We're sunsetting PodQuest on 2025-07-28. Thank you for your support!
Export Podcast Subscriptions
cover of episode Navigating Quarter-Life Crisis: Unpacking the Psychology of Your 20s - Jemma Sbeghen

Navigating Quarter-Life Crisis: Unpacking the Psychology of Your 20s - Jemma Sbeghen

2023/6/22
logo of podcast Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

AI Deep Dive AI Chapters Transcript
People
A
Ali Abdaal
J
Jemma Sbeghen
Topics
Jemma Sbeghen: 二十多岁面临的迷茫和焦虑是普遍现象,被称为“四分之一人生危机”。它源于互联网和社交媒体的普及,以及人们对人生选择的增加。外部因素如经济衰退和气候变化也加剧了这种焦虑。应对这种危机,关键在于认识到迷茫本身并不一定是坏事,它意味着更多机会。我们不应试图详细规划人生,而应关注想要的生活感受。要学会享受独处时光,进行自我反思,并定期与朋友见面,避免孤独感。在人际关系中,要主动联系朋友,保持联系,并学会积极倾听,设定健康的界限。在职业发展方面,要敢于走出舒适区,尝试不同的工作和行业,并学会争取自己的权益。要养成良好的生活习惯,平衡工作与生活,并明确自己的价值观和身份认同。 Ali Abdaal: 二十多岁面临的挑战与心理学相关,人们在平衡生活各个方面时,感觉像是在仓鼠轮上奔跑。现在的决定不会完全决定未来的幸福,人生会发生很多变化。关于20多岁,存在两种不同的叙事:探索和积累,关键在于平衡。要享受过程,而非仅仅关注结果。要学会享受独处时光,进行自我反思,并定期与朋友见面,避免孤独感。在人际关系中,要主动联系朋友,保持联系,并学会积极倾听,设定健康的界限。在职业发展方面,要敢于走出舒适区,尝试不同的工作和行业,并学会争取自己的权益。要养成良好的生活习惯,平衡工作与生活,并明确自己的价值观和身份认同。

Deep Dive

Chapters
Jemma defines the quarter-life crisis as a period of uncertainty and anxiety between the ages of 20 to 30, driven by modern phenomena like social media and economic instability. She discusses the historical context and how it differs from previous generations.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
中文

Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

Hello and welcome back to Deep Dive, the weekly podcast where every week it's my immense privilege to sit down with authors, academics, entrepreneurs and creators and other inspiring people

We talk about how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools we can learn from them to help build a life that we love. Today, I'm joined by Gemma Speck. Gemma is the podcast host of The Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast that talks through some of the big life challenges and changes of your 20s and what they mean for our psychology. The thing that also links to this quarter life crisis is this idea that

The decisions that we make now are going to be the sole reason for our happiness in the future. And that is not the case because your life is going to go a million different directions in a blink of an eye. Now, when I let our podcast community know that Gemma was coming on the pod and asked them to send in the challenges they're facing during their 20s, the thing that really stood out

is this feeling that as we transition into adulthood, it can feel like you're on a bit of a hamster wheel of trying to balance all these different aspects of your life. One of my good friends said this to me the other day. I have no idea where I'm going to be in like five years time or 10 years or when I'm 50. And if I continue to work in my nine to five, I would know. I would know that, you know, you move up between, you move up the ranks, your pay increases, you have a family, all those things, right? And what she said to me, and it really stuck with me was,

Now, before we get into this episode, I've got a very quick announcement, which is that I'm launching a Telegram community for the podcast. Now, I'm going to be honest. Initially, the reason for starting this podcast was quite a selfish one in that I wanted to learn from cool and interesting people and apply their insights to my own life. And it's just generally easier to hang out with people if you invite them onto your podcast, rather than if you just want to have a chat with them.

But over the last 18 months of running this podcast, it's grown ridiculously fast. And actually, we've had so many messages and YouTube comments and emails and Instagram DMs and stuff from people talking about how much value that you guys have gotten from the episodes as well. And so we're planning to change direction a little bit in that instead of me just treating these conversations as a personal therapy session with the guests, which we might still do a little bit of, I actually want to learn more about you guys who are listening to the podcast or watching the podcast and understand what are the things that you would like to see from the podcast.

And I really want to better understand what challenges you're going through, what struggles you're going through, so that we can then kind of tailor the guests and tailor the questions to that. So that's why we're starting up this completely free Telegram community. If you hit the link in the show notes or in the video description, wherever you're watching or listening to this, you'll be able to sign up completely for free. It's always going to be free. You will never have to pay.

pay a penny. The group is called the Deep Divers, which I think is kind of funny. And it's basically a group where I'll be posting some of the behind the scenes stuff from the podcast. But also as we get new guests coming on, I'll be asking in that group if you guys have any specific questions for the guest so that can help inform the direction of the interview. I'm also going to be posting a few polls and questionnaires and surveys in that group. So if you're interested in kind of sharing more about you and about your life,

then you can do it through that group. And then again, that'll just help us figure out how do we best make this podcast as value add for you guys as possible. And we're also gonna be using the Telegram group to give away some freebies. Like for example, often authors on the podcast will come and they'll gift us like 50 of their books, for example. I don't need 50 copies of an author's book, but it's the sort of thing that we can absolutely send to people around the world completely for free. Anyway, if that sounds good and you'd like to join the community, then do hit the link in the podcast show notes or in the video description, wherever you're seeing this or listening to this. And now let's get on with the episode.

Gemma, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing? I'm doing so well. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm very excited to chat with you today. Okay, so you are the expert on the psychology of your 20s. And one thing that often comes up when people talk about that is this idea of a quarter life crisis.

So what is a quarter-life crisis and how do we think about that term? Yeah. So the term quarter-life crisis, I think we need to think about it in the context of a mid-life crisis, right? That was the first idea that kind of came before the quarter-life crisis and

We think about it a lot in terms of a lot of men reach, you know, they reach middle age and they go and buy like a red convertible. They get like a young girlfriend. That's a very outdated idea. We're seeing that earlier and earlier, people are having these kinds of

crises or forks in the road where they have to make these massive decisions or they feel like they do. And what that creates is a sense of anxiety, a sense of dread, a sense of stress, and then sometimes a sense of needing to be spontaneous and to take a risk. So essentially the quarter life crisis occurs between the ages of around 20 to 30. And it involves someone

experiencing this sense of what am I doing with my life and where to next. So that's essentially the idea that we're talking about today. And this seems to be a relatively modern phenomenon. Like, what do you think is driving it so prevalent? Like,

I guess in the last sort of five to 10 years, I've been hearing about this, but I guess I feel like in the early 2000s, it probably wasn't really a thing. Yeah. That's actually such an interesting question because I've been thinking about this a lot as well. And I think if we take it back even further to like the 1950s, the 1960s, there was this very almost narrow blueprint of what our lives would look like.

We went to high school, we graduated, went to university, picked up our life partner, got a great job, nine to five, bought a house, had children, retirement death. And that's really depressing, right? But it was very narrow. And I

I think as we entered into the early 2000s, a few things happened. And the first was, of course, the accessibility of the internet and social media. And suddenly, not only did all these new career pathways become available, a lot more opportunities for entrepreneurship, but then we also have this element of being able to look at what everyone else was doing with their lives and compare to that.

So we see people now who are traveling the world, people like you and I who are doing this for a living. It's very unconventional, I would say. Or we see people who are working the traditional nine to fives. We have this very amazing spectrum of things that we can compare ourselves to.

And I think that kind of flips this switch where we're like, oh my goodness, what am I doing? And then to further that, we're also seeing things like a lot of environmental factors, right? Like

Or external factors like we have a recession coming up. We're not going to deny that. There's all this uncertainty around the climate, around our financial situation, around financial security. And what that creates is a lot of anxiety around, OK, I need to be future prepared. But then I also want to have fun because this is my 20s and everyone tells me this narrative of you should take risks, you should make mistakes.

So that's kind of this friction point where it's, I almost imagine it kind of like a tree and all throughout like our teens and our young years, it's going the same direction. And then suddenly we're like, oh, there's actually, I'm in charge now. I get to make these decisions. There are all these people that I can compare myself to. And there's all these new careers and all these new options. But then also this, these like these little thoughts in my brain and these emotions

external factors that are challenging that and it's kind of like the tree just goes like poof and we can't really see where everything's going and where that will take us sorry that was a bit of a ramble but i hope that makes it clear absolutely yeah so um one thing i've heard from a lot of people is and i think when we polled our um podcast community about this one thing that really came up was people feeling lost yeah

Yeah. And maybe I should have said that earlier, but that's essentially, I think all of those feelings wrapped up in one title and one word would be the feeling of being lost, right?

And I think that all comes down to this expectation that you need to be on the right path right now. You need to have everything figured out right now. And that is not the case. And I think in our 20s, we are bombarded by all of these life choices that we need to make. We were talking about some before, right? Should I move to a new country? Should I go and do my doctorate degree? Should I just quit my job and go traveling?

And all of those things paralyze us because we're overcome by this thing called the paradox of choice. And I also think this is something that's come up a lot more in the last like 20, 30 years. We're presented with so many options, which is a good thing, that it paralyzes us and we can't even make one. And there was this really interesting experiment they did on this, a little bit of a tangent, but...

These psychologists from Stanford, they went to the farmer's market and they set up a stall for jam. And on day one, they had 27 jams for sale. And on day two, they only had five. And we think, and they wanted to see how many, how many times people purchased the jam. And on the second day, when people only had five options, their sales were like up 300%.

