Life Kit - What 'The Rocket Years' Can Teach Us

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

There's often a lot of pressure put on a person's 20s. Stay career focused? Or make it a time of exploration? In this episode, Elizabeth Segran talks about her book, The Rocket Years: How Your Twenties Launch the Rest of Your Life. She offers advice for anyone who wants to be more intentional about their life choices.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is NPR's Life Kit, and I'm Megan Cain. And this is the moment our guest this episode had a sort of aha moment. I had just turned 34, and I had recently gotten married, and I had a small child, and I had spent two hours putting her to bed, and it was only eight o'clock, and I was exhausted, and I stared out into a living room that was full of toys and crushed blueberries. And I looked at my husband and I was like, what happened to our life? Liz is the author of The Rocket Years, How Your 20s Launched the Rest of Your Life. Because while 30-something Liz's life was pretty great, you know, great family, cool job,

things still felt, you know, a bit settled down. When I was in my 20s, life had felt so fluid and full of possibilities. All of a sudden, over the span of a few years, I had made decisions that I didn't even realize I was making at the time that had sort of set me on a trajectory that would be my life for the next 40 years. Liz dug deeper to better understand how all of her choices in her 20s impacted her life. And lucky for us, she's a journalist and she shared her work.

That started me on this course of exploring the big decisions that we make in our 20s and looking at data and research about what we know about how those decisions will play out in life. This episode, exploring the decisions of the rocket years. Now, I talked with Liz before the pandemic hit, but her advice feels particularly relevant these days

because lots of people are questioning how they want to live and how they want to get there. And the good news is there is no one right way to do your 20s. Liz says it's more about purposeful exploration. Okay, so Liz, the last thing I want people to do, because you have so much good info in this book, is to listen to this episode and feel stressed about what they can accomplish in their 20s, or people who are older than that. So what is your message to the person thinking, oh man, I completely missed my chance or this is just like so much homework for me.

What is a good mindset to have? I think that it's really important for people to realize that there isn't just one right path in life. And this book is not at all about trying to say, you know, here's the right path that you should take and here are the rules to get there. The real point of my book is that we're living at an age where we have more choice than any other people that has come before us. We have so much choice over who we marry, when we marry, if we have children, what kind of career to pursue, you know, what we fill our leisure hours with. And that is hugely empowering. But sometimes I think that it can also feel a little paralyzing. And so the point of my book is to give readers an opportunity to stop and think about what they really want out of life and what is really

meaningful to them. I think that it would be a mistake to think, oh, you know, I've already missed the boat or, you know, or like I'm doing it wrong because there's really no such thing as the wrong way to do this. Everyone just take a deep breath. You get to decide to choose your own adventure. Everything will probably be just fine. So your book is called The Rocket Ears. You break up each chapter in kind of different arenas of life and kind of present different research and what it tells us about how we're thinking about different parts of our 20s. So let's start with the first

one, which is career. And you really talk about the dream job. That is a totally new concept that has arisen. Is that right? That's absolutely true. And, you know, if you think about it, for most of human history, nobody had any real choice about what job they did. But, you know, I looked at some data that showed that 95 percent of older Gen Zs and millennials think that finding a career is their most important objective in their 20s. In fact, it's much higher than even, you know, finding a life partner or starting a family, which is a huge change from even 50 years ago from our parents' generation. What I think most people don't realize is that it actually takes between 10 and 15 years to find a job that really does align with your skills and your values and your sense of,

you know, what you want to do in life. And in that in that 10 to 15 year period, most people are job hopping a lot. The average American will have 12 jobs between the ages of 18 and 50. But half of those jobs will be in their 20s. So you shouldn't feel bad if you're in your 20s hearing this or if you're, you know, you're older and you're thinking about your 20s and you were jumping around from job to job and kind of not feeling totally fulfilled, like that's totally normal. It's totally normal. And I think the crucial thing here is that it's really important not to give up on the concept of the dream job and believing

that the dream job is out there. What is some advice you have from the research for people in their 20s about things they shouldn't do in pursuit of a dream job? How can they make sure that they're not burning out in the hopes of finding a dream job? I think that's really interesting question because part of the problem with this idea of the dream job is that it's so much more than just a paycheck. 86% of millennials say that they would be willing to take a pay cut to work at a company whose mission and values aligns with their own. And so money is not the primary concern here. But I think that the problem there is that a lot of 20-somethings end up doing work that actually does not compensate them very well or that doesn't offer very good benefits. And they're willing to take that pay

cut simply because they're so passionate about the work or this dream that they'll eventually find a career that is so important to them. And I think that that's something to keep in mind because I think that a job that doesn't pay you well or that doesn't give you good benefits, that doesn't compensate you for the work that you're doing, is by definition not a dream job. It can't be a dream job. And the other thing that I found that's really interesting is that a lot of millennials don't actually take any time off. Oof. I'm only just starting to learn this message.

