Imagine you\u2019ve been plunked into the ocean. You can\u2019t spot land. You\u2019re treading water, your arms are spaghetti-limp and all you see is blue. You get the sense that this could be it forever: you against the currents.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a little dramatic. But it is one of the metaphors that the clinical psychologist Meg Jay has shared to describe being in your 20s in her cult classic book \u201cThe Defining Decade\u201d \u2014 and it is the metaphor that persistently triggers the most explosive reader response. Dozens of 20-somethings have emailed her, making reference to the ocean metaphor with: \u201cYes!\u201d They resonate because they, too, feel adrift.<\/p>\n
Twenty-somethings are not short on sources of career advice. They\u2019re told to hustle, hustle, hustle and to chill out; they\u2019re told that their professional clocks are ticking, and also that 30 is the new 20 and they have all the time in the world.<\/p>\n
Into that morass came Dr. Jay\u2019s book, first published in 2012, which has since sold more than 500,000 copies and spawned book clubs, TikTok endorsements and a zealous following. Her advice falls somewhere between \u201cthere, there\u201d and tough love: Start planning for the future, but don\u2019t freak out. When she published a new edition in 2021, Dr. Jay found that the reach of \u201cThe Defining Decade\u201d kept expanding, answering to 20-something confusion that is now textured with the pressures of social media and the turbulence of the pandemic. (Parents embrace it, too; Dr. Jay sometimes hears from mothers that all they asked for on Mother\u2019s Day was for their children to read the book.)<\/p>\n
Dr. Jay has emerged as the patron saint of striving youth, a prophetlike figure for a generation of young people buried under mixed messaging. They\u2019re told on television that they could be Kardashian-level rich if they tried, told on Instagram that they should be vacationing in Sicily, told on TikTok what a #Girlboss routine looks like and told in Beyonc\u00e9 lyrics that everyone is quitting their job.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s college graduates have extra reasons for uncertainty, given the churn in the labor market and the waves of layoffs across tech. In a survey of 1,432 job seekers from Handshake, a job search site for college students, the top words that members of the class of 2023 and other recent graduates used to describe their feelings about the economy were \u201canxious,\u201d \u201cworried\u201d and \u201cnervous.\u201d They\u2019re following on the heels of millennials, who were known for spending their 20s job-hopping and landing in various positions for under three years. Dr. Jay\u2019s book combines sympathy for young people\u2019s confusion with a nudge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt definitely aims to create some urgency,\u201d said Dr. Jay, 53, her sobering message tempered by a warm southern drawl. \u201cWhen we believe that we have all the time in the world to do something, we don\u2019t do anything. That\u2019s just true, for everything from figuring out our careers to doing our laundry.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sense of urgency it breeds means that Dr. Jay receives not just fan mail but also angst mail from her readers. \u201cThey\u2019ll email me and say, \u2018I read it at 22 and threw it across the room,\u2019\u201d Dr. Jay said. \u201cIt just depends.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the one hand, the average American won\u2019t get married until around 30 and might switch employers every 30 months; on the other hand, they\u2019re likely to be saddled with nearly $40,000 in student debt. That can leave people with a simultaneous sense of wanderlust and panic.<\/p>\n
Sarah Liddy, 25, and Audrey Flowers, 24, are two of Dr. Jay\u2019s superfans, mixed-up youth who recently decided to start a podcast to talk about being mixed-up youth. They called it Completely Clueless, with a profanity added in the middle for effect. Both Ms. Liddy and Ms. Flowers dreamed, in high school, of becoming actors (Ms. Liddy had her debut as the teapot in \u201cBeauty and the Beast\u201d). They studied musical theater and graduated from college during the pandemic, when auditioning opportunities were nearly nonexistent. Ms. Flowers was, until recently, working at a Lululemon store in New York, and Ms. Liddy is babysitting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe past couple weeks of my life have been an absolute fail, like an L,\u201d Ms. Liddy said in a recent episode of the podcast, called \u201c20s talk,\u201d using the slang term for \u201closs.\u201d \u201cMajor L\u2019s are being had in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you\u2019ve got to be in your flop era,\u201d Ms. Flowers replied. \u201cBecause a slay era doesn\u2019t mean anything if there is no flop era.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added, encouragingly: \u201cYour slay era is right around the corner, baby girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a Wednesday earlier this year, Ms. Liddy and Ms. Flowers sat down for lunch with Dr. Jay in Dimes Square, the Manhattan microneighborhood known for its cluster of dive bars and young people trying to figure out their lives over dive drinks. The two declared, giddily, how much Dr. Jay\u2019s advice had meant to them.<\/p>\n
Ms. Flowers and Ms. Liddy\u2019s story is, like so many described in \u201cThe Defining Decade,\u201d both particular in its mishaps and broadly resonant. They were told by teachers while they were growing up that they had what it took to achieve theatrical stardom; Ms. Liddy recalled a sense that her whole hometown thought she would end up on Broadway. In college, they threw themselves into auditioning for shows. Then Covid arrived and tossed their professional plans askew. Both podcast hosts related, they said, to Dr. Jay\u2019s descriptions of being unmoored.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ocean!\u201d Dr. Jay said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve said that to my therapist multiple times,\u201d said Ms. Flowers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve both had periods since graduating where we have felt really stuck,\u201d Ms. Liddy added. \u201cI just wish I could be my old self again \u2014 that girl who was defined by working hard, \u2018She\u2019s going to be a star.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
