I don't think it was a constructive response. No, the original post was not literally true.
But I don't think many people would deny that one's 20's are a key decade. In fact, if I had to pick a most important decade, that would be it. In your 20's, you're expected to start a career, and to do something valuable for society. You're going to meet the people who, 20 years later, will be willing to work with you because "I've known him for decades." 20-somethings have more energy than older people, but more direction than younger people.
Nobody seriously thinks people "suddenly" can't build cool things at a particular age. But I know very few people who would think that someone's intellectual output or energy keeps growing past their 20's. Of course, very few people expect a 25-year-old to be as wise or well-connected as a 45-year-old; if I were betting on who would start a better law firm or hedge fund, I'd bet on the older guy.
Here's some insight which I had with a senior partner at a "big 4 consulting" firm and their attitude to age.
The buy up highly educated people in their 20's because they're cheap and eager to work. In fact, they're cheaper than most people when you do an hourly analysis (probably cheaper than cleaners).
BUT... the simple fact is, they also know they burn out by their 30's. Life takes over. The doubt. What am I doing with my life? Why don't I have a family? Maybe I missed out on other things my friends were doing?
By that stage, they no longer care about you because they've got a new batch of cheap 20's burning the midnight oil.
However, the good news is that they noticed that there's a reversal when people reach their 40's. They've got experience in life and business. They're no longer in doubt mode.
Ironically, these organizations have standard pitches to sell the career delusion. "People are our greatest assets" and similar rhetoric. The reality is ... THE DO NOT GIVE A CRAP ABOUT YOUR CAREER. Careers do NOT exist. It's like selling women the idea of being a "homemaker" in the 1950's.
I have noticed that people are more likely to be successful in their 30's and 40's (read some evidence that suggested that too but can't remember the reference). People getting rich in their 20's is an aberration.
Neuroplasticity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_That_Changes_Itself) also suggests that we never stop learning, so I have to disagree with point 3 "Your brain finishes forming in your 20's." Dribble! That's like the rhetoric about careers. People just get lazy.
What people have going for them in their 20's is no commitment and all the time in the world. But no experience which can also be a disadvantage. If you can recreate "no commitment" in your 30's-40's (20's + real experience), then you should excel because your ideas are more mature and hopefully clearer!
You're more likely to be successful as an actor in your 30's for the same reasons!
I "agree", but draw the exact opposite conclusions.
You should take your 20's seriously... because it's the only time in your life that you aren't encumbered by building a career, having kids, etc.
So you should take your 20's to do the things that you won't be able to do later. Work as a bartender, play in a band, travel the world on the cheap, teach English abroad, date the kind of people you wouldn't marry. You don't have serious responsibilities, so take advantage of that while you can.
Don't waste your 20's "building a career". You've got your 30's and 40's and 50's to do that. Don't be in a rush to have kids too soon.
Obviously, don't throw your 20's away. But spend them doing life-experience-focused things, not career- or family-focused.
And this gets at the author's third point: "Your brain finishes forming in your 20's". If that's even true (although I doubt it), then you'd better get in all those varied life experiences sooner rather than later. Learn a second language, learn to cook, learn to play music.
Don't waste your 20's on grinding away at traditionally career-oriented stuff. That part of your brain is probably already fine. Your 20's is the time to look for diversity in your life, not to focus narrowly on any particular part. You've got all the decades afterward to work on narrow refinement and career progression...
So, counterpoint: I'd argue that it's much more important to spend some of that time in your 20s putting in the effort learning how to stay hungry and stay foolish. Then you have the whole rest of your life to accomplish great things.
I'm 31. I'm working on a project with a low chance of success, but it will change the world if it does succeed. (Granted, it's done as part of a large organization, but I also haven't ruled out startups if the large organization ceases to be a good place to innovate, and now I have the financial wherewithal to do so.) The main difference now vs. when I founded a startup at 26 is that now I know the chance of success is low, but I don't care. Because I've learned that just because I don't see a solution immediately doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. And that this is what I want to do, my basic needs are taken care of, and so it really doesn't matter if it doesn't work, I'll be happier having tried. And that other things that would otherwise be distractions are only distractions to the extent that I let them be so - my friends will be there when I want to invite them out, my bills are on auto-pay, and I have the right to say "no" to other projects at work.
Your 20s are a time when you outgrow most of your insecurities and learn who you are and what you really care about. If accomplishing great things or founding a startup or just plain innovating is one of them, then you can do that for the rest of your life. If you're just doing it because the Internet says you should, then you won't be any happier having finished it off in your 20s than if you spent that time learning about yourself.