And it shows us that we actually don't want as many choices as we think that we do. And when we do have more choices, we're less likely to act on those. And we feel lost because we're unsure of whether we're going to make the right decision. So that's another kind of psychological element behind this experience. I guess part of this feeling of feeling lost or directionless is this idea of needing to have sorted out

Like your ideal life? Yeah. I've heard a lot of people say that like, oh, I don't know what to do with my life.

And the implication there is that that is a really bad thing. Yeah. And sometimes even like when I talk to my mum, she will say that she'll look at my career and say that like I don't have any direction in my career or something like that. That's so funny. And I kind of be like, that is true, but it's also not necessarily a bad thing. But at the same time, the phrase you have no direction in your career is definitely a negative rather than, oh, you don't have any direction in career. Well done you. Yeah. Yeah. How do you...

Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? I really like this train of thought here because I think about this a lot. I think that a lack of direction comes off very negative, but it also means an abundance of opportunity.

And that's something that we need to realize. And one of my good friends said this to me the other day, because I recently started doing my own show full time. It was a massive risk for me. I took a massive step away from the financial security that my nine to five offered me. I did something a little bit against the grain. And the thing that really like struck me was because this path is unconventional, it's

I have no idea. Like podcasting hasn't really existed for that long, right? I have no idea where I'm going to be in like five years time or 10 years or when I'm 50. And if I continue to work in my nine to five, I would know. I would know that, you know, you move up between, you move up the ranks, your pay increases, you have a family, all those things, right?

And what she said to me, and it really stuck with me, was stop trying to imagine what your life looks like down to the detail and just imagine how you want your life to feel like on an average Monday afternoon. And I was like, wow, that is so profound. She was like, picture yourself at 50 and what are you doing on a Monday night?

And what does that entail? Because you're not going to be thinking about all the milestones that you hit. You're not going to be thinking about all the successful things that you've done. You're not going to be putting the pressure on yourself to meet all these certain goals. Instead, when you think about it that way, you just think about what kind of life do I want to be living? What emotions do I want to be feeling? And you acknowledge that there will be multiple paths to get there. And I think that that's very liberating, right? So I said to her, like, I would want to be living in...

a big city and I'd want to be having people over for dinner that I'd met, you know, in various places. Maybe I'd have a few people living with me who had picked up along the way, friends, family, random acquaintances. And I want to be able to come back and talk to my friends or talk to my partner about an amazing day that I had. And I want to feel loved and I want to feel happy.

And it doesn't matter what happened before that, as long as I'm in that spot. And I think that is a much better frame of mind to be in rather than to look at your life as a series of milestones that you need to hit or a series of decisions that you need to make and a correct way of going about your 20s and then also your broader life. Does that make sense? Oh my God, that's such a good way of thinking about it. What's yours? Can you picture what you want when you're 50? Monday night,

At 50? Yeah. I think mine is broadly similar in that the feelings that I would want is a feeling that I've spent the day

you know, still working. Uh, cause I, I enjoyed, I enjoy working, but feeling like the work was interesting. I had autonomy and independence. I could kind of do what I wanted. Maybe I learned something interesting. Maybe I shared something interesting because for me, teaching and sharing is like a big part of what brings me fulfillment. And then yeah, go home or stay home, uh, in the evening, have friends over for dinner, um, living in a place where it's very easy for friends to hang out and maybe have a family and kids and all that kind of stuff.

that's the sort of feeling that I would want. If I imagine people I know at 50 who have, who are like working in medicine, for example, and the feelings that that seems to invoke in them around like the day job, that feels like the opposite to what I would want. But if I imagine people who are authors, like I know a couple of authors in their 50s who can just sort of spend the day

going for a walk in the Yorkshire Dales and then writing about whatever takes their fancy because, you know, they've got an advance on their latest book deal or because they've made enough money through royalties to fund their life. And that seems like a good place to be. I love that. And I don't know what the Yorkshire is, but it sounds lovely. But you know what's really interesting is when you picture that, could you tell me like how much money you were making? No one ever thinks like,

In that thought exercise, we never sit there and think, oh, and my salary will be this and I'll be driving this car. And by the way, like I'm going to have all this money in savings and this is the kind of clothes I'm going to wear. And none of us think back to when you ask yourself that question,

It's, you don't think like, okay, well, what were the things that got me there? Or what were the mistakes that I needed to make? Or, and it's really easy to see that that life that you want

will still be possible if you start at 30. So your 20s are about being able to feel lost and be comfortable with that feeling and try out a couple of different things. It's all right to feel lost. Feeling lost also means having a lot of open doors linking back to that paradox of choice that we were talking about, right? Yeah, this reminds me, have you come across Tim Urban's blog post? He's got an amazing blog, Wait But Why. Yeah.

And there's a blog post in that that it's titled something like, life is a picture, but you live in a pixel. Whoa. And the way he describes it is like, you know, you imagine like Mark Zuckerberg and you think about the picture of his life, like, oh, he must be really happy. He's like rich and he's like powerful and stuff. And you think of it in those...

broad brushstrokes. But if, but like Mark Zuckerberg and everyone else is living in a single pixel, they wake up, they like have breakfast, go to the gym, do some work, come home, hang out with the kids, maybe see some friends. Like that is the day to day. Yeah. And it's very easy for us to imagine that happiness is found in the, in the, in the whole picture and like, like, oh, I'll be this successful and I'll be doing this kind of job. But actually every single day, day to day, we're going to be living in the pixels.

And so we shouldn't over-index on what the broader picture looks like, but actually try and think about what, you know, he says exactly this thing. What are the feelings we want to have in the pixel? Yeah, I love that. And it's so interesting because when we think about the pixel as well, I think it also links to this broader idea of,

almost the pressure to be successful as well and thinking that that's going to make us happy. And I think it's really worthwhile to have big goals and like having something that you're good at is amazing. But when you think about people like Mark Zuckerberg or whoever you want to have in mind, um,

They're not going through life thinking every second of their waking life, I'm so successful, I'm so successful, my life is perfect. Mark Zuckerberg, like you talk about that day and all I could think about was like, oh yeah, and then he probably got a parking fine or he burned his eggs in the morning or the person who makes them for him did. Or his kids were really screaming and he had an argument with his wife. I think that the thing that also links to this quarter-life crisis is this idea that

The decisions that we make now are going to be the sole reason for our happiness in the future and the sole determinant of our happiness, like the sole determinant of our happiness in the future.

And that is not the case because your life is going to go a million different directions in a blink of an eye. So many things are going to happen. And I think it's this huge myth that I don't know where it came from, that we need to know what we're doing in our 20s and the life we create in this decade is somehow going to contribute to

you know, our overall happiness in the rest of our lives. Like I think that you're allowed to treat your life as if it's a discrete moment. Every moment is a discrete moment. Every decade is a discrete decade. The decisions you make in your 20s, yes, some of them will bleed on if you decide to go to medical school, you're in debt. That's a lot of hours spent, right? But also you can change at any point. You can change your life. You can change what you want to be doing and what the meaning of happiness kind of means for you as well. Yeah.

So just on that note, it's like we talked earlier about there's almost these two different narratives that we have about our 20s. One narrative is it's your 20s. It's for exploration. Like, you know, it's all good. Yeah.

And the other narrative is actually your 20s is for building up some kind of structure and for getting ahead in your career and for starting to grow your income. Because by the time you're in your 30s and you settle down and start having kids, you'll be really glad that you actually grinded in your 20s, which unlocks more freedom and more autonomy and more like ability to spend time with your kids. Whereas if you screwed around in your 20s, now you're 30 and working in an entry level job and getting home at 8pm and unable to spend time with your kids because you haven't got enough money kind of stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. And both of those seem fairly compelling to me. I know it's hard, right? How do you think about this? So I think that you can have both. And I know it's really hard to say that, but I had a nine to five job up until very recently. I think that we have this very, because I get both, right? Because I get the idea of being like, I want to ensure my future is one that is secure and all of those things. But then I also want to have fun.

And it's such a self-limiting belief to think that it's an either, it's kind of black and white, right? Like either you choose this path or you choose the other path.

there are so many moments in the day that are yours to create and yours to make good and for you to create memories in those. And you can pursue financial security. You can pursue the beginnings of a very fruitful career while still allowing yourself time to take risks, still allowing yourself time to go and explore and to travel. And I think it's all about this balance and also consistency. So,

I'm going to give a personal anecdote here because I really can only speak to my experience, but I finished uni. I went straight into consulting, which I feel like a lot of people do, right? Consulting was this very broad stroke career idea. It was very structured. I was like, I can do this.

And for a while there, I was like, all right, this is the path that we've chosen. I'm going to start saving money. I want a house by the time I'm 27 so that I can set up for my future. And I did that for a while. But at the same time, I was doing my podcast, right, on the side. And I was using some of those extra hours that we get in a day to save.

feed into my creativity and to take a bit of a risks and do something that I enjoyed. And slowly but surely that actually begun to overtake the nine to five. So it's about achieving balance by allowing yourself time to pursue the other things. If you've decided that

your nine to five or your career as your main focus, where does your life fit in with that? And when I say life, I mean like the important things about life. I mean, where do your friends sit in? Where do your memories sit in? Where does your family sit in? Where does love sit in? Where does all those beautiful, joyful things fit into that equation? Or if you're someone who is like, I'm going to go and travel, I'm going to go and experience the world. I think it's, you got to understand that

At some point, there will be some responsibilities that are going to come up that might jeopardize that. You don't need to think about them now, but just have like a vague idea of what that is and maybe do some things in that time around you're traveling to set up for the future. Like go and get a diploma or get some, make a tangible investment in your future self. So maybe that's setting up some kind of, I don't know, I don't do investing. So I'm not going to give financial advice.