Take your vacation days. It's so true. And I think this again comes back to this idea that these are people who are so passionate about their work that, you know, sometimes they think, you know, oh, I can just like work remotely or whatever, because I just I don't want to miss anything. I don't want to miss a moment to to move forward in my career because it's so important to me. But, you know, I think all of this will eventually lead to burnout. And I think that that will in the long long term, be much less productive in your pursuit of your dream job. I was really glad that you also spent a lot of time seriously delving into why friendship is so important, especially in a person's 20s. So what's going on in a person's

20s when it comes to friends and why is that so important? There's a lot of data now about the circles of friends that we have throughout our lives. And a lot of research shows that our circle of friends seems to peak at the age of 25. Which feels early. Can I just say that does feel a little early to me. And it keeps shrinking and shrinking and shrinking over the course of our life. Yeah, there's this dramatic fall off. I think you wrote that there's like most people lose like a third of their friendships between their mid-20s and mid-30s. I mean, that makes me kind of sad. It's super depressing. Yeah. And so there's a couple of things going on there. On the one hand, you know, our 20s are this kind of magical friend making time. By the time we're in our mid-20s,

the average person has about 18 close friends. But actually, as you get older, that circle of friends begins to shrink. And there are many reasons for that. One is, as you get older, that circle of friends begins to shrink. And there are many reasons for that. One is, again, you have less time. And especially as you get married and start having children, it just becomes much harder to nurture your friendships. And so over time, your circle of friends shrinks. And if you don't do anything to stop it, but, you know, the number of hours you spend with other people outside of your family will also shrink. And this is actually a very scary thing when you think about the health risks associated with being lonely. Completely. that shows that people who are embedded in community and people who have lots of close relationships tend to fare better both mentally and physically.

What are the things that you can do to make your friendships more intentional in your 20s? I think that there are a couple of things you can do. First of all, be aware of that drop-off. The next step, I think, is to figure out the friends that you really want to have in your life in the years to come. There is some good reason that your circle of friends shrinks a little bit. And I think that that's because as you get older, you become more aware of who you are. And that in turn helps you

understand the kinds of people that you want to be close to. You then can be very intentional about the people that you want to stay in touch with. That doesn't mean that you necessarily have to see that friend every week like you did when you were in your 20s. The form of the friendship can be different. This might mean, you know, calling each other once a week. It might mean making plans to go on a trip together every six months. Something like that that fits into your life. But the other thing is that it's a good idea to also, you know, be actively making new friends. And I think that part of the problem is that, you know,

what we don't realize is that friend making is actually a skill. You know, sociologists say that there are actually three steps that go into making a new friend. And the first one is to be in physical proximity to this person. Secondly, having repeated and unplanned interactions with this person is the best way to establish a friendship. And if you think about it, you know, the friends that you made growing up, it wasn't necessarily that you sort of sought them out. It's that they were part of your community and you bumped into them at soccer practice or, you know, in class. As we get older, it's much harder to find these places where we interact with people regularly. And there's not a huge amount of pressure to be friends with them, but we just see them all the time. The final step is trying to maintain an emotional bond with them. Let's move on to another chapter that I was really happy to see. It's all about hobbies. And we don't really talk about hobbies and why they're so important in your 20s. But you

say that they are. Why is that? As we get older, it's just harder for our brains to learn new skills and new habits. And so the combination of these two things means that, you know, most people resist picking up new hobbies as much as they would like to in their 30s and 40s and 50s. And the downside of all of this is that, you know, hobbies are really, really important because they allow us to pursue things outside of work and family. Pursuing hobbies allows us to have a much more balanced life that takes a lot of pressure off these other things that are really important to us. And also there are some studies that show that hobbies are actually really important to your

mental and physical health. Oh, totally. Even like the non-sports ones, like embroidering, for instance, like doing a creative habit, I'm guessing. Totally, because it gives you an outlet from the other things in your life and takes away a lot of stress. And so actually, some doctors recommend hobbies as an intervention for some health problems and psychological problems. So the argument that I'm making in my book is that, number one, it's really a good idea to actively think about the hobbies that you'd like to pick up in your 20s and actually create the time to pursue them, knowing that, you know, you have this period in your life where you're more likely to be able to adopt these new habits and that and later on in life, it's going to be much harder to do so. So in your 20s, hobbies are a great way to meet lots of interesting people.