20 - as in before life starts to throw serious time sinks at you, wives, children, mortgages, high stress jobs etc etc.
At 20, I just did whatever the hell I wanted, bummed around Europe before figuring out where to do my masters. Responsibility was not paramount on my mind. Maybe 20 something's today are different, but not the ones I know, it's still all about having fun, learning new stuff and exploring the possibilities.
I fail to see how anyone could not have understood what the comment meant.
Ugh. I've been having this conversation a lot lately.
> Your 20's lay the groundwork for success in the rest of your career.
Can also be said as: While in your 20's, you should start living like you're in your 30's, 40's and 50's, so you can do that and only that for your entire life.
I completely reject that way of thinking.
There are many things we all want to do in our 20's we will not want to do later in life, which is all the more reason to do them in your 20's, lest you never get to do them at all.
As anecdotal evidence, I spent 2 years of my life from 27-29 driving from Alaska to Argentina, because I wanted to. Will I want to sleep in a tent for >500 nights when I'm 50? doubtful. Am I extremely happy that I did? You bet, best experience of my life. Did it "harm" my career? No, I'm working right now as a Software Engineer.
I think early 20s are a very powerful time for many people because naïveté can be quite convincing, and they have a lot of time to learn without unreasonable expectation.
People will start looking more at your record than your potential, which is a shift from optimism to criticism in 99.9% of cases. In my case, I had what felt like a meteoric rise in the early part of my career, but technology changed, and my interests changed, and now all of that is irrelevant. So all that success you feel like you missed out on so far, it’s probably not much different either way, but you can’t replay it the same way. Maybe you’re talking about money, and lots of things can reset that too.
That big tech co might take you, but increasingly for niche jobs not on the fast track. You can probably do a startup, but you might have to grind on your own for years while some kid gets his tweet funded. When you were young it seemed like the other way around because you only saw the top 0.01% of timelines ahead of you, and now it’s the same way looking back.
Sound advice is the same, but you’ll keep learning that you should have followed it, and there was still time then, but now it’s too late, at least until now becomes then and there was still time. Maybe it sounds something like this: focus on the routine physical act of doing something you respect and enjoy enough to ignore the outcome, and just keep doing it. Or maybe just save your money. Actually don’t ask me; I don’t even know why I’m writing this.
Okay, I do know why: because every other response is going to be some variant of suggestion to pretend that age doesn’t matter, and that your anxiety is totally unfounded. No. Things change. Opportunity is limited. Some doors are closing on you, and some you’ll learn were never open, but it sure feels good to think it’s all possible, and that’s slipping away. I regard dismissal of someone’s feelings as a nasty thing to do to someone, even if you’re just trying to help them, and even if you are rationally correcting them. You’re not wrong, but you’ll adapt and whether by rationality or necessity, correct your values to align with reality as it evolves.
Re: the first paragraph, I think that's often true comparing people in their 20s vs 40s, but many people in their 50s and 60s (especially in engineering) have considerably more financial freedom than those in their 20s. They have somewhat more obligations, but many more resources. With a paid-off house, kids through college, paid-off cars, well-funded 401(k), 30 years of savings from a six-figure engineering job, etc., they have an ability to self-fund that most 25-year-olds don't (and often, a stronger network).
I think there might be more conservatism in that someone who's had a successful 35-year career as an engineer and is used to a regular six-figure income may not be particularly inclined to quit his or her job now and start something else. But I think in terms of resources they're often actually less tied down than a 25-year-old who has no savings cushion and has to pay rent— even if the 25-year-old didn't have student debt.
Youth is wasted on the young - my new favourite saying.
Somehow a young person has to work out a way to hack the process, by gaining wisdom and maturity before their youth has run out, and apply it successfully. (and, to be fair, 35 is still young). To be more correct, someone in their 20's need to work out how to think like someone in their 30's or 40's, before they turn 30. Young people who do that are going to be successful, no doubt. The big problem is that a 20 year old has to listen to, and accept advice from, a 40 year, something many have problems with.
It's exceedingly cynical. Most people don't master anything after 40, but most people don't master anything before 40, either. The difference is that younger people can look forward to an imagined life with huge accomplishments and older people have to look back and admit they they didn't achieve the things they imagined. There's nothing stopping someone over 40 from achieving huge things, any more than there is something stopping someone 20 from doing the same.
It's true that most people who accomplish big things do so when they are young, but that seems to mostly be a reflection on the fact that people who are driven to do big things have generally the same drive when they are young. People who don't have that drive when younger don't typically discover it at middle age.
Totally disagree! I'd also say 30 is the new 20 - especially for me, I'm nearly 28 and have more enthusiasm for things like education and my career than I've ever had.
