Manosphere: The Importance of Your Twenties (Part 1)

1. Dr Meg Jay warns that 30 is not the new 20:

Our 20s are life’s developmental sweet spot. They matter. A lot…

Consider this: About two-thirds of lifetime wage growth happens during the first 10 years of a career, with the biggest gains coming from job-hopping or earning advanced degrees before marriage, family and mortgages take hold. Even the underemployed can take heart in knowing that wage losses disappear by about age 30, if they move through post-college jobs and degrees strategically.

Personality changes for the better during our 20s more than at any other time in life, if we engage with adult roles and, as researchers say, “get along and get ahead.” Good jobs may seem elusive, but even some workplace success — even just goal-setting — in our 20s is associated with greater confidence and well-being in our 20s and 30s.

More than half of Americans are married, or are dating or living with their future partner, by age 30. Along the way, committed relationships in our 20s make us more secure and responsible — and less depressed and anxious — whether these relationships last or not.

Female fertility peaks at about age 28. And the brain caps off its last growth spurt in our 20s, making these years our best chance to learn to manage emotions and wire ourselves to be the adults we want to be.

Far from being an irrelevant in-between time, the 20s are a crucial period that comes only once.

2. Krauser writes a brilliant post about developing yourself in your twenties:

I have written how I consider men’s lives to follow three fundamental phases: foundations, accumulation and maintainance. Don’t overthink this it’s just a convenient mental map to be deployed where useful. So let’s consider the second stage which typically begins upon graduating university or beginning an apprenticeship.

Goal: Max out your manly talents of intelligence, creativity, wealth-generation, physical competence

The accumulation phase could equally be described as “setting yourself up for life” or “becoming the best man you can be”. It’ll typically take you the whole of your twenties…

First off you have to carefully marshall your intellectual, physical and emotional resources…

1. Choices

What does that mean to you, dear reader? First off you have to carefully marshall your intellectual, physical and emotional resources. Make careful decisions on what skills you seek to acquire.

• The payoff for any given skill is wildly disproportionate to its difficulty
• If something is enjoyable, its probably not lucrative. Expect to make tradeoffs
• Scaleable skillsets are a huge gamble…

2. Excellence

Once you’ve started on your career your main goal is to become really good at it. Shine your star as bright as you can. Take real passion in excellence for its own sake…

3. Intelligence

Your twenties are your peak brain-forming years. You can google yourself all the studies showing how artists are most productive in their twenties, how creative thinking is maxed out in those years. By spending your twenties feeding your mind you will become more intelligent… You must find challenge in your twenties. Work is a great place for it but also consider your leisure time. Learn expert systems…

3. Athol Kay looks back on when he was in his twenties:

As you get older, you change. In some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse. Typically it’s a physical decline vs. a mental and resources gain.

I actually look back at myself in an odd sort of awe. How did I not know I was as good looking as I was? Oh I wasn’t like crazy hot guy, but certainly far better than I thought I was. How was I not simply asking girls out frequently? Holy crap that would have been so easy to have gotten not just a few more dates, but a ton of dates and all that could have come with that. Once you learn Game you’re always going to look back into the past and realize how often you missed an opportunity with a girl. Maybe not just any girl either… you totally messed up with the girl. The one you really wanted.

You realize you could’ve. You realize you should’ve.

But that’s all gone and here you are now. Older. Slower. It’s not as easy as it was. Everything comes with extra little price in pain or energy compared to how it was twenty years ago. What you have though, is a lot more experience, skill and stuff piled up. Young guys have potential for future power, that’s what attracts women to them, older guys are judged on whether or not theyactually achieved power. Whether or not that’s personal power, social power, physical power, financial power or whatever power doesn’t matter. It’s potential power vs actual power. That’s why as an older guy writing about Game I’ve increasingly started talking about structural attraction issues, rather than how to order drinks in the bar so girls think you’re the hot catch of the evening.

Older guys don’t have any time to create the impression of power, we actually have to have it. That’s why younger guys can turn their dating life around as fast as it takes to hit the gym for a couple months and buy some proper clothes, and older guys can have a 1-2 year program of development ahead of them.

4. Don’t cohabitate. If you want to settle down, marry.

5. Experience rapid growth and development.

6. Don’t use or stop using porn. The longer you take to reboot, the harder it will be.

7. Go after what you want.