But maybe like set up a portfolio or something like that or invest in your education or invest in some kind of unique skill that you can bring to the table that when you decide maybe it's time to settle down, you have that to fall back on, right? I think it's this balance. You don't have to choose one or the other and that's it for the rest of your life. Mm-hmm.

How does that sit with you? Because I know that you were a doctor, right? Yeah. And then you decided to do something else. Yeah. Yeah, I think I broadly vibe with the idea of balance. And I've always rejected the kind of black or white thinking. Yeah. Like even at medical school, like when I started diving into productivity and

psychology of like achievement and motivation and success and stuff i would come across things that were like um lionizing discipline and hard work and work ethic and there's a quote from muhammad ali where he says something like um you know i hated every minute of training but i said don't quit suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion yeah i thought like that that doesn't seem like a particularly fun way to spend my university years like suffering for the

fancier number on the certificate at the end of it like it's gonna be a doctor at the end of it right and so the way i approached university and i guess continue to approach life is by thinking how can i work towards the things that i care about with like growth and you know after reading the four-hour workweek financial independence became very important to me how can i work towards those things that i think i value but how can i also enjoy every step of the journey along the way yeah because

Everyone I've ever spoken to who has achieved anything major has said that the achievement itself is hollow. And it's really just the journey that, as Miley Cyrus says, it's the climb. It's just all about the climb. And if the climb is fun, then the destination almost doesn't matter. It matters only insofar as it gives you a direction to head in. And as you hit milestones along the way, great. Now your identity changes.

If you start making, you know, 3K a month, then you become the sort of person that could push for five, push for 10, push for 50 or 100, like whatever those numbers might be as you work more and more towards them, your skills and your identity changes. So I'm just all about trying to enjoy the journey as much as possible while also working towards some sort of destination. I love that. And I think that's a really healthy way of thinking about things, right? And I always say this on my show, but life is going to go forward. Life is going to move on.

regardless of the decision that you make. But what's going to matter is whether you're happy with that decision or you're miserable, because those hours are still going to occur. Those days are still going to happen. But when you imagine yourself in those days, when you imagine yourself in those years, are you going to be happy? Are you actually going to be satisfied with your life? And if the answer is no, regardless of what decisions you're making, then

then you probably should rethink it. And I think that that's very much ties in with this idea of the journey might sometimes be hard, right? But you also need to realize and kind of adopt a bit of an existential outlook on life, which is that, you know, people have different religious beliefs, but from my perspective, you really do only get one life on this earth.

And when you're gone, that's it. And no one's going to remember you and your impact, whatever that may be, it's probably going to fade away. It will inevitably fade away. What matters is the quality of your life. And I think that especially relates to people who are receiving a lot of external pressure from family, from society, to family.

only be the amalgamation of their successes and only be like their personality their identity is only linked to what they've achieved and their actual enjoyment of life is kind of negligent and it's it doesn't matter so I think that's something we need to rethink right when you talk about that Muhammad Ali quote like that makes me shiver because I'm like maybe I'm just not disciplined but I would never do something like that if like the journey was awful but like

I got like a title at the end of it. And even then, like you said, sometimes that's just as hollow because once you've reached that goal, you kind of look around and think, what else do I have to show for this other than this one success, this one major dopamine hit, this one moment in my life? Yeah. One question I occasionally ask myself while journaling is that

If I were to die tomorrow, would I be reasonably happy with how I've spent the last month? Interesting. And if the answer to that is...

you know, is ever, ever leans towards not really, then I think, ah, okay, I need to change something. Yeah. Because that means that I'm not actually like, I think that's when, if I was suffering every day in training, working for something that I just died before the thing happened or worse, I achieved the thing and then got depressed at the end of it because I realized that it was all, it was all hollow. I feel like that's, that's a question that sort of cuts through that and it's,

encourages us to enjoy the journey as well alongside working towards whatever goal we're working towards yeah and i always say like that's actually really interesting and i'm going to start using that i was just thinking to myself whether that whether i am happy with the last month that i've i am actually i was like wow actually i think a couple months ago i would have probably said no and i'm really happy now but i also think that sometimes there are going to be like crunch periods and periods that you're going to have to work really hard just like

awful things are going to happen. You know, people pass away, things happen, sickness happens, breakups happen, suffering happens, but it's about whether the future that you're imagining for yourself is going to make up for that and going to be worth more than that. And I guess that's also a question to ask yourself. Also like consistency is key, right? You can avoid some of that massive periods of stress, you know,

the avoidable periods of stress, right? Like some things just happen and you can't avoid them, but the burnout, the hours at the library, the hours of overtime, sometimes you can avoid that by just being consistent and balancing both hard work and the good things in life by building really great habits that slowly accumulate and build into greater productivity, as you talk about a lot, and then also, yeah,

kind of an advantage in the sense that you've been doing this work and not just in these sprints but over the long over the long term so i also think that's good because then you don't have to feel like every action you take every moment you live needs to be striving towards this goal you know that you'll slowly improve and slowly work towards something rather than feeling the burden of doing it all in this moment does that make sense yeah absolutely so i guess like yeah we've

We've kind of talked about kind of defining the quarter-life crisis and all these emotions and feelings that it's very, very normal to feel these days when people are in their 20s. I even know some people feeling in their sort of late teens or they're like, oh, damn, I'm 16 and I really should have figured out my life by now. And it's kind of like... I was like that. Were you like that as a teenager? Not really. I didn't think about things too hard. I was like that. Oh, yeah? Oh, my God. I must have been such a little brat. Like, I must have been so annoying. But I was like, oh, my goodness. Yeah.

If I don't get into this university and if I don't get perfect grades and if I don't get a perfect ATAR, which for people in Australia will know this term, but it's like your final school grade. Like my life is going to be terrible. Okay. I was like that as well. I just didn't admit it to myself. And I was like, my life is going to be terrible. And it's so funny because one of my friends took like a completely different approach and she was like, I don't care. I want to have fun.

She didn't get a great final score and she is doing amazing things. She is like the happiest person I know. And I think it just goes to show that like, you can't plan out what your life is going to look like. And you don't need to be worried about it. Like, oh my God, if I could go back to 16 year old me, I would just like sit her down and just be like,

Go to a party and do a bit of underage drinking. Like you need to let loose here. Like go and run around. Like you need to chill out just a little bit. You don't need to rush. It's going to be all right. Yeah.

All right, we're just going to take a quick break from this episode to introduce our sponsor, which is very excitingly Huel. Now Huel is great because I've been a customer of Huel for the last six years. And also we've got an interview with Julian Hearn, who is the founder of Huel on this podcast. So you can check that out. It'll be on the YouTube channel and the Spotify page. And that was a fantastic masterclass in entrepreneurship. But anyway, we're talking about Huel because Huel is a fantastically complete meal. So if you're like me and you have a fairly busy life and you don't necessarily make the time to shop and

cook and prep and wash up like a healthy meal at home, which is obviously ideal, then the nice thing about Huel is that it's a great alternative to an unhealthy cereal or an unhealthy takeaway meal, for example. I particularly like the Huel Black Edition because this is high protein and lower carb. So for 400 calories, you get 40 grams of protein. And so this is absolutely fantastic for workout days where I'm trying to get my 160, 180 grams of protein in. And it's also great because the high protein helps me stay full for a lot longer.

I'll take my two scoops of the black addition powder. I like the banana addition and the salted caramel addition. I'll mix it up in my Nutribullet blender thing with water and maybe a little bit of milk sometimes. And then I'll just sip on that while I'm working at my desk. And that will get me the appropriate level of protein that I need. It'll get me a decent chunk of carbohydrates and fibers and fat, and also 26 different vitamins and minerals, which are generally very good.

for the body. It's also very reasonably priced. Like if you work it out, it comes out to one pound 68 per meal ish, which is about 400 calories. And that's way cheaper than an alternative would be if you were ordering takeout, for example. So if that sounds up your street and you would like a nutritionally complete and affordable and healthy option for some of your meals, then head over to huel.com/deepdive. And if you use that URL huel.com/deepdive, they will send you a free t-shirt and also a free shaker bottle thing with your first order. I still use my t-shirt,

It's great. It's nice, elastic-y. It fits reasonably well. It makes me look kind of hench. So you can check that out, heal.com forward slash deep dive. So thank you so much, Heal, for sponsoring this episode. This episode is very kindly brought to you by Trading212. Now, people ask me all the time for advice about investing because I've made a bunch of videos about it on the YouTube channel. And my advice for most people is generally invest in broad stock market index funds

which is exactly what you can do completely for free with Trading 212. It's a great app that lets you trade stocks and funds and ETFs and foreign exchange if you really want to. And one of the great things about the app is that if you're new to the world of investing, you can actually invest with fake money. You don't have to put real money in, they've got a practice mode where you invest fake money and then it actually tracks what the market is doing in real time. So you can see, had I invested,

a hundred pounds into this thing, what would my return have been? X weeks or X months further down the line. Once you've got some comfort with that, then it's super easy to deposit money into your Trading 212 account. You can use Apple Pay like I do initially, or you can use a direct bank transfer. And then once the money is in your Trading 212 account, then you can invest it in basically whatever you want. The other really cool feature about Trading 212 is their pies feature. So what you can do is you can follow people who've created investing pies. For example, someone might have a pie where, I don't know, 30% of it's Apple and 20% is Tesla and 10% is the S&P 500.

And you can follow people on the app and see what pies they've created. And you can see the performance of those pies. And then you can just copy and paste a particular pie into your own account. And so that means like, let's say you've got £100 to invest and you've put 50 of it into the S&P 500, but you want to be a little bit more experimental with the other £50. You can invest it into a pie where someone else who's generally a pro or someone in their bedroom who just loves the markets has already done all the homework for you. Also, very excitingly, there's a new feature that they've added to the app, which is a daily interest on your uninvested cash.

