How To Actually Make The Most Of Your Twenties

0:11What is up? I'm Grace Beverley and welcome back to Working Harder. the podcast-shaped guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing, because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

0:25What is up and welcome back to Working Hard. I hope you're doing well. Today's solo episode is all about your 20s, so the decade I feel that everyone loves to romanticise but also panic about at the exact same time. We are very much told that these are the best years of your life and that this is the decade where you're supposed to find your passion, find your people, figure yourself out, build your career, start investing, go to therapy, travel the world and somehow also enjoy being young and carefree. So today I wanted to break that all down. We're going to talk about what actually matters in your 20s, what the research says about how this decade shapes the rest of your life and how to make the most out of it without losing your mind trying to do everything perfectly.

1:02Before we get into it, guys, I was having a look at the stats this week and only 26 % of people who listen to this podcast every single week are actually following it on the podcast app that they listen to it on. I get it, some of us have commitment issues, but if you do hit that follow button, it means that the episode will land in your feed every Monday and you won't have to scroll past 14 other podcasts to find something that you want to listen to on your hot girl walk. And it also helps us reach many more people and book even bigger guests and be able to spend even more time on research for these types of episodes.

1:28So I'd be super grateful if you could follow us.

1:36So let me start with the most obvious point. Your 20s are very weird. You're technically an adult but then you also might be googling how many times that you can reheat rice before it actually kills you. You know you're told to build a five-year plan but also told to live in the moment. You're watching some friends get engaged, get married and have kids while you're still deleting hinge every three weeks and in the middle of that you're quietly wondering whether you're doing it all wrong, whether you're in the wrong career, the wrong relationship, whether you should be traveling the world. But here is what I want to say from the very start.

2:04Your 20s are not about perfection and they are also not about getting things right. They are about foundation. The habits you build, the people you meet, the decisions you make, they all compound. You absolutely do not have to have it all figured out. In fact, I would get the idea of aiming to have everything figured out out of your brain in your 20s. It is not about that and if you're focusing on that you're going to miss so many other things and according to the experts who have actually spent their lives studying this stuff you do just need to start building something that supports the version of you that you're becoming and the version of you that you want to become so that's what we're going to be focusing on in this episode i do not want anyone to think that your 20s have to look any way at all because they absolutely do not that being said there are things that you can focus on and things that you can concentrate on that aren't end goal-based things that could go a very very long way to making sure that you build the foundations for the rest of your life in your 20s.

2:56And there's a lot of expert-based literature on this to help us use these years as foundational years. And that is what they are. I think it's so easy to look around at social media and constantly think, oh, I need to do this. I need to do this. I need to do this. By this age, I need to have achieved this. I need to have achieved this. I need to have achieved this. And that just misses so much of the point. And I think if you spend your 20s trying to have everything figured out, what you're actually going to end up doing is trying to get to a finish line as fast as possible when you don't even know if that finish line is where you want to be.

3:26So let's look at what the experts actually say about all of this. Psychologist Dr Meg Jay, who is author of The Defining Decade, found that over 80 % of life's most defining moments happen before the age of 35. And I feel like that's kind of terrifying. I feel like no wonder we put so much pressure on our 20s. And A study from the University of Virginia showed that people who took intentional actions in their 20s, things like goal setting, building strong relationships, reflecting on their identity, were significantly more satisfied in their 30s. And I know it's easy to listen to that and maybe think, okay, so I do need to have everything figured out in my 20s.

4:01Actually, I would encourage you to look at that in the opposite way. In my opinion, your 20s are for gathering as much information as possible about yourself, about what you like, what you're good at, what you want from your life, the type of life you want to build, all of these different things. and if you're racing towards one destination or racing towards what you think your life should look like in your 20s you're not going to be spending enough time on working out what you actually want things to look like because you're spending time trying to double down on making sure you're reaching x achievement y achievement etc etc there is so much we can get out of our 20s and i want to talk about in this episode specifically how you can do that best so i really think one of the most effective things you can do is shift the narrative from thinking about achieving in your 20s and shift it more to thinking about building so that you can build these foundations for the rest of your life.