There were 50 million 20-somethings in the United States, about 15 percent of the population, when \u201cThe Defining Decade\u201d came out. This cohort is experiencing a stage of life that Dr. Jay describes as a modern phenomenon. For much of history, people didn\u2019t have a full decade between leaving their parents\u2019 homes and starting their own families. They settled down early \u2014 moving into their own homes, finding jobs, having children.<\/p>\n
But a confluence of economic and social forces has meant that people now have a longer period between childhood and full-fledged adulthood. One reason is birth control. As oral contraceptives became readily available in the 1960s and 1970s, women were able to delay the decision to start families, and their labor force participation soared over 50 percent. There\u2019s also student debt, which has prompted many recent graduates to move home with their parents. On top of all that, as religious affiliation has declined, more than half of Americans now derive their sense of self from work \u2014 meaning choosing a career isn\u2019t just finding a source of livelihood but also of identity.<\/p>\n
With child-rearing and home buying postponed, and the stakes of professional development heightened, a new phase of life has emerged: one of possibility and risk, exhilaration and crippling self-doubt. It\u2019s a complicated time. And Dr. Jay, perusing the self-help section at Barnes & Noble one day, realized that while there were ample books about how to raise a child, there weren\u2019t as many about how to keep raising yourself once you\u2019re technically an adult, or at least not enough books with the kind of measured advice she thought young people deserved.<\/p>\n
The first edition of \u201cThe Defining Decade\u201d came out just after the 2008 financial crisis, when young people were graduating with debt into a historically bad job market. The second edition came out during the pandemic, as they graduated into a workplace turned upside down.<\/p>\n
When the pandemic hit, Dr. Jay was incidentally in her own period of flux. She\u2019d decided to leave behind her own comfortable routines by signing up to teach \u201cThe Defining Decade\u201d in a program called Semester at Sea, in which students spend months on a cruise ship traveling the world. Dr. Jay\u2019s book club meetings turned out to be among the most popular events on the ship. The room was always packed, the cookies ran out instantly and students watched as their classmates swapped their Colleen Hoover novels for \u201cThe Defining Decade.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen she\u2019s talking to young people, she gives off the vibe that she\u2019s rooting for you but would call you out on things you\u2019re not doing,\u201d said Athena Bo, 23, a Semester at Sea participant. \u201cA lot of people passed by the room and would say stuff like, \u2018Damn, that room is packed.\u2019 \u2018Damn, Meg Jay is superfamous.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
To Ms. Bo, reading \u201cThe Defining Decade\u201d sharpened the lessons she\u2019d absorbed from her father growing up: \u201cThe example I always remember is when I went to McDonald\u2019s, he would say, \u2018If you want chicken nuggets, you\u2019re going to have to order it for yourself.\u2019 He would hold me up and be like, \u2018You\u2019ve got to ask for the chicken nuggets.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Obviously, chicken nuggets were a low-stakes request. A decade later, Ms. Bo is learning, from Dr. Jay, to ask for more: a job, for example, and a relationship.<\/p>\n
As Dr. Jay was updating the book in 2020, she was getting dozens more reader emails. Some people told her they felt as if the pandemic had stolen their defining decade, sapping them of the motivation and opportunities to chase what they wanted. Others said that because they were locked down at home, they finally had the time to read her book.<\/p>\n
Twenty-somethings were experiencing the unease that Dr. Jay had spent the last decade describing, but it was intensified by Covid isolation. Jahleane Dolne, 25, one TikTok fan of \u201cThe Defining Decade,\u201d found herself applying for jobs from her parents\u2019 home, scrolling LinkedIn while seated next to her high school cheerleader uniform and prom dress. Jasmine Yook, 30, who has also posted on TikTok about the book, reread Dr. Jay\u2019s book at 29 and reflected on the gaps between where she wanted to be in her fashion career and where she had landed.<\/p>\n
Dr. Jay responded to these readers with football coach pep. \u201cThis is your Great Depression,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is your recession. This is your generational adversity, and what did you do? How did you respond? To say, \u2018Well, I got scrappy and started a podcast\u2019, or, \u2018I read 50 books I said I was going to read,\u2019 that\u2019s a metaphor or an example of how you respond when life gets difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
And while much of her advice can sound intimidating, she isn\u2019t against offering hacks. \u201cYou\u2019re asking about formulas,\u201d Dr. Jay said, over lunch, after a discussion about the balance between seeking joy now and working hard to lay the groundwork for joy in the years to come. \u201cThere actually is a very loose formula.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everyone at the table leaned forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cHappy successful people say that they spend about half their time thinking about the present, \u2018What\u2019s going to make me feel happy and successful now,\u2019 and about half thinking about the future,\u201d Dr. Jay continued. \u201cIf somebody asked me about a formula, how do I balance between being happy in my 20s and being happy beyond, I would say probably about half and half.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the other side of a French fry platter, Ms. Liddy and Ms. Flowers nodded sagely. The advice wasn\u2019t so much a panacea as a flash of hope. There was wisdom they could grasp onto. Somewhere, in the distance, there was land \u2014 or at the very least, their 30s.<\/p>\n