These interest rates may go up or down over time as the economic environment changes. But the cool thing is that you get paid out every single day if you're into that sort of thing. And so if you haven't yet started with investing and you want to give it a go, then you can download the app on the App Store. And if you use the coupon code Ali, A-L-I at the checkout, that will give you a totally free share worth up to £100. It's available on iPhone and Android, and you can check it out by typing in Trading212 into your respective App Store. So thank you so much, Trading212, for sponsoring this episode. I guess we're both kind of on the same page that...

really you know this question that we're trying to answer is like how do we navigate our 20s it's like it's it's really all about balance yeah and you don't want to completely screw up your career for the sake of chasing heroin or whatever yeah but also you don't want to completely screw up your your 20s by grinding all the hours at the investment bank and not actually having the time for anything else in your life um one thing i wanted to wanted to ask you about is um

that you think kind of based on your research and the people you've talked to, habits that are useful to develop in your 20s. So I guess when we're thinking about how to navigate our 20s, there's a few like broad categories. There is relationships, there is career, there's sort of work-life balance, that kind of stuff.

Um, there's, I guess, confidence, finding your true self, like understanding what, what you personally vibe with. And then I guess health is, is a fifth. So I wonder if we can just kind of blitz through these in turn, and I'd love to get your take on, on each of these five categories. So starting with relationships, um, what do you think people struggle with most in their twenties when it comes to relationships? Oh my goodness. Um, I'm going to take relationships to be relatively broad. I think we often think about romantic partners, but

I think that our friendships are the most important relationships that we have in our 20s, more so than any other decade. You know, our early childhood years and our teens, it's family. Most of us meet a partner in our 30s and 40s, then it becomes the partner, then it becomes the kids, right? But our 20s are like friendships forever.

But I think the thing that people struggle with is have I found the right people in my life and am I investing in the right people in my life? And part of that is also to do with loneliness, right? And feeling lonely and feeling like you don't have the right people around you. So I think like a massive habit is,

around that is it links to understanding that you, most people are never really truly alone and that being lonely and feeling alone, being alone and feeling lonely are very different things. So the thing that I do is that you need to make plans with your friends or almost create a schedule for yourself to spend quality uninterrupted time with the people that you care about at least two to three times a week.

and make that a non-negotiable. Not only is it going to really improve your mental health, but additionally, it's going to kind of circum, it's going to kind of circumnavigate or avoid that feeling that we are alone and that we're lonely. Cause I know that's something that people really, really struggle with. So that's like my first relationship habit.

Make time for your friends and make it tangible so that you can follow it. So two to three times a week, I want like two hours of your time devoted to something that feeds into your relationship needs. I'm glad you bring this up because when we asked in our podcast community, I said we were interviewing you and we had more responses to that than to anything else we've ever posted in the podcast community because there were loads of people like, oh my God, I'm struggling with all these things in my 20s.

And one of the main themes that really came up was this feeling of loneliness. Oh, yeah. It's massive. It's massive. And actually, there was a study that they did recently that showed people between the ages of 16 to 30, I think, or maybe it was 25 to 35. Basically, this period right now in our 20s.

is when people experience the greatest amounts of loneliness. And we typically think that it's around, you know, people who are elderly. And we have this very outdated idea of people sitting alone in their flats,

partners have died, kids have moved away and they're the lonely ones. But actually in our twenties, it's such a weird time where we do feel this overwhelming sense of A, feeling lost and B, feeling really disconnected. So I think that kind of links to my second habit that I want to talk about, which is feel comfortable being alone. And the way that you can build this habit is much like we devote time to our relationships and

You need to create time in your week to experience solitude.

So something I do, and this is a habit that I've had to build over time is to actually carve out like a day each week or a night each week where I do not talk to anyone, where I enjoy my own company, where I sit with myself in silence, or I feel like the, you know, from the urges, like put something on the TV or to like be on your phone. That's not solitude. That's not alone time. You're just distracting yourself.

find time to sit with yourself and be alone with your thoughts and engage in something that is helpful for understanding you. And that might be a hobby, that might be journaling. I'm a big proponent of journaling and because that's like, that's just you on the page, right? That's just you on the page talking about what you want to talk about and what's going on in your mind. And I think that is

Yeah.

We did an interview last season with Francesca Spector, who is the author of a book called Alonement, which is all about like actually taking alone time a bit more seriously than we do. Oh, I love that. And since doing that, I've kind of lost the habit a little bit. But for several weeks, I would occasionally do like solo dates with myself in a new restaurant. Oh, I love that.

Oh, I love that. And I just love going to restaurants and cinemas by myself. It's so nice. Yeah. I just take a little journal with me, you know, I'll just order whatever. It's like journal and feel good. It's just such great vibes to do like once a week. And I find it, if it's more often than that, it starts to get a bit much. Yeah. But I find that I take that scheduling time with friends thing like super seriously as well, where every Tuesday night is like friends dinner. Yeah.

Sunday mornings are brunch with my brother and my housemate and my brother's wife. And we invite friends over for there. So we have these two default slots in the calendar. And then inevitably, you know, like Monday and Thursday night is date night. And so Wednesdays and Fridays get like often by default filled up with creators who are in London for the week or things like that.

And so with the craziness of the calendar, I often don't make that time for alone time anymore. Because it always feels like, oh, actually, you know, this person's in town. And of course I should prioritize that. It feels selfish to do it, doesn't it? Yeah. And then eventually, like, I just...

After a few weeks of this I'll get to a point where I feel like I've just been non-stop and I haven't really taken the time to reflect on how the week's gone or how the month has gone. So I find these sort of periods of alone quite helpful. Yeah, self-reflection. It's a habit. You've got to build it as well. What sort of questions do you ask yourself when journaling? So I actually have this amazing journal that someone sent me from, oh my gosh, I'm going to say Scotland.

And each week it has these, each day actually it poses a little question. So the journal structure is what are my goals for tomorrow? What's list like 10 things that you're grateful for today? And that's another habit that we're going to talk about in a second. And then it will be like, what is one song that represents how you're feeling right now? Or what is one small thing in your life right now that you could change and you'd be happier for it?

Or what is one goal that if someone said you could have this right now, you would want? It's like those little things that make you really think about

make you really think about where you sit with yourself and your values and all of those things. And then if I just like free journal, I'll just write about whatever's on my mind. Normally how I'm feeling, like if I've had a rough day or, you know, I went through a breakup like a year ago and oh my goodness, reading back over that was also a lot, but it's

It's all about processing your own emotions and not needing other people to validate or reinforce how you feel because you are the most important relationship that you're ever going to have. And the others contribute to that. But if that relationship isn't steady, if you don't know yourself well enough, everything else is going to be formed on a rocky foundation. Yeah, I love that. One thing I enjoy doing is collecting journaling prompts. Oh, cool. Because a bunch of people I follow on Twitter just don't.

just enjoy journaling as well. And when I see a prompt, I'm like, oh, that's a great question. Because I think there's just something to the power of asking yourself and other people powerful questions. Because sometimes if I ask myself, what's on my mind? I'm just like, it's hard to really answer that properly. But if I ask myself something like,

what's one thing I did today that if I, or if I ask myself that if I repeated everything I did today, would I be closer to where I want to be or further away from where I want to be? And then that reminds me, huh, that's interesting. I actually didn't go to the gym today. And so if I repeated every single day, if I repeated today for the next year, I'd probably be in pretty bad shape. Cool.

I didn't call my mum or my grandma today. That's something I should change. And it just like prompts those sorts of things, which otherwise, if I just asked myself what's on my mind or open up a journal, those thoughts wouldn't have come out. Yeah. I really like that. Now, when we're in the school or university, friendship galore, like you live next to people, everything's all good. So fun. But then people graduate, they get jobs, friends move away, everyone gets busy. And it seems like even if

you're living in the same city like i'm now living in london like literally all of my friends with the exception of a handful of uh friends who are doctors who have moved to different parts of the world um all my friends are in london and yet it still feels like i see my school friends once every six months once a year because even though we're in london just sort of getting the calendars to line up and schedules to line up and all that kind of stuff plus the fact that it usually needs one person to take the initiative and if everyone's busy no one does that

Have you got any tips or best practices or habits for maintaining or building new friendships post-university? Yes. So I'm going to offer you two here. Perfect. The first one is around those pre-existing relationships. I truly believe that you should be the person to take initiative. If you want something, if you want to see these people, if those relationships are kind of falling apart, like,

Be the person who takes initiative. It can take a lot of energy, but I'm that person in my friendship groups and I'll do things like let's – one of them is I do a Sunday dinner. So every Sunday when I'm in town, I say to anyone who lives in Sydney who I know, come for dinner.

Just bring a bottle of wine, bring dessert, bring something and have a feed. And just let me know like four hours in advance if you're coming along, bring partners, bring anyone. And that Sunday dinner is actually such like is like the glue for some of my relationships. And not to say that like those people are only coming for the free food, but they're so busy that having a discreet day where I know that we're going to see each other is

actually is a lot easier for a lot of people to navigate with such busy lives. So that's actually a tip. I wouldn't say a habit, but a tip. If you can afford to do it, if you have the time, make the initiative, something like a Sunday dinner or like a Saturday brunch club is like a great kind of activity to bring people together. And the other habit that I think is really important is to be consistent in your hobbies and your activities if you're looking to make new friends. So

I think this applies to a lot of people in their 20s. I moved to a new city almost two years ago, a year and a half ago, and I left behind this whole community that I had. And I felt like I was starting from scratch. And the best thing that I did was invest time in consistently going to the same activities and the same hobbies week in, week out. And those were cycling classes and rock climbing.