4:49And that doesn't mean doing absolutely nothing. There's so much you can do in your 20s to make the most out of it. But I do really want you to get out of your mindset, this idea that you have to achieve all of these things that you thought you would achieve by 30 when we were taught when we were younger that like 30 is the end of your life. And I would even say that as I approach my 30s personally, I feel more and more excited about the fact that I truly know myself and I know what I want from life and I'm able to move forward into the next decade knowing these things because I've built those foundations and built that understanding of myself.

5:22So whilst we've been talking about things that you don't necessarily need to concentrate on in your 20s, there is a lot that you can do to be using your 20s most effectively and that's really what I want to focus on today. As I've said before, this isn't about pressure. It's about recognising that the stuff you do now has weight and the more intentional you are, the easier it gets later. It just doesn't need to be about achieving all your goals. So this is where the biology actually gets fascinating. Your brain literally isn't fully formed until your mid-twenties. We've all heard about the part called the prefrontal cortex, so the area behind your forehead that handles planning, impulse control, decision making and self-regulation.

5:57Neuroscientist Shannon Adele says that the prefrontal cortex, a brain region responsible for cognitive control and inhibition, is slower to develop. She points out that adults benefit from a well-developed prefrontal cortex allowing them to better execute skills that require learning focus and memory and that specific area of your brain is not fully developed until your mid-20s all of this means that your 20s aren't just a wild decade they're basically the final stretch of your brain wiring itself into becoming an adult your ability to resist impulsive decisions to plan for what's ahead to regulate emotion all of that is still being refined so when you go into your early 20s and you feel like you are a like child adult trying to do all of these things without necessarily knowing how you can or what your mindset should be or what's the right decision to make or making the same mistakes over and over and over again and not actually knowing why that is because it's kind of true and on top of that a lot of us are kind of thrown out of the education system in the second half of your teens or in your early 20s and so you've been living one life and you're essentially then going into leading another life.

7:01So you've got to spend a few years actually knowing how to do that. So it's all well and good knowing these facts but the question really is what do we actually do with that information when there are a hundred choices in front of us in terms of what we should really be doing with our 20s every single day. So I've spent time breaking these down into my four steps for your 20s that I can that I hope will be relevant whatever path you want to take and actually help you get the most out of these years. So step one get obsessed with foundation, not perfection. As I've said, this isn't the decade where you need to nail your career, your relationship, or your five-year plan.

7:35What does matter though is learning how to build trust with yourself. That means building simple habits, so not perfect routines, little habits to help you actually trust yourself. So things like making your bed when you said you would, things like showing up to the gym even if it's just for 10 minutes. These tiny moments, these promises to yourself compound and more importantly they teach your brain that you are the type of person that follows through you are the type of person who does what you say you will do this will come in hugely helpful whether you want to spend your life in an office or traveling the world there is truly nothing more important in your 20s in my opinion than building your self-worth and I think so many of us come from so many different backgrounds where maybe you weren't necessarily told that you were a great person or that you did do good things or all of these amazing things about yourself and if you're from that type of background then you're going to need to be spending even more time proving to yourself the type of person you are and proving to yourself things like your resilience, your determination, your discipline because all of that compounds together to give you your self-worth and to help you know yourself and know your worth when it comes to everyone else.

8:43You need to know that first before you can do big things anywhere else and all of this is not just about doing more. I think the really important thing is that the habits, boundaries and mindset shifts that you build now in your 20s are the ones that you're going to thank yourself for later on when life does get a lot more complicated and when responsibilities do really pile up. And then that self-trust will become your safety net. And not just that self-trust, but your actual understanding of the type of life you want to live and the type of routines you thrive in and the type of routines you don't thrive in or the type of jobs you don't thrive in.

9:15That understanding of yourself through building your own self-trust where you can really trust your opinion because you know you always work to understand yourself is so so important. So in this way basically our 20s aren't about performing adulthood, they're about learning how to actually practice it. Step two is about sorting the boring stuff early. Now this isn't an exciting one but it is very important and something that is foundational not just in terms of how you know yourself but in terms of the things that very much pay off when you sort them earlier and earlier. I know no one's getting excited about setting up a pension or knowing their credit score.