“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world.”
If you are in your mid 40s you are not going to become great at something new to you (painting, quantum physics, chess, programming, etc etc). It is nice to dream of that, but it does not happen.
You might become decent and contribute to society in your new skill but that's different.
Who are those people who have made a single great contribution at an advanced age (let's say past 50)?
The few that I can think of (like that obscure mathematician who didn't get tenure and did his research alone) labored in their calling starting in their 20s at the latest.
The one exception could be business success which indeed is possible even at a very late age(Colonel Sanders etc)
I'm 25 and feels lost in a culture that hails 20 year olds that are dreaming up the next big thing.
I don't think age is the important thing here, I have worked with people of all ages (15-70 or so) that I look up to and learned a lot from. Experience is important, and it is hard to have experienced a lot of things if you are 20.
On a semi-related note, all my best bosses have been parents, having kids seem to teach you something about the value of time.
I used to think that way too when I was in my 20s. High achiever, very smart. Now I'm in my 30s and I can say that my opinion has changed. Not hugely so, but definitely some.
The older you get the more your perception of time changes. I think this is part of the reason that there are so few 20-something leaders of huge companies. Partly it takes time to prove yourself to enough people to get a shot. Partly because it takes a long time to be patient enough to where you can be effective at the job.
Agreed. I always fail to see how a person's age is relevant to what they do. In a large population, there are bound to be outliers whose brains mature somewhat earlier than the rest. So what? For any given accomplishment, how is it made any better or worse by the accomplisher's age?
Full disclosure: I am a 30-year-old cynical bastard. :)
I've spent a considerable amount of time thinking about this, ever since the topic came up on reddit about why so few people in their 20's seem to "have their shit together."
I think it comes down to two reasons. The first one is huge, but its essentially luck. I think the reason I'm even afforded the opportunity to take my 20's seriously is almost completely happenstantial.
Looking at my friends and (distant) family I sometimes feel guilty because nothing bad has ever really happened to me in my life, whereas they've had to put up with all kinds of weird shit. For many people I know not being able to take their 20's seriously as powerhouse career years is sort-of excusable. They were spending them trying to survive, or raise a family all-too-soon.
But me? I'm young (24), well educated, I live in a huge Victorian-era house near main street nearly for free, programming job, walk to work every day, have a book deal (boring HTML5 book), brag, brag, etc, etc
But somehow I feel I'm just infinitely lucky. Lucky that my parents are two normal, well adjusted people. Lucky that I could be awkward and nerdy as all shit through middle school and high school and nobody was ever unpleasant to me. I was never bullied. No weird drama ever entered my life. I exited college with $0 but debt-free, thanks to Bank of Dad, who carefully engineered my experience to be basically broke but never in-the-hole so long as I worked (got an internship every summer and winter).
Lucky lucky lucky. Thanks everyone in my life so far. Really.
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On the flip side I think that such a lifestyle (very career focused 20's) is seen as unattractive to a lot of 20-somethings. At the least, I think most people in my age range would describe people like me as boring (though I am never really bored). I spend most of my days reading, writing, sitting in cafes, programming, or doing art things. Right now and for several more months, its nearly 100% career activities. If I had to put together a dating website profile, it probably wouldn't look particularly attractive to other 20-somethings.
Put another way, most of my hobbies are either career related or solitary acts. Not that people can't appreciate them, just that none of them are exciting, and most of my 20-something friends (none of which IRL are programmers, I lead a lonely career here in NH) that proclaim me to be one of the few who has their shit together would also not want to be me.
None of them want to work desk jobs and then go home and work some more. They want to work in food/bar services or have a whatever-job, drop it at 5pm and go do fun 20-something things. Career development it seems isn't fun to most 20-somethings, socializing at bars is, moving out to Montana to climb things and work for a harvest season is, saving up to hide away in Peru for a year is, writing music with friends while working retail is, but not career development. Not to disparage these things, it just a sampling of their goals.
But I don't think many people would deny that one's 20's are a key decade. In fact, if I had to pick a most important decade, that would be it. In your 20's, you're expected to start a career, and to do something valuable for society. You're going to meet the people who, 20 years later, will be willing to work with you because "I've known him for decades." 20-somethings have more energy than older people, but more direction than younger people.
Nobody seriously thinks people "suddenly" can't build cool things at a particular age. But I know very few people who would think that someone's intellectual output or energy keeps growing past their 20's. Of course, very few people expect a 25-year-old to be as wise or well-connected as a 45-year-old; if I were betting on who would start a better law firm or hedge fund, I'd bet on the older guy.
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