And so and so that's also a really valuable reason to pursue these hobbies. But the other thing that I've discovered is that, you know, as somebody who's no longer in my 20s, it is still possible for people to pursue hobbies later in life. It's just worth understanding that we have this internal resistance to doing that. And so... Yeah, because people don't like doing things they're not good at. Totally. And I get it. Totally. It's harder and it's going to be slower. The learning process is going to be way slower, you know, when you're, you know, 40 than, you know, when you were 20. But it's still worth pursuing for all of those other reasons that I was talking about. So you talk about a lot of different other things in the book. You talk about fitness,

you talk about marriage and family, faith and politics. We're not gonna have time to get to all of those, unfortunately. But like, what's just like one little tidbit of research from one of those that you just find so interesting that you just like keep coming back to? So one thing that I discovered is that people who are politically active in their 20s actually remain politically active throughout their whole lives. So people who go to protests and who vote, who basically develop the skills that they need to be part of the political process, those people tend to have

much richer political lives later on. And people who aspire to do that but don't, you know, they have a much harder time later on doing things like, you know, even voting, right? Voting is a very complex process, as I'm sure that many people listening to this will realize. And just, you know, just learning how to do that in your 20s isn't just great in your 20s, but it has this huge, you know, impact on the kind of political engagement you'll have later on in life. I feel like there is a lot of this pressure that people get that like the 20s is this really precious time that you need to be thinking about optimizing and really like digging down in every part of your life because it's going to impact the rest of your life. But you also get this message that it's a time to explore

and to, you know, not be so stressed out about what you want to do for work. And it feels kind of stressful to hold those two things in your mind, I think, when you're in your 20s. I mean, I don't know about you, but I was definitely like, I'm going to optimize and do all this. But then I got out as soon as I turned 30. I was like, should I have been more chill, though? Like, so what have you been finding in writing this book about how to hold those two kinds of approaches to your 20s in your mind? I think that you're spot on. I think that the main tension that most of us experience in our 20s is this feeling that on the one hand, we need to make good decisions because we have this limited amount of time

to set ourselves on the right course. And then on the other hand, it's a time to, you know, go out there, you know, date lots of people, quit a job if you don't feel like you want to stick with it. I actually think that most of us felt pulled in two different directions when really they're both part of a really important process. And in my book, I describe it as purposeful exploration, because here's the thing, you need to make all these decisions in your 20s. But during those years, you're still getting to know who you are as a person and what the world is like out there. And in a lot of ways, I think that that pull to go out there and be a little bit impulsive, I think that that's actually a very valuable instinct that we have because it helps us develop self-knowledge that when, you know, eventually when we have to make a decision because it's thrust upon us, we actually have more data at our fingertips that will allow us to make better decisions.

So I think that a much more helpful framework is for people to acknowledge that both of those things are part of the process and they're both very valuable things. Purposeful exploration. I like that. That feels like it takes a little bit of the pressure off. Like you don't have to choose like one camp or the other. I think that it's really important for people to realize that there isn't just one right path in life. And this book is not at all about trying to say, you know, here's the right path that you should take and here are the rules to get there. The point of my book is to give readers an opportunity to stop and think about what they really want out of life and what is really meaningful to them so that then they can use some of this data to chart out a path that aligns with that. So I think that it would be a mistake to think, oh, you know, I've already

missed the boat or, you know, or like I'm doing it wrong because there's really no such thing as the wrong way to do this. For more NPR Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one about how to brew coffee at home and another on how to keep your houseplants alive. Plus, tons of other episodes on personal finance, parenting, and health. You can find those at npr.org slash life kit. And if you love Life Kit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash LifeKit newsletter. Also, we want to hear your tips. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823 or email us at lifekit at npr.org. This episode was produced by Claire Schneider. Beth Donovan is our senior editor. I'm Megan Cain, our managing producer. Thank you for listening.