When you go to the same location and do the same thing in the same building, it's likely that the same people are going to be there. And it's likely that you already have something in common that you can bond over. And similarity we know is the biggest, biggest determinant of friendship, similarity and proximity, and then reciprocity. So you kind of already have those two down, right? Similarity, you're doing an activity that you know the people in that room already like, and

And proximity, you're going to see these people week in, week out if they also are showing up consistently at the activities that you're doing. I made so many friends that way because you start to become familiar faces in each other's lives. You strike up a conversation. Next thing you know, are you coming next week? Yeah, I am. We should get a coffee beforehand. Boom. Friendship. Nice. That's a really big habit that I – and a habit but also a tip that I think is so valuable if you want to make new friends –

is to show up in the same places at the same time. And I'm sure that the people that you actually find yourself really being aligned to will be the people who are doing the same thing. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's such a good idea. Yeah. Yeah, I think like, I feel like one of the things about university and why people often end up making friends with the people that they live next to, it's just that proximity thing. Mm-hmm.

And it's less about quality time and more about quantity time. Oh, yeah. And so showing up to the same activity, like I started kickboxing lessons a few months ago, but I've really half-assed it and I haven't shown up to the group classes consistently. And therefore, there's no chance I'm going to make friends with anyone there. But if I just showed up for like a few weeks in a row, chances are I would have made friends with at least one person there. And like, you know, they go to the pub afterwards and you join them and then that's how friendships are formed. Whereas, oh, I'm too busy this week because work and I'm too busy that week because work and I'm too busy that week because I've got other plans.

Now it makes it a lot harder to make friends in that specific setting. Yeah. Well, the other one that's really good is sports games. So like sports games. Yeah.

That sounds so naive, but matches. But sports teams. So like I joined my futsal team, a futsal team. That was great. Wait, a what team? A futsal. It's like indoor soccer. Futsal. Yeah, it's indoor soccer in Australia. Oh, cool. Do you guys not have that here? I mean, we call it indoor football. Oh, football. Yeah, we don't have a proper name for it. Wait, so we don't have football in Australia. No, you call it soccer. Yeah, soccer. Indoor soccer. So that was great. And I also think another habit –

that it's also aligned to this idea of making friends that I think anyone needs to form, whether you are in your teens or your twenties or your thirties, that is active listening. Active listening is such an attractive quality in any friend, any partner, any workmate, any acquaintance. So you want to possess that as well. And I think that it's a skill that takes time. So practicing actually

Listening to what people are saying, acknowledging how their body is reacting to you, trying to, and it comes naturally over time. I think we're actually not inherently great listeners in this generation because we're

We're so bombarded by all this stimulus and all these things going on in our brain and in our environment that sometimes these kinds of conversations, the ones that we're having right now, it can be very hard to engage in them. So practice active listening, practice actually making eye contact with someone, trying to imagine what they're feeling, what they're thinking, and engage with what they're saying to you and reciprocate that.

I think that when we talk about relationships in our 20s, whatever that may be, being an active listener makes you an attractive person to have a relationship with, someone who's enjoyable to be around. And it just causes all of our relationships to flourish. Any tips for active listening? So I think that I realized that I wasn't a great active listener. And someone gave me this tip was to

really look at, okay, I'm going to act, well, you're not talking, but I'm going to pretend that I'm active listening to you right now is to really like look at someone and be, and really try and sit in their words and picture their words and imagine what they're saying. So instead of just being like, oh, this is just stuff that's coming into my ear, like really imagine that you're in their stories with them.

And that visualization will make you more engaged, but it will make you seem more engaged because you are.

The other thing to do, I think active listening is not just about what's coming out verbally. It's also about someone's body and really taking time to acknowledge, okay, we all kind of understand various body cues, actually recognize them and pick up on how's this person feeling and can I make them more comfortable or how am I acting right now? And is that making them uncomfortable or is it making them feel safe? So all

All of those two kind of things to understand and to get further into what someone else is telling you, I think is important. And it is just a skill, I think. Yeah. One thing I was researching for my book was, you know, what are the differences between energizing relationships and draining relationships? I love this concept. And one of the key things that came up in the studies that I was looking at was, you

the idea of energizing responses. So for example, if someone shares news, then there's sort of four different ways to respond to that. And the two main axes for that are, is it active or passive? And is it constructive or destructive?

So active constructive is where we kind of want to be for the most energizing relationships, which is, you know, you say you've just run a half marathon or whatever. And an active constructive response might be, oh, my God, that's incredible. Tell me more about how did it feel? And it's like I'm building on it and asking you to share more. That's so good. A passive constructive response would be, oh, that's cool. Yeah. Passive. I mean, it's constructive in that I haven't like torn you down for it. But it's not that energizing. It's sort of neutral at best.

A passive destructive response would be kind of, oh, cool, but let me tell you about the thing that I did, where it's like kind of the self-centered thing. And then an active destructive response is a total dick, where someone's like, well, that's not such a big deal. Like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, why would you think you should do that? You're going to ruin your knees. That would just be a completely unhelpful response. Yeah. And shifting more towards energizing interactions, active constructive responses to things.

There's like genuine evidence from like psychology studies that people who do that are seen as more energizing, more charismatic, more enjoyable to be around than people that respond in any of the other three ways. It's so powerful, isn't it? And it's the one that you said, it's active, no, passive, constructive. Is that it? Where someone's like, oh, that's cool. Isn't that the worst? I honestly think that that's worse than someone being like, oh, cool, but guess what I did? Like, and especially when you share news with

With friends or family. And I think those are the people that we love the most and we trust the most. And we want them to be like really in our corner. But then you have to remember that the reaction that you want from someone else, you need to give them as well. So...

Anytime someone gives you really great news, like you need, like you should be genuinely excited for them. If there's someone that you care about or someone that you like or someone that you know, I think that's so valuable. Just reciprocating good energy from the people that you want in your life is so powerful in our place. Yeah.

Yeah, the other tip that one of our team members actually shared with me was, you know, something he's found really helpful is just greeting someone very effusively. Because if like we hang out with a friend, like I think especially as dudes, I suspect it's like you kind of try to play it cool. Like you don't want to be too keen and you don't want to come across as like, you know, a bit too kind of,

emotionally expressive and so you're just like oh hey man how's it going whereas like if I'm like oh my god Godwin it's so good to see you it's been so long like how are you like just something like that makes the other person feel great makes you feel great starts the interaction off on the right foot like

And it's a very easy hack, just like greeting people more effusively than you think you should. Really helps to, again, make relationships more energizing. Yeah. And I think sometimes people think that that's inauthentic and I don't think that's the case. I think it's just about tapping into how you really feel about someone. And it's almost like adopting like a Labrador philosophy of like, oh my God, I'm so excited to see this person. And even if you don't, like, you know, you have those days where you're like, I'm so tired.

I'm so tired. And I really wanted to cancel these plans, but I haven't seen this person in six months. And a lot of it is about like faking it till you make it. If you like a really, if you act really excited to see someone, you will feel excited to see them and they'll feel excited to see you. And then it's like an amazing positive experience. So I really do believe in, in that advice that you just gave. Absolutely. Fake it till you make it. Fake it till you make it. How do you think about setting boundaries in relationships? Um,

Oh, I, I really believe in this. And I do think that it's become a bit of a therapy, like a therapized idea. Obviously it's based in therapy, but there's so much dialogue about this online rhetoric about boundary setting online. I think it's become a bit misconstrued, but our twenties are a really a great time to learn how to set healthy boundaries. And when I say healthy, I mean, respectful for yourself, but also respectful of others. Um,

Sometimes we think, okay, I need to set a boundary and that means that I'm just going to fully cut this person off and that's it. That's not healthy. That's not mature. I think a massive habit around setting boundaries is to do with really understanding what you want out of your relationships and

I think another part of that is really understanding how our people pleasing tendencies really feed into the relationships we have. So the habit that I think that we need to set, the thing that we need to get better at in this generation is A, understanding what we want from our relationships and the behavior that we won't accept and B, learning how to communicate that to people without being worried about hurting their feelings. And

And I don't think that there is one specific way that we can go about this. I think there are many ways that people arrive at this point and often it comes from really horrible experiences. Like have you had this experience where you haven't set a boundary until it's way too late? Yep. And then you're like, oh my God, I wish that I had done this sooner and I would have avoided so much pain. And someone said this to me the other day, but the most compassionate people have the best boundaries. Yeah.

And I just think that is so, so spot on. What's an example in your life where you've set a boundary and it's been helpful? I think a massive habit around that is getting used to being vulnerable and being honest with the people in your life. So I have this example from when I moved to Sydney. That really shook up a lot of my relationships. I went to university in Canberra, which is the capital of Australia, and I left all of my really good friends behind.

That put our relationship, long-distance friendships, that puts your relationship under a lot of strain.

And I had this, I wouldn't say problem. This is one of my closest friends. There's never a problem that can't be solved. There really isn't any problems. But I think this friction and this confusion around how much time I was going to be able to devote to coming back to see this person or coming back to, or calling them all the time or always replying to their messages, right? Like I had this new life that I was trying to invest in. I really respected her, but there was this friction occurring where I

I couldn't maintain both. I couldn't come back every weekend. I was trying to create a new life. So what I started trying to do was to build up honesty with her. And it was honesty in the sense of just being honest about what was going on in my life and then slowly building up to being honest about the state of our relationship. And honesty is itself a boundary, right? Because in honesty, we communicate what we want. So what I ended up doing was

When I wanted to set a boundary, I gave her an option.

