, kind of. Your twenties are a huge period of exploration and building. If you went the traditional path of finishing grade school and going straight to college, it's the first time in your life that your role isn't defined for you. You don't get an A or a gold star for showing up to work on time or finishing a project. Your parents aren't in charge of your decisions or your finances. And now your friends are all over the country.

If you let it, this time can eat you alive with anxiety. It's a constant trap for comparison: They're getting engaged?! She bought a house? He has 100k followers on Instagram? But a focus on your mental heath and (hopefully) these tidbits we picked up along the way will help you.

Don’t judge yourself by your productivity; that is not a measure of your worth.

Basing your entire worth on your productive output or your job in general is a particularly American ideal. It's also capitalist as fuck. One of the tenets America was founded on was that idle hands lead to sinning, so feel free to stick it to the Puritans and do nothing for a little while. On the other side of this coin, examine what you are drawn to do in your down time. If you can't stop thinking about reading while you're watching TV, maybe that's a better fit for your leisure time. As with everything in your twenties, your down time is yours for the taking if you take the time to investigate your inner monologue.

Don’t put conventional pressures on what you should be doing/how you should be living your life—the job market doesn’t work the same way it did even 15 years ago. you can’t force yourself into that paradigm because it doesn’t exist anymore.

We didn't just make this up. A significant amount of the economic growth in the last 15 years was due directly to the rise in contract and temporary employees. Everyone loves to roll their eyes over the fact that every single one of their Facebook friends seems to have a blog or a side hustle of some kind, but there's a reason for that. Forbes magazine points out via a study from Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz that there was a 5.7 percent increase in "alternative work arrangements" between 2005 and 2015, accounting for "at least 100 percent of the job growth during that time."

What does that mean for your career? It means that a lot of companies will hire contract workers in order to avoid providing benefits. It means you may not just jump feet first into something you'll be doing for the next 30 to 40 years. With the recent findings that we are basically teenagers until we are 24, it makes sense we wouldn't have an idea about what we want our lives to look like wrapped up in a neat bow by the time we get to our mid twenties.

Give yourself permission to experiment and fail at things. Don't chew your fingernails to the nub over what your older family members may think. There is no one right job structure for everyone.

Don’t expect to “make it” right away. It’s probably not going to happen.

One of our favorite authors, Roxane Gay, is 43 years old. She finished her PhD at 35. She has, however, been writing and submitting work for a long time.

Ok. I am not an overnight sensation. The media loves to spin things like that but I've been publishing for more than 20 years. When I was young, a kid even, I would buy the Writer's Market every year and submit my work to The Paris Review and the New Yorker.

— roxane gay (@rgay) November 23, 2017

It may seem like she burst onto the scene, especially with the popularity of Bad Feminist, but how do you think she got to where she is? If you've read any of her memoirs, you know how she spent her twenties. It wasn't being at the top of bestseller lists. And that's perfectly fine.

The obsession with youth, especially for women, sells us the myth that we should be killing it at our jobs and our lives in the golden years of our twenties. But on a lifelong timeline, that's a lot like peaking in high school. Where do you go from there?

What's more important is starting. There are a few ways to approach this in your twenties. If you went to school and have a pretty good idea of what you would like to eventually do with your degree, try to find a job that is even tangentially related to your degree. Use that experience to find positions more closely aligned with what you would like to do down the line. If you want to be a fashion photographer, try working as a studio assistant for a brand and work your way up. If you want to be a lawyer but can't imagine stepping foot in a school for a few years, work as an assistant at a firm. One caveat: ALWAYS make sure you're getting paid for these experiences.

If you are totally burnt out in one field, see if you can do something else. You already know not to define yourself by your job and your job alone, so don't be so damn downtrodden if you have to work at a coffee shop or a restaurant for a few years. Let those human interactions inform your experiences for years to come. Those jobs teach you a TON that you can spin for interviews later.

Don’t hang out with people you don’t want to hang out with.

If someone is draining to your emotional and mental health, it is your responsibility to choose how you want them in your life, if at all. In college, it is easy to keep people around for the fear of loneliness or because they are mutual friends with someone else. But as an independent person outside of that bubble? Do yourself a favor. If you are dreading hanging out with someone, take a good look at why.

This is a tumultuous part of your life that will inevitably lead to growth and change. Some people will be able to go on the ride with you, others you will have to completely revamp your relationship if you want to save it, and others you may have to let go entirely. It's a natural process of becoming yourself.

Don’t be afraid to invest in yourself.

This goes beyond just the monetary aspect of things. Invest your time and energy into loving yourself and doing what you cherish. Especially if your ideal future holds a marriage and children, this is one of those times in your life you absolutely need to be selfish. Protect and guard what is important to you. At first, there may be some push back from people who my be used to you giving too much of yourself. Either they will adjust to your boundaries or they will end up on that list of people you choose not to spend time with.

Financially, there is incentive to do this as well. The adage of having to spend money to make money is true for a lot of passions. Whether it is finishing a degree, taking workshops or classes for your development, going to therapy, or starting a small business, these are all things that require investments. Unfortunately, while your twenties may be a prime time to start thinking about your passions seriously, they may also be financially lacking. See what you can do with dedicating just 20 dollars a month to yourself. That fund may be the very thing that ends up jump starting your dreams down the line.

Don’t call yourself poor if you aren’t.

If you are driving a car, using a cellphone, and always know where your next meal is coming from, you're not poor. If you or your parents could absorb the costs of a medical emergency, you're not poor. These aren't technicalities, but please be realistic. If you can even entertain the idea of going out to drinks or coffee with you're friends, you're not poor.

You might be broke. No matter what you're doing in your twenties, whether you are responsible for yourself for the first time ever or you are still grinding out hours like you did in high school, money is a difficult thing to tackle and manage. If you have that sense of dread every time you pay your bills because it will zero you out again, take a look at your finances. This isn't a bootstraps bit of inspiration. If your family is genuinely impoverished, then it's a lot harder to get out of that situation. But if you are a standard, educated, middle class person, have a little dose of perspective.

Don’t be afraid of confrontation.

You have a choice to make in your daily interactions with those closest to you and with the world. When you see an injustice or if something feels off, you can ignore it and let it worm its way around your brain. Or you can confront the situation.

Confrontation is a loaded topic because how you handle it has a lot to do with how you were raised or your past experiences. As we discuss in this week's episode, Ari was raised to never talk about it when things went wrong and I consistently used confrontation as a defense mechanism against emotional abuse. We can see those differences in our relationships with confrontation, but we both recognize that it is often the healthiest thing for us.

While the generation below ours is already educated and primed to tackle a lot of things, our twenties is when we really took responsibility for our beliefs and standing up for them. Confrontation goes beyond just people you love that hurt you in some way. It also extends to those spouting off hate around you. This applies double for when the people saying misogynistic or racist or ablest things do happen to be people you know.