Your 20s are not for exploring

They are for committing

I feel like I’m taking a bit of a risk here, because the message of this post is quite unfashionable for 20-something year-olds*—and that is this blog’s target audience (we cover how to launch your career, handle money, set up meaningful relationships).

But for that reason, I would be loathe to not impart the most important lesson my former students at Boston College said they learned—despite their initial skepticism.

* Unfortunately, there’s no existing abbreviation for “20-somethings”. “Young adult” isn’t right, and “new adult” sounds a bit off. So I’ll just call them 20STs.

The conventional wisdom

The message we typically impart to teenagers is that in their 20s they will become fully responsible adults, but they should not be too quick to “settle down”—they should utilize the flexibility and energy their youth affords them in order to explore.

Ask a typical 20ST about the following topics, and this is what you’ll likely hear:

• Career – “I don’t want to stay with any one company too long. It’s best to switch jobs every 1-2 years.”

• Love – “I may want to get married, but not until my early 30s. I first need to learn what type of person I’m compatible with.”

• Housing – “I don’t want to sign any lease that feels too permanent.”

• Life – “I first need to focus on finding myself.”

The danger of exploring

The problem is, you don’t have infinite time. Exploring is certainly valuable—even necessary—to learn what you want. But if you explore too long, you’ll run out of time.

• Career – There’s only so much you can learn when you stay in a job for 1-2 years. Many valuable skills (not to mention promotions) come when you really get to learn how your organization functions, and when your manager is able to learn about you deeply enough to evolve your work in accordance with your strengths.

• Love – You’ll never learn who is good for you to be in a serious relationship with unless you are in one with them. The criteria for your ideal spouse may be quite different from the criteria for your ideal casual relationship.

• Housing – It’s very hard to build community unless you invest in a community.

• Life – No matter how much you try to find yourself, there is something you will never know about yourself if you don’t make commitments: you won’t know what you are like when you commit. (You won’t know what you are like in a long-term job, or in a long-term relationship.)

That is why most 20STs find themselves more lost than ever. All-too-quickly, they find that a decade has passed, and where they are at age 30… is exactly where they were at age 20.

If, at age 30, you want to be the kind of person who has their life mostly sorted out—you cannot wait until you are 29-and-a-half to start sorting it out.

The skill of commitment

As we previously learned about contentment, commitment, too, is not a state of being—it’s a skill. Like any skill, you can build it over time.

You certainly don’t need to suddenly declare that you have committed to your employer or partner for life. Instead, you can utilize a powerful framework: commit, for now.

• Career – “I don’t know if I’ll want to stay in this job forever. But for now, I’ll assume this is my long-term thing, and invest in it accordingly.”

• Love – “I’m definitely not ready to propose. But for now, I’ll assume that we will one day get married, and treat this as that kind of relationship.”

• Housing – “I don’t know if this is where I want to live forever. But for now, I’ll plant roots here as if I plan to stay a long time.”

• Life – “I don’t know everything I want out of life. But for now, I will pick some life goals, and try to achieve them.”

You can give yourself a timeframe to check in: “in one year, I’ll see how I feel.”

The YCB monster

There’s another valid concern 20STs have with commitment: they are loathe to lose their freedom. Being able to switch jobs and move cities at the drop of a hat certainly sounds liberating.

But with too much exploring and not enough committing, you are not liberated; you are constrained. You are in thrall to something I call “the YCB monster.”

The “You Could Be…” monster is the one always whispering in your ear whenever anything is slightly less-than-perfect:

• “Challenging day at work? You could be doing something different… Just open LinkedIn.”

• “Your boy/girlfriend bothered you today? You could be with someone else… Just open Tinder.”

• “Feel lonely in this town? You could try your luck somewhere else… Just open Zillow.”

Of course, most people aren’t going to open Tinder as soon as their partner does something minor to bother them. But that possibility always exists. Until you shut the door on the YCB monster entirely (at least for now!), it will always be tempting you with the “what ifs”—and distracting you from the number one benefit that your work and relationships have to offer: overcoming challenges.

Lost at sea

Meg Jay, author of the excellent book The Defining Decade, provides the metaphor of a 20ST lost at sea. They don’t want to commit to swimming in any one direction, because what if it’s the wrong direction? So, they get stuck treading water until they drown.

The odds of finding land in one given direction may be low, but they are infinitely higher than staying where you are forever. You can always course-correct later; for now, pick a direction and swim.