9:52But the truth is that sorting the basics early is kind of the ultimate cheat code for future peace of mind. You do not need to spend your 20s in spreadsheets. In fact, I would very much recommend you don't, even though I love a colour-coded sheet and I love a colour-coded piece of information. You can have all of your stuff there, but you do not need to spend every single weekend analysing every single part of your life. But you do need to start thinking about your future. So that could be automating a£10 a month into a savings pot or an investment pot or setting up a direct debit for your student loan or googling the words lifetime ISA and watching one video that doesn't bore you to tears.

10:30So a few things that I would really, really recommend sorting when you're in your 20s. Number one is understanding investing. That doesn't mean that you need to be saving thousands a month and putting it all into investments and growing tens of thousands in investments a year. Instead, that's really just about understanding what investing means. Like, how do you compound money? What is an index fund and how can it help you actually build your wealth over time? Another thing I would really recommend you set up is your pension. There are different rules in different countries in terms of auto-enrollment and whether you are automatically enrolled based on having a job or based on being a certain age or whatever, but that will pay back dividends and has huge tax payoffs in most places and just means that you can start actually investing in your future for after work.

11:15There are so many things that we could concentrate on here. Those are some of my main ones but there's so much else too. So there are things like making sure that you are building up your credit score, maybe that by just doing your essential shops on a credit card and making sure you are paying it back by direct debit and you are never actually using more money than you actually have when using a credit card. Things like building a lifetime ISA, that's specific to the UK, but there are obviously equivalents elsewhere, things like a 401k, et cetera, et cetera. Just really understanding the basics of how other people are building their money.

11:48This is a lot of the stuff that we are not taught in school and being able to understand that better is incredibly, incredibly important. You might have the most amazing self-improvement foundations for your life, but if you do not have financial foundations, I'm not talking tens of thousands in savings but understanding how things work and doing what you can to be able to build and understand that is so incredibly important. The earlier you build the muscle of looking after your future self both mentally, financially, physically, even in the tiniest ways the stronger your foundation gets and that is definitely the case when it comes to financially as well because of compound interest and honestly it's not about just being rich or trying to get rich in your I think too much content focuses on that.

12:32It's about feeling safe and being able to make decisions still feeling safe because when things go wrong, which they will at some point, that savings buffer or that bit of admin that you did three years ago will feel like the kindest gift that you ever gave yourself. Step three is trading comparison for curiosity. Your 20s are peak comparison territory because everyone is in so many different places at once. It's like everyone's playing a different video game but posting it to the same Instagram feed. One mate is launching a startup and one is living with their parents, one is having their second baby and one is an emergency room doctor and still somehow has time to do yoga and that's kind of the point.

13:11There is no right version of your 20s, there is just your version and the version you want for yourself. So when comparison inevitably creeps in and it will, I would really recommend that you start to use that as a cue, not something to get angry at yourself for. So instead of why am I not there yet you can instead look at that like what do I actually want that to look like for me or am I feeling this way because I want that life or am I feeling this way because I absolutely don't want that life and it makes me angry that someone is living that life. It might seem small but the shift from judgment to curiosity changes everything.

13:44So instead of shaming yourself you start designing a life that actually fits you. Step four is all about building meaningful friendships and relationships and I feel like this one doesn't get talked about enough in the how to succeed in your 20s chat but it might be the most important because yes of course career matters, job matters but when the job falls through or the relationship ends or the identity crisis hits and it will multiple times it is the people that you call crying on the bus home that get you through it. The friendships you build in this decade aren't always about seeing each other every week, they are about showing up and staying bonded to each other or finding new bonds over time.