So I would say, for example, it was her birthday actually recently. And I would say, okay, your birthday is on this weekend. You want me to come down for two nights? I actually can't do that because I've got a lot going on with work. Which night would you like me to choose? Which night would you like me to come down? And it's about being honest, yes, but also setting boundaries and being willing to compromise and

I think that's the healthiest version of a boundary that you can come to. You've got to remember that boundaries aren't just around making sure everything goes your way. Relationships in life are really complicated. You're going to have to compromise sometimes. But if you have good boundaries that are respectful and that you're willing to be somewhat flexible on,

I think that makes them a lot more robust. So we've talked a little bit about relationships. Let's talk about careers. Now we talked about that whole navigating that, like travel the world and find yourself versus grind and hustle in your twenties. And it's kind of said that it's important to get a bit of a, a little bit of a balance.

But I guess with that in mind, that balance is what we're trying to go for here. What are some habits that you think are helpful to develop in your 20s? Yeah, I think career is a big thing on our minds, right? Especially in our 20s, as we talked about throughout all of this. But the first habit I think that you need to kind of cultivate is stepping out of your comfort zone.

I think that there is a saying that I love when it comes to this, which is that you can either choose to be comfortable or you can choose to grow. And our twenties are an amazing point where we can, we can, we can grow and we have the opportunities and we have the freedom to kind of push the limits of what we think is possible. So yeah,

We don't know. Most of us wouldn't have kids in our early twenties. Most of us wouldn't have a mortgage. I would assume wouldn't be married. Those are like three massive responsibilities.

And once those come into play, it's a lot harder to take a risk in your career or step out of your comfort zone, big or small. So using that time, and especially in our early 20s, to capitalize on that opportunity is so valuable. And what that could look like is going back to university if there's something that's really captivated your attention, going and getting a diploma. I know that's easier said than done in Australia. It's

free, you get a loan from the government. So I'm sure there's people listening out there who don't have that financial opportunity and don't have the ability to do that. But

Also, stepping out of your comfort zone means applying for jobs that like are just a little bit above where you think you currently are. Asking for promotions, those kinds of things really, most of the time, if you apply for like, if you apply for a job that's a little bit above where you currently sit, you'll probably get it. And yeah, there'll be a couple of months where you're kind of learning the ropes, but that's going to really put you in good stead for the future.

maybe at that company, but also in your career as well. Yeah, on that note, there was a good stat. I think it was from the book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. Oh, it's like, love Sheryl Sandberg. So good. Where she said something like, when women look at a job description, they think they're suited if they match 100% of the requirements. When men look at a job description, they think they're suited if they match 60% of the requirements. And it's just such a big gap in like how...

seriously people take job descriptions and like job requirements and stuff but also how willing or unwilling certain people are to put themselves in that position of uncomfortableness or even just like backing themselves that like yeah i got this how hard can it be yeah i think that women are naturally taught to feel a little bit smaller when it comes to those things and um i think naturally obviously we've been in the workforce for a while but yeah there is still that expectation of like oh i don't want to be like

I don't want to be the reason why some stereotype is met. So I want to make sure that I really am really aligned to what is expected of me. That's not all women, but I would say like that example that Lean In gave, that book gave, is like super spot on. Any tips on that front? Like if there are women listening to this who are struggling with this career thing and seeing their male colleagues like be more bullish for promotions and stuff like that, and they're like,

I'm kind of doing a good job and no one's noticing my input. Yeah. Lean in. This is going to maybe come off a bit strange, but be rude. You can be rude. Ask for what you want. Because most of the time when women are rude, it comes off as normal. I think that women's like...

When we think of rude, we think that it's really like, I have so many friends who are like, oh, was that rude? Was what I said rude? And I'm like, absolutely not. It's just that I think as a gender, we can be quite people-pleasing. So as a tip, just ask for it. Be rude, push back. If someone keeps interrupting you,

Keep talking until they get the message. Don't let them cut you off. Say your piece. I think also put your hand up and if you think that you have something really valuable to share, you should share it. It's not rude. You're not being aggressive. You're just doing your job and you're just taking up the space that you deserve to take up. And I think when it comes to promotions,

You don't have to be like, oh, all my male colleagues are getting promoted and make it about gender if you don't want to. Sometimes that is true. Sometimes it's not. But if you have a reasonable case for being like, I should receive this promotion, that's your duty to do that. Like you should respect yourself enough to go into your manager's office or the HR office and make your case. It's not rude. You're not being aggressive. You're just self-assured and you know your worth. And I think that's something that

I think men and women kind of have to learn, especially younger people have to learn that no one's taking anything personally here. You've just got to do what's best for yourself. Yeah, I guess it's very easy to think that

Oh, if I do a good job, my manager is just going to notice. And of course, I'm going to get the promotion. Like, yeah, how do you counter that? Yeah, I don't think that's true. And I think that it kind of depends what company you're working in. I used to work at a fairly large company. There wasn't much oversight over that.

And I think sometimes companies do this thing where they have like, I don't know, you're a doctor, you kind of become a doctor. And is there a promote? Is there a level above that? Like, yeah, there's like very, very specific tick boxy things to go up the ladder. Exactly. And that was kind of what it was like in my old firm. And you've got to kind of realize that not everyone is watching your behavior every minute. So although you may think that you're doing really, really well, unless you actually put that image out there and

and say, okay, this is what I've been doing. I deserve a promotion. People are often not going to see it because there's this weird thing where people only tend to notice behavior when it's not good behavior, when it's negative or when you like mess up and all the good stuff kind of flies under the radar. So bring that to their attention. Um, and it's,

Like I said, it's not rude. It's just you're doing your job well. And it kind of links to my next tip that I'm going to give you. But if you're doing your job really well, if you're going above and beyond, you deserve to be paid more. I just think that's the case in most situations.

Yeah, we were talking about this earlier. So you said act your wage. What do you mean by that? This is my next big habit. This is a hot take because I think I disagree with this, but I'd love to hear what your view is. I'm so excited to talk about it because I do think it's a little bit controversial sometimes when I say this, but act your wage is basically, it's kind of like act your age. And I don't know where I saw it, but act your wage is like, if you're getting paid a certain amount,

you shouldn't be too flexible with the duties that you're doing above that because you're not getting paid for those. And especially when you, when I talk about things like overtime and a lot of in Australia, at least I think a lot of places you don't get paid for overtime and

Um, that's your time. That's your life. You should value that time as much as your employer values your time. So it's about realizing what am I actually getting paid for here? And how much am I willing to go over that and give more to this company? Because like at the end of the day, it's just a job. It's not your life. But what do you think? Cause I know you have a different, and I know there is different opinions here. Yeah. I agree that, um,

I think it depends on what you want. So I think I fully agree with the sentiment that your time is fundamentally the most valuable resource that you have and you shouldn't give that time away lightly. And similarly, I agree that basically every job is just a job at the end of the day and shouldn't come at the expense of your life. But I think I would say it's less act your wage and more act the wage you actually want.

Interesting.

everyone is just busy with everything and so no one really has the time to have fundamental oversight on whatever what everyone else is doing and so you know one thing that some of our team members do is at the end of every week they'll just create a little loom video recording of like here's the stuff i worked on this week here are the interesting salient insights and it's so easy for me to watch that at three times speed and think fuck that person's doing an amazing job yeah whereas the people that don't do that it's very like they do fantastic work but it's very easy for that work to fly under the radar because it's just not that visible to me because it's

Like I'm just not poking around on Notion pages and trying to see what everyone else is up to and all this kind of stuff. So there's easy ways of like showing the boss or the manager or something what you're doing because that just brings a top of mind. But I think also in startup land, and I've got a bunch of friends who are like sort of have their own sort of companies with like five to 25-ish employees. And it's really obvious who the star players are.

And the star players are the ones that you really fight hard to keep hold of. And if they wanted to leave and start their own things, those star players are the ones that you would be giving the most glowing recommendations and genuinely throwing all the clients their way if they want to become freelancers, et cetera, et cetera. And that doesn't come from acting your wage. It comes from acting way above your wage and delivering at higher than the rate to that the employer is paying you. And so there's kind of this balancing act of if you value getting ahead in that career,

and the environment is set up to recognize that then acting above your wage is actually a good strategy but if you're in a corporate environment like in medicine acting above your wage doesn't do anything it's actually actively unhelpful yeah because you just physically cannot progress because you have to take certain exams and you have to be at a certain stage to take the certain exam so actually acting above your wage in medicine and above above your station is just likely to get you sued uh because you know it's your senior who needs to take responsibility for the specific thing rather than you as the junior

But I think in a lot of smaller companies, that's less the case. Yeah, that's actually so interesting because you said something there that I want to grab and that is if the environment is right. I don't think that the environment is right in most cases. And I don't think that it will be recognized unless you explicitly point it out.

And so if you're willing to point it out, if you are willing to make those videos, as you were talking about and call attention to that, you're doing more. I think that's really valuable, but I also think that you can still do your job incredibly well and you can be incredibly productive and innovative and creative within the hours that you're getting paid for. And anything more than that, you kind of have to be happy with the fact that why have we said, I think we said this way before, um,

Is it worth it? Is the time you're giving up worth it for the payoff? And it's interesting when you talk about the startup space and the entrepreneurial space. It's like, oh, those people are going to be the ones that are going to get the glowing recommendations. And that's really great. They can make or break a career, right? But are they going to be getting paid more to do that? And I also think that that space is very –

very one of a kind compared to a lot of other, a lot of other industries and a lot of other business models and a lot of other industries and sectors. So in general, I would say that acting your wage is going to make you happier and allow you to actually have work-life balance better than acting above your wage. But I do really like what you were saying around, you

it for your career it can kind of make or break and if you're acting for act the wage that you want um if the conditions that you're working in allow for that to be recognized it's very interesting right absolutely um i think yeah there's a couple of points on that one is that um one of the piece of advice pieces of advice i've often heard from entrepreneurs is that if you want to become an

Join a small business instead. Join a small business that has fewer than 10 employees because that will train you in business in a way that joining a big corporate will never do. The consultants will say, of course, you'll learn about how to run a business when you join McKinsey, but like bullshit. You'll learn how to do PowerPoint slides and Excel models on BS that is not even relevant 50 years from now.

