"Our twenties can be like living beyond time. When we graduate from school, we leave behind the only lives we have ever known, ones that have been ne… - Meg Jay

Sometimes Danielle fantasized about “waiting tables or working in some easy job where [she] didn’t have to think or didn’t make mistakes.” But twentysomethings who hide out in underemployment, especially those who are hiding out because of a lack of confidence, are not serving themselves. For work success to lead to confidence, the job has to be challenging and it must require effort. It has to be done without too much help. And it cannot go well every single day. A long run of easy successes creates a sort of fragile confidence, the kind that is shattered when the first failure comes along. A more resilient confidence comes from succeeding — and from surviving some failures.

Forget about having an identity crisis and get some identity capital. … Do something that adds value to who you are. Do something that's an investment in who you might want to be next.

quickly. Afterward, things are not so easy. The twenties are that critical period of adulthood. These are the years when it will be easiest to start the lives we want. And no matter what we do, the twenties are an inflection point — the great reorganization — a