Some key lessons learned from the book- The Defining Decade- Why your twenties matter and how to make most of them now.
Work:
Build identity capital. Identity capital means skills, experience, and connections that establish the foundation of a strong long term career. It is not impossible but much harder to do this later. There is more long term satisfaction in building a good career in the 20s than frittering time as if the time in the 20s doesn't matter much since everything is happening later in life these days.
Love:
Be intentional about finding a partner. Understand "The Cohabitation Effect". Don't move in with a person with whom there are no strong commitments. Living together without marriage makes sense only if both of you are somewhat committed. Otherwise, living together leads to the Cohabitation effect with a lock-in and people end up marrying these people even when their personalities are too different and later this ends in a divorce. WHAT YOU WANT is less important than WHO YOU ARE (OCEAN personality type) when it comes to finding a partner. A personality match is the number one indication of a marriage working, more than what you externally think you want in a marriage.
For eg, there are 5 personality traits- OCEAN. Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. One can be high, low or average in these 5 categories. The only deal-breaker is if someone is highly neurotic (extreme). Otherwise, most other personality differences can be bridged with hard work on the relationship.
Overall Satisfaction:
This has to do with future orientedness. People who are future-oriented with plans and goals tend to be more satisfied. Yes, being future-oriented means more sacrifices and more hard work but that tends to give more meaning to life so that when you look back at life, you tend to feel more satisfied. An example the author uses is starting a family. Having and caring for a child is not easy (and is not for everyone) but it tends to give a lot of overall satisfaction to life. Fertility peaks for women at 28 and starts declining rapidly after 35. Before 35 is the time to have a child since, after that, a lot of medical interventions are needed which have low success rates and are expensive. Despite IVF and Inuterine inseminations, the safest time to have a child is pre 35.
Work:
Build identity capital. Identity capital means skills, experience, and connections that establish the foundation of a strong long term career. It is not impossible but much harder to do this later. There is more long term satisfaction in building a good career in the 20s than frittering time as if the time in the 20s doesn't matter much since everything is happening later in life these days.
Love:
Be intentional about finding a partner. Understand "The Cohabitation Effect". Don't move in with a person with whom there are no strong commitments. Living together without marriage makes sense only if both of you are somewhat committed. Otherwise, living together leads to the Cohabitation effect with a lock-in and people end up marrying these people even when their personalities are too different and later this ends in a divorce. WHAT YOU WANT is less important than WHO YOU ARE (OCEAN personality type) when it comes to finding a partner. A personality match is the number one indication of a marriage working, more than what you externally think you want in a marriage.
For eg, there are 5 personality traits- OCEAN. Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. One can be high, low or average in these 5 categories. The only deal-breaker is if someone is highly neurotic (extreme). Otherwise, most other personality differences can be bridged with hard work on the relationship.
Overall Satisfaction:
This has to do with future orientedness. People who are future-oriented with plans and goals tend to be more satisfied. Yes, being future-oriented means more sacrifices and more hard work but that tends to give more meaning to life so that when you look back at life, you tend to feel more satisfied. An example the author uses is starting a family. Having and caring for a child is not easy (and is not for everyone) but it tends to give a lot of overall satisfaction to life. Fertility peaks for women at 28 and starts declining rapidly after 35. Before 35 is the time to have a child since, after that, a lot of medical interventions are needed which have low success rates and are expensive. Despite IVF and Inuterine inseminations, the safest time to have a child is pre 35.
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