Whereas if you join a small company, even if it's like a local accounting firm that has like eight people in it, you have so much visibility of everything that goes on in that business. So that when you, if you do want to start your own business someday, that is a fantastic training ground.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. And it's interesting you gave the tax, the accounting example, because starting your own business, oh my God, I worked in consulting. I made so many PowerPoint slides. I did so much stuff like that. And the thing that was like so interesting is that I quit and I have no idea what anything about tax.

Or how to balance my money sheets or how to budget or like how to handle my finances when it comes to my business. And like, I think that's such a good point. Like if you, if you want to excel, start small and that means start small within a company, start small within the skills you're learning, but also start small within the kind of employer. And that kind of links to the next part that I want to talk about for a tip in your twenties, which is job development.

hunt and job hop as much as possible. I think that this is, as long as you leave on good terms with your previous employer, you need to be taking as many risks and looking into as many industries and as many possibilities as possible. Very rarely will the first thing we do straight out of the gate, straight out of uni, be the thing that makes us happy and be the thing that's going to fulfill us.

So the only way to sometimes realize that is to find something else to do. And it can be super random. So like I used to work, I've jumped hop so much. I was notorious for, I used to work in, um, on the phone for donations for like charities and

Then I was a data analyst and I did like data work. And then I worked for a long time in, not a long time, but for a while in child maltreatment and domestic violence. And then I went and did mental health policy and now I'm doing a podcast. And I learned so much from all those things that have contributed so beautifully to what I love and what I'm doing now. But it also allowed me to never feel like I was wasting time because I was always doing something that kept me engaged and

and that I could learn from. What do you think about that? Do you think it's better to invest in, stay at one place and really climb the ranks and learn as much as you can from there or to seek new opportunities as soon as you've kind of drained that previous source or you've learned what you need to learn? Yeah, I think I'm with you on this one. It feels kind of weird to say because I don't want my team to leave me because they're great. But it is broadly in an individual's better interests to job hop.

than it is to stay in one place. Yeah. Unless that one place is an absolute rocket ship and you know that there's like way more responsibility coming into the business and therefore like you actually do change your own role quite a lot. I think actually, yeah, I think it's less about changing jobs and more about changing roles. Yeah, that's a really good point. And often changing roles will mean changing jobs if it's a very rigid thing. Yeah. But within a startup changing roles, it's like if the startup is growing, there's always more demand for jobs to be done than there are people to do them.

Whereas if the company is declining, then there are always more people than there are jobs. And so that's a real, real problem. But I think, yeah, like the first six, six months to 12 months, probably at a job are the fastest learning curve. And then beyond that, you really plateau out unless you switch role at that point. And so if I were giving advice in the best interest of the team members that I don't want to leave me, I would say you should probably start looking for another job because

Because A, the best way to get a raise is by just finding another job. Oh, yeah. Leverage that. Leverage that. But also the best way to learn more skills is finding another job. Yeah. Where you get paid to learn rather than earn kind of vibe. Just do. And I love that part as well. My housemate, God bless him, Tom, he...

I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this. I'm sure he wouldn't mind. He does this a lot. Not a lot, but he really taught me this power of leveraging other job opportunities to get promotions.

And he is really good at it because he's very self-aware of like, all right, I've learned what I needed to learn at this level. I need more responsibility. And he's such a go-getter and he's so motivated. And sometimes the company he works at doesn't really allow him to grow. They're a very rigid company. So he'll go out and he's so talented and so good at his job that

that he'll be like, okay, I've got this offer from Qantas or I've got this offer from some big company and he'll leverage it and get a higher position. And so I think it's the same thing about what you said before. It's not about job hopping because that can be really stressful around your finances and all those things, but role hopping as well. Just take as many risks as possible. Just learn so much.

um and also I feel like the worst the worst feeling to have is to hit like 35 and be like oh fuck like I'm still doing the same thing I was doing at 22 and now I want to change but I feel like I've aged out of the time that I had to to switch to switch around and of course you can start at any age you can change at any age but in our 20s I think it's a lot easier to do that yeah no great yeah

I think equally, like there's one of our team members, Alison, has like the complete opposite take on this. So she spent three years working her way up an accounting firm and got the tax qualifications and all that stuff in Ireland and then decided to move to London for this job to work on our team. And her whole thing is, you know, for the first time in my life, I am not going to strive and I'm not going to grind. I'm in my 20s. I'm going to enjoy my 20s. I'm going to

you know, I'm doing this job because it's, it's fun and interesting and it's just a job, but I'm not trying to side hustle on the weekends. I'm not trying to side hustle in the evenings. I want to see every musical London has to offer. I want to hang out with my friends every day. I want to play rugby, like,

I want to live my best life. And in this phase of life, I don't want to strive. I love Alison. And Alison says that she's the happiest person she knows. So like, yeah, I think for some people that making the intentional and active decision to actually just be happy in a job that you that you enjoy enough to get on with and then, quote, enjoy the rest of your life outside of that.

is also a reasonable strategy that, and I think as long as you're not going to regret it when you're older, then you do you. My best friend, Erin, she has the same philosophy, which she's like, I'm actually, she's very similar to Alison. She's like, my career is actually not my life.

I do not live to work. Yeah. I just work to live and the things that, and all that work does is give me a paycheck so I can go and do my hobbies. She's also one of like, she is also one of the most well-balanced people that I know. And like, she really doesn't dream of labor and I love her for that. And yeah,

her and her partner go like Tasmania is this island off of Australia. It's like beautiful. And it's like half of it is like basically nature, like a national park. And they like go out and they do hikes and they go and volunteer and plant native bulbs and they save wildlife. And I'm like, you guys have the best life. And it all comes from that philosophy of

Act your wage, be balanced, but also don't be afraid to take some risks if it's going to lead to greater balance and happiness in what you want to do. Okay, so we kind of touched on the idea of work-life balance, but I wonder if you've got any specific habits that you would recommend for people in their 20s to navigate the idea of work-life balance or work-life integration or however you want to think about it. Yeah, I've got this really amazing activity kind of that I do, well, I did when I worked at 9 to 5.

that I think is really valuable. So when we think about our life, I like to think about it in terms of five buckets and, um,

Each day you need to do something in each of those categories. So one of them is physical. So exercise, moving your body. One of them is mental, looking after your mental well-being and taking care of yourself there. One part of that is practical as well. So practical meaning there's just some shit you need to get done. You got to do your laundry, you got to do your groceries, you got to do those things. Social. Social.

Um, so you need to feel fulfilled socially and to get that connection. And then the final one is, uh, spiritual or emotional or, um, to do with your hobbies. So in your day, I want you, if you want, if you really, you know, wanting to achieve work life balance, try and find a way to hit every, every one of these five categories. So physical walk to work.

um mental check in with yourself at the end of the day maybe take your medication that you've been prescribed do a very short five minute meditation when you get home from work um in terms of practical

Make yourself dinner. Just do something practical that's going to make your life better the next day. Make your bed, do some laundry, something that's going to just make your life a little bit easier. Social, call a friend. They don't have to be these big, massive time commitments. And then like a spiritual, mental one, maybe you're religious, you want to pray for a little while or read your Bible.

Or whatever. I'm not a very religious person. Whatever you want to do if you want to practice your religion. Or do something that feeds your soul. So one thing I do is I knit. So when I watch TV, I'm like, this feels like such...

Like such like it's squeezing my brain of like the good energies and like it just feels like such a zombie like activity. So I've taken to like knitting while I do it and it kind of hits all those five buckets and it allows you to achieve greater work life balance because in those hours that we.

have beyond work we we fill it in with the things that are going to keep us feeling healthy and keep us feeling like our life is more than just our jobs does that make sense does does that resonate with you yeah it really does i like this fight like i i love categorizing things into smaller numbers than is yeah right yeah because it's like if if you think if people are like oh what a world

what do I do with my life? Like life is such a big thing, but it just becomes so, so much more manageable if you split it into three or five or seven or nine. Yeah. I didn't, you know, fewer is better categories. And on one hand as well. Yeah.