14:22There might be someone you drifted from that you really liked at school that you've got back in touch with or there might be someone that you met this year in a class that ends up being a really really great friend for the rest of your life. It's the voice notes when everything is falling apart and the late night can I talk to you about something weird messages. Our 20s can so often be the decade where our friendships start to peter out. We're not together most days like we were at school or at university. Long-term partners come into the mix and suddenly you're all checking your diaries and you're not free from the next month and if you were free then you'd be going over to the flat where your friend's boyfriend lives and you can't have your same girl's night but I promise that carving out the time for your friends the kind that leave you feeling uplifted and like everything is going to be okay after you see them is the tonic you need in your 20s and investing in friendships will go so far I do think that coming into your 20s a lot of your friendships change there are a lot of people that I was super close with at uni who I'm not close with now or I was close with them then I'm not close with them and then I am close with them again things move around the whole time but actually being able to build a base of relationships and being able to build your friendships into this new decade when actually they will look so different from the types of friendships you had in education where you were able to pop around to their room every five minutes to be able to tell them a piece of gossip like life does get harder and more gets in the way and people move to other countries but investing in your friendships is so incredibly important and that doesn't need to look like seeing them all the time it just needs to look like showing up and please please please no matter what you do do not think that relationships are a substitute for friendships do not think that just because you've got into a relationship you can spend time with all that person and leave your friendships elsewhere of course when you're in a new relationship you're going to be spending much more time with someone and you're going to have less time to see your friends and that is absolutely fine and that is like an amazing place to be and some of the most fun times in a relationship that being said I do not believe your partner can be your everything and I do not believe it is healthy for a relationship or yourself for that to be the case there is so much joy outside of just your relationship and I do think that it's natural that friendships ebb and flow over time but actually really making sure that you still keep them even when you're in relationships is so so important and will mean that you always have a safety net and kind of companionship outside of whatever your relationship looks like.

16:46So how do we put this all into practice? So psychologists have proven that we actually find it a lot harder to care about our future selves than our present selves. This is a theory called the future you theory which is really interesting that I can do a whole other episode on if you'd like. But basically we need to work really hard to remind ourselves when we're doing something that will benefit us in the future. So every month I write down, what will 30 year old be grateful that I started now? This is a really simple prompt, but it can really help you to reconnect with why any of this matters and the things you are doing that your future self is going to thank you for.

17:18I will say you don't need to be doing things all the time that your future self is going to thank you for. I think some of us spend too much time thinking about our future selves when we actually should be spending more time thinking about our current selves and what looks right for us today and tomorrow than next week. But you'll probably know which side you lean on more and whether you are the type of person who's doing everything for this kind of imaginary future self at the expense of your current self or whether you're the type of person who needs a little bit more of a push to make sure you're setting yourself up for the future.

17:47Another thing you can do is picking one theme to improve in your life every month. So this is perfect for someone who maybe gets a little bit too excited about a full life overhaul. It can be really useful to just focus on one thing every month that you want to actually improve, that you're going to come back to again and again and again to really build so that you're not constantly getting excited over and over again on the idea of rebrands and then falling off because you're trying to change too much at once. So some months that could be money, some months that could be boundaries or just remembering to move your body twice a week.

18:19It's important not to try and go into every month trying to become a new person, but instead just trying to nudge one area in a better direction. And sometimes that can mean reading a book, sometimes that's just paying attention to the patterns that keep showing up trying to fix everything at once is a fast track to burnout so instead give yourself permission to grow in one area and maybe let the others be a little bit chaotic for a while that month is not focusing on them you're going to double down on fixing one thing in particular so it's not about perfect progress it's more about sustainable growth the next one is tracking your growth in small moments so i used to think growth meant having like a long list of wins or milestones and achievements and now I just keep a note in my phone where I jot down the stuff that doesn't necessarily look good on social media or it's not like the most aesthetic but it's something that I'm proud of.

19:06Something like a boundary I held or a task I delegated when usually I would have just done it myself and that's what's holding me back from actually being able to get more leverage. And the idea behind this is that it's not about building a highlight reel and the reason why we go for so many achievements now is because of this announcement culture and the need to constantly achieve over and over so we have more things to announce online. But this is kind of an antidote to that in that it's a reminder that I'm building resilience and building myself. I'm not just building a brand and what this brand of me is.

19:35And it also means that on the days where I feel stuck or behind, it helps me to remember that real progress often looks boring or it looks invisible until you actually zoom out and think about the progress you've made and those little habit changes or those little boundary changes that you feel very proud of yourself for that haven't necessarily led to a big achievement or announcement. So Dr. Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist and author of The Defining Decade. She works with 20-somethings every single day. So for the expert section of this episode, I wanted to ask her what the one piece of advice she would give to someone in her 20s is.

