*Note: This was originally published in 2021 on my former website.
As a 24-year-old trying who is figuring out her life, discovering Elizabeth Segran’s book, “The Rocket Years: How Your Twenties Launch the Rest of Your Life,” was like the universe was reading my mind.
For a while now, I had been looking for some type of book on how to being a twentysomething. Our twenties are such a strange time in our lives because even though we’re legally adults, it feels like it was only yesterday that we were kids who wished we were adults already. While we might feel old in our twenties, we still have so much life to live and so many more things to go through during this phase of our lives.
The Rocket Years isn’t a how-to book on how to live our twenties but rather a book that shows how the choices we make or delay in our twenties can impact our lives down the road through social science data. The book isn’t all purely data as Segran mixes in her own experiences and choices she made when she was in her twenties. There are 8 chapters in the book on career, hobbies, fitness, marriage, family, friendship, politics, and faith.
Here are are some nuggets (aka facts) from the book that stood out to me:
– “Millennial burnout” is a real new condition happening with Millennials where we’re becoming so exhausted from constant work, that everyday tasks become overwhelming. The data also shows that many of us in our twenties are overworked, underpaid, and downright miserable at their jobs (Career chapter, page 18).
– Age 25 is an important age– “the exercise routines we form between the ages of 25-35 can be directly traced to a longer lifespan” (Fitness chapter, page 67).
– We’re likely to lose our faith in our twenties. When this happens there are three scenarios, 1) some of us won’t go back to our faith, 2) some will discover another religion, and 3) some of us will rediscover some version of our faith (Faith chapter, page 179).
– Neurologists say the younger we are, the easier it is for us to form/create a new habit. We can pick up new concepts and behaviours easier from the day we are born until the age of about 25 (Fitness chapter, page 72).
– The earlier you are politically engaged, the more likely you will be as you age (Politics chapter, page 149).
There were four chapters that resonated with me the most. The hobbies, fitness, politics, and faith chapters. The fitness chapter was my favourite. Before I stumbled on this book, I made the decision to further take charge of my fitness. In June, I had been hiking almost every other week, and in July when I found this book, I started running once a week. In this chapter, Segran tells us what everyone says, exercise is important, but a major surprise is that our mid-twenties is our fitness reset button.
Seriously!
In a Harvard research that Segran cites, it found that how active you were in the first two decades of your life “…has no impact on adding additional years to your life.” So, you still have time to become that more fitness-focused you! As a former active kid in my elementary years and later became inactive, this is a welcome fact and motivates me to keep going after my fitness goals.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone in their twenties—yes, even if you’re in the last year of your twenties or just turned 20. This is a book that really understands what it’s like to be a twenty-something.
While this book might seem like it’s telling you that you need to have everything together in your Rocket Years because of the title of the book, it’s not about that but rather what Segran tells us is that our twenties are a foundational time in our lives and that we can change our lives whenever we can, it’s just easier if we start doing that in our twenties rather than later.
Trish types away 