The Rocket Years: How Your Twenties Launch the Rest of Your Life

We tend to think of our twenties as a playground for life: A time for low-consequence experimentation and delaying big decisions. But the truth is that while you’re muddling through those years—exploring new cities, dating the wrong people, hopping between jobs—a small shift in your flight path can mean the difference between landing on Mars or Saturn. As the data shows, the choices we make (or put off) during this critical decade about our career, marriage, health, friends, even downtime have the greatest impact on how our lives play out. For example, did you know that people who marry between the ages of 28 and 32 have the lowest risk of divorce? And that the average 25-year-old has 20 close friends, but this will shrink to 8 after age 40? And that most of us don’t acquire new hobbies after we hit our thirties.