Yeah, the way I think of it is basically work-health relationships. But then within health, there's body, mind, soul. And so I like to keep it simple. So it's just each day, I just need to take one action in work, health or relationships. So my health thing today was I went for a walk around Hyde Park. My relationships thing is I will call my grandma after this. Work thing is drawing diagrams for my book. And sometimes the health thing will be physical, like going for a walk. And sometimes it will be like,

mental slash spiritual, like practicing the guitar, which I've shoehorned into health because it doesn't neatly fit into work or relationships. But I think just any way of like splitting up life into a few different categories that's more manageable really helps like genuinely navigate that thing of work-life balance. Because if you have balance across work-health relationships or however you want to split it up, then you're doing pretty all right. Yeah. And the other thing I would say is take advantage of your Sundays. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Use your Sundays to reset and recharge. Don't fill them up with like a million social activities. If you want work-life balance, it's hard. I wish there was a four-day work week as we were talking about before, but alas, we do not have that. So I always take my Saturdays for socializing and activities and having fun and then my Sundays for a recharge just to get my life in order, do the laundry, do the laundry.

dust i've literally never dusted i don't know why it's gonna be like wow that's impressive vacuum there we go um and of course do your sunday dinners absolutely we're we're trialing a nine day fortnight in our team these days oh how's it going uh it's good our first official friday off was like last friday um i think about half the team actually ended up taking it off oh that's

Oh, that's good. The other half ended up like, including me, and ended up working. But it was quite nice because there were no meetings and it was just like a day to bash through everything, anything that needed doing. And it was quite relaxing and chill. So we're trialing this for the next six weeks. This was actually Alison's idea. She has a friend working at a startup that does these nine-day fortnights. And it's more manageable than a four-day week, which is quite a lot of faff. And also other people aren't on a four-day week. Yeah, exactly. And so like, actually, when you squeeze down the amount of day

days available but nine day fortnight like anything that can be done in 10 days can also be done in nine days realistically yeah and the things that can't are the thing the lowest priority things that shouldn't be done anyway so it forces in theory forces prioritization yeah so we're trying to get out and seeing and seeing how it works and over time we might have to become more draconian about people actually taking that friday off because

It's just like a deep work day then rather than a day off, which is fine. Yeah. At my old company, we had this thing called recharge days. So if you'd worked two weeks or more where you'd worked in an excess of 10 hours over time, you had to take a recharge day. So you had to take like a Friday or a Monday off. And that was so lovely. And I think that was really what like encouraged me to go into –

doing my own thing because I was like, I love this flexibility of having an extra day to myself. One thing I find really helpful for work-life balance is something called the ideal week method. So basically what this is, is that you go on Google calendar or whatever, you create a brand new calendar. So it's completely blank and you call it your ideal week calendar. And you just block out in the week long view,

what does your ideal week actually look like or your ideal practical week so let's say you want to wake up at seven o'clock you block wake up at seven like do morning routine let's say you're at work from nine till five you block that out for work and maybe you can subdivide that as like ideally depending on how much control over you have over your schedule this is when i'd like to do deep work this is when i'd like to check slack and email this is when i'd like to have meetings ideally obviously people have different levels of control over their own schedules and then the evenings again you block out like okay every tuesday let's say my ideal week every tuesday is uh

I cook dinner for friends and every Sunday dinner is also a dinner with friends. I'd say Thursday night is date night. Wednesday night is rock climbing. Monday night is my alonement time. Friday, I'll just leave blank for any spontaneous thing that comes up. And Saturdays I'll leave empty for, again, spontaneous things that come up. And I want to go to gym three times a week. So let's say that's Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You know, I've really been wanting to learn the guitar.

And like, okay, cool. I can squeeze that in on a Thursday. I really want to have singing lessons as well. But then you realize, actually, I actually physically don't have enough hours in my week anymore. You know what? What's more important, singing or guitar? Actually, yeah, let's stick to guitar. I can always put singing in later. And you then map this to your actual calendar and just try and follow this. And this is great because firstly, it gives you visibility over, like firstly, it gives you intentionality over what you actually want to spend your time on. But secondly, it gives you visibility over how much time you actually have.

Um, and it's very easy, I think, especially in our twenties. And I imagine increasingly when people have kids and overcommit, like everyone feels overcommitted, like they're doing too many things. But what I find is whenever I need to add, whenever I want to add a new habit or a new recurring thing to my life, like I was thinking just this morning, oh, you know, I've been watching some John Mayer videos. I'd love to get back into guitar lessons. I look at the ideal week and I'm like, well, where, where do I want to fit those in?

nowhere it's not a priority right now cool it'll just go in the bucket list for at some point further down the line yeah so it's just a nice way of like limiting commitments that are physically limited by the calendar the ideal week i really like that all right final thing to talk about in terms of navigating our 20s is this idea of confidence slash finding our true self um so what advice would you give to someone who's in their 20s who's maybe struggling with their identity or feels like they don't really know their quote true self whatever that means

The advice I would give is that the idea of the truth self

is a huge myth and it is going to change a million times. It's going to change at every turn. Everything that happens to you is going to change your concept of self. But what is the main core of that, if your true self doesn't exist, what does exist is your identity and your values. And I think that

The important thing to do in your 20s is to really get kind of a grasp on what those are. The other advice I would say is that it is so normal to not really know who you are in this decade. So the way that I like to explain it is that

Your identity up until the time when you're like in your late teens has literally just been a mashup of everything in your surroundings. It's been what your parents have told you to believe. It's been what people have said to you on the playground. It's been what your teachers have said. It's been the media that you've been consuming. The biggest ones are obviously parental and family influences. And then suddenly you fly the nest and you have to

understand and decide what parts of that identity do I actually not believe in and not agree with. I'm going to chuck those aside. What parts of that identity do I really believe in and I want to really cultivate that and engage with that. And then what are the new things that are going to come in that perhaps my parents don't accept. And I think a lot about this in terms of sexual identity and people discovering that after leaving conservative homes or your political affiliation or just

your passions and what really drives you, all those things need to come together. That is going to take time. You're basically relearning who you are in this new context. And that idea of the true self is such an ambiguous, fleeting feeling. I feel like very rarely do we ever feel like our true selves because I don't actually think that there is one version of that that exists. Nice.

I agree. You mentioned one thing that might not change so much is your values. Yeah. What do you mean by that? So your values are essentially, I would call them like the core pillars of your identity and yourself. So we all know what values are. They're the things that we prioritize and the things that are important to us. And I think that we don't think about them enough in any stage of life. Okay.

So there's this activity that I think is really valuable for people to do in their 20s. And it's called, it has a few names, but basically it's like a value dictionary or kind of like a value tapestry where you really sit down. It literally only takes 20 minutes.

And just have a real deep think about what your values are. And what I want you to do is go to Google or go online and Google like the 200 top values in the world. What are the 200 most common values? And print them out, have them on your computer, choose 20 that really resonate with you. And from that 20, get rid of 10. What are the top 10? And from that 10, pick out your top five.

And those five values can be things like independence. They can be things like family or honesty, creativity, intelligence, curiosity, anything that you want, really. But when we take this approach to really understand

look at these values and think of them in the context of how we want to be, but also how we are. It's a, it's, it makes things a lot clearer about what we want from our future and how we want to act and who we want to be. So I really recommend that to a lot of people who are in this decade as I am. I did this exercise recently and it was really powerful and seeing and being like, am I actually living my life the way that my values would tell me to? And yeah,

If that's not the case, is it the fact that I'm lying to myself about what my values actually are or am I just not aligning and living with them? Nice. Yeah, I've tried similar exercises quite often.

I always like it's like because when you get these list of like 200 values, like basically all of them seem reasonable. Yeah. Because no one's going to have the value of like murder or like destruction. Like that tends not to be on this list. It tends to be honesty, integrity, like friendship, community, togetherness, autonomy, independence, freedom and all these like things. Compassion, kindness, like where you're like, damn, I've got to pick just 10. Yeah.

But I find that really narrowing it down is really just about fully being honest with yourself. And it's less about, you know, I aspire to value compassion kind of thing. And more about, to be honest, I probably value independence more than I value compassion. And just like those difficult choices where you're honest with yourself. For me, the ones that always come to the top of the list are the freedom, autonomy, independence related ones. And so that, you know, doing those exercises, I discovered these during lockdown initially. Yeah.

That really helped me decide what to do with my career because I was like, well, however I cut it, whichever find your values exercise I've done on the internet, it's always landed on independence, autonomy, freedom being like the absolute number one.

So cool. Medicine is probably not necessarily the career for me because it's a little bit misaligned with that specific value. And things like togetherness or community is often fairly high up on the list. And I feel like, yeah, you know, when I was at university, I loved having people around. I love having an open door policy. People are welcome whenever. It's like I like creating that sense of community and togetherness.

Whereas for other friends of mine, their value might be, you know, not related to that or where they value their own private space, which I don't really. So things like that, you kind of just realize by doing these exercises that what is actually important and forcing yourself to narrow it down to just three or five, then becomes a lens through which, you know, is one way to make decisions. Yeah. I love that independence showed up for you. That's one of mine as well. Oh, nice. Yeah.

Any other strategies or tools that you'd recommend for people to get a sense of who they truly are or what they really value? The one that I think deserves a mention here when it comes to living authentically and being your most authentic self is to get comfortable with disappointing people and get comfortable with the idea that not everyone is going to like you.

That links a lot to what we were talking about in terms of career. But I honestly think that that advice, that habit, that tip applies to every single area that we've talked about today. You kind of have to realize that at the end of the day, this is really your life. Like you don't owe anything to anyone.

If you're like a parent, you obviously are being like, you know, there are some exceptions. But in terms of the way that you live your life and who you choose to be, not everyone is going to accept that. And you have to be OK with that because you have to realize that your time is not their time. And regardless of whether everyone likes you or not.

your life, like I said, life is going to go on. Do you want to be happy or do you want to be miserable? Because those people are not going to be happy. They've already made their choice. You can make a different one and decide to be an authentic individual. And also authenticity is so attractive and

It just makes people so attracted to you and you will find more like-minded, beautiful people who will build you up rather than try and tear you down. Nice. I love it. I think that's a great place to round this off. Any final pieces of wisdom for anyone who's navigating this quarter-life struggle in their 20s? I think my final piece of wisdom is just

head down, you'll get through it. It's super common. And I think part of the experience can be isolating, but the fact that you and I are talking about it today shows how common it actually is. So you're not alone in that experience. Brilliant. Thank you so much.

No worries. All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode.

So thanks for watching. Do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.