20:07Advice I'd give anyone going into their 20s, halfway through their 20s, almost done with their 20s, at the beginning of their 30s, is really to spend more time imagining life going well. So what is your life? If it goes well, what does that look like in terms of work or love or friends or finances? Because when we do that, I think then it begs the question of, okay, well, if this is what it looks like if my life goes well, what does that mean about what I need to be doing today, what my goals should be this year so I could get closer to my dreams, closer to that vision? I think it's tricky in your 20s.

20:45There's a lot of uncertainty in the way that the brain responds uncertainty is to imagine the worst. So we actually are already spending a lot of time imagining what if my life goes horribly. So we're already talking to our friends or our therapists or whoever about what if I never find a job? What if no one ever loves me? What if I could never pay my bills? And if our head is there all the time, then we're really operating out of a place of fear. And then in that case, any relationship looks better than being alone for the rest of your life or any job looks better than never finding a job. So I think we need to spend more time on what does it look like for my life to go well and what does that mean in terms of the choices I make and the actions I'm taking.

21:26Whether this is in a journal or in notes on your phone or in the conversations you're already having with a therapist or a friend, notice yourself if you're saying, what if this, what if that, like when you notice the what ifs, notice what kind of what-ifs they are. They're probably negative. What if no one ever loves me? What if I never get a promotion? Notice that and say, okay, that's my brain doing what it's evolutionarily wired to do, which is sort of expect the worst, prepare for the worst, notice it and shift it and spend at least as much time. What if I do get the promotion? What would that look like?

22:01Why would I get it? What should I do now to try to help that happen? So it's really a matter of noticing how you're what-if-ing and shifting that. So again, people can do it in a journal. They can do it in notes on their phone. They can have those conversations with their therapist. The tricky thing about being in therapy, and I say this as a therapist, is that people really perceive it as a place where they should go and talk about all the bad stuff, every bad thing they've ever done, every bad thing that's ever happened to them, when really we're missing an opportunity to talk to another outside, hopefully wiser person about the good things about us and our strengths and our dreams and how to get there.

22:40And so again, even in therapy, we can be operating out of a place of fear rather than sort of out of a place of hope or strength. So one of the first hot tips for your 20s is don't compare your path to other people's path, because this is when life goes in a million different directions. And some people are going to have, you know, five kids and some people are going to write five books and some people are going to do a million things in between. So tip number one is don't compare your path to someone else's path to sort of figure out what is my path. Let me just focus on my life and not worry about what other people are doing.

23:14I think another thing I see that really helps people in their 20s is getting that internal locus of control. I think it's really easy when you go online and you see the news and all the things wrong in the world to imagine, oh, you know, my life can't possibly turn out well because of recessions or politics or climate change or whatever the case may be. I think it's the 20-somethings that say, I have control over at least my part in my life, and I'm going to focus on that and do what I can do to create a life for myself. The other thing I would say is that I talk about this in The Defining Decade, the strength of weak ties.

23:50That's really about reaching out to people, asking for help, asking for leads, whether we're talking about apartments or jobs or people to date or, you know, ideas for new companies, that the people who really connect with others, talk to others, listen to others are curious and open. They get a lot further a lot faster. And that often some of that connecting that they do in their 20s starts to really pay off, believe it or not, in their 30s and their 40s when those people that they connected to, you know, you go back to them and say, hey, I remember that thing that you told me about this company.

24:25I'm interested in that. Or, hey, I just moved to your city. Let's meet up. So using weak ties is important. Your 20s are actually one of the hardest times of your life. You've got the most uncertainty. It's a time of, I say, first and worst, you know, first and worst jobs and apartments and roommates and relationships and breakups and all that. And it's really not a great time to jump to long-term conclusions over how your life is going to be. It's about not getting confused about what's happening in your 20s and thinking that always has to be the way it is. That's where the imagining like, well, what if my life got better?

25:00What would that look like? What can I do to get there? And to start to have some hope and belief in yourself that there are things you can do to get there. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, but over time. For anyone who wants to dive deeper, I'm going to be sending out some reading recommendations on my favourite articles all about your 20s in the Working Hard newsletter this week. So the link to sign up for that is in the show notes. And if this episode helped you to reframe your 20s or think about anything differently, I would love if you could send it to a friend who's in the thick of it too.

25:27It really helps the podcast and I hope it will really help them too. But as always, have a lovely week.