Getting a job, moving away from your parents, getting married, and having kids-for most of history, with the exception of the 1950s and '60s, people did not become adults in any kind of predictable way.And yet these are still the venerated markers of adulthood today, and when people take too long to acquire them, or eschew them altogether, it becomes a reason to lament that no one is a grown-up.

No One Is Growing Up

Social constructs have real consequences: they determine who is legally responsible for their actions and who is not, what roles people are allowed to assume in society, how people view each other, and how they view themselves.There is either no answer, or a variety of complex and multifaceted answers.One way to measure adulthood might be the maturity of the body. Surely there should be a point at which you stop physically developing when you are officially an "adult" organism?

The Social Constructs On Adulthood

<ul><li>At about age 22 or 23, the brain is pretty much done developing, according to Steinberg, who studies adolescence and brain development.</li><li>Plenty of brain functions are mature before this point, though. The brain's executive functions-logical reasoning, planning, and other high-order thinking-are at "adult levels of maturity by age 16 or so."</li><li>A 16-year-old, on average, should do just as well on a logic test as someone older.</li></ul>

Brain Development

<ul><li>The answer to "when do you become an adult" has to do with when you finally have acceptance of yourself.</li><li>Patients who seem secure through any life struggles are the women who seem like adults.</li><li>They still have a young soul but roll with all the changes, accepting the changes.</li></ul>

Becoming An Adult

<ul><li>Emerging adulthood is a vague, transitory time between adolescence and true adulthood.</li><li>It's so vague that sometimes 25 is the upper boundary, and sometimes 29.</li><li>While adolescence clearly ends at 18, when people typically leave high school and their parents' homes, and are legally recognized as adults, one leaves emerging adulthood... whenever one is ready.</li></ul>

Emerging Adulthood

<ul><li>The late teen years and early 20s are probably the best time to explore.</li><li>Anthony Burrow, an assistant professor of human development at Cornell University, studies the question of whether young adults feel like they have a purpose in life.</li><li>In a study, commitment to a purpose was associated with higher life satisfaction and positive feelings.</li><li>Other research has identified exploration as a step on the path to forming an identity, and people who've committed to an identity are more likely to see themselves as adults</li></ul>

Time To Explore

Personal industry, devotion to something bigger than oneself, part of a historical process, and peers who grow with you all play roles.

<ul><li>Before World War II, it was unusual for the young to achieve the markers of full adult status before their mid- or late twenties.</li><li>The golden age of easy adulthood did not last long.</li><li>Starting in the 1960s, the marriage age began to rise again and secondary education became more and more necessary for a middle-class income.</li><li>Unfortunately, not all of society has caught up, and older generations may not recognize the young as adults without these markers.</li><li>Many young people still want to establish careers, get married, to have kids. but they just don't see them as the defining traits of adulthood.</li></ul>

Adulthood After the War

<ul><li>There's no one path to adulthood</li><li>Circumstances sometimes thrust people into adult roles before they're ready</li><li>Adulthood's responsibilities can definitely be thrust upon you, and if the world is treating someone as an adult before they feel like one, that can be challenging</li><li>A study done by Rachel Sumner found no difference in overall levels of purpose between adults who went to college and adults who didn't, which suggests that a particular privilege isn't necessary for someone to find purpose.</li></ul>

No One Path To Adulthood

In an age when the line between childhood and adulthood is blurrier than ever, what is it that makes people grown up?

Stashed ideas

When Do You Become an Adult?

An elimination diet program created by a husband-and-wife team, Whole30 encourages people to give up alcohol, dairy, grains, legumes, and sugar for exactly 30 days.Toward the end of the 30 days, you're supposed to slowly reintroduce these foods into your diet, to identify which ones work for you.

The Popularity Of 30 Day Challenges: The Whole30 Fad

<ul><li>Whole30 and other challenges are essentially hashtag-optimized versions of New Year's resolutions.</li><li>These were popularized by "Try something new for 30 days," a 2011 TED talk by Matt Cutts.</li><li>Research shows that resolutions are largely ineffective when it comes to establishing long-term behaviour.</li><li>Only 8 percent of people achieve their resolutions in the long term.</li></ul>

The Effectiveness Of Whole 30

<ul><li>The idea is that doing something consistently for 30 days will help you establish a healthier attitude toward indulgences (food, alcohol, Paris Hilton memes on Instagram, etc.) in the long run.</li><li>Drynuary, a month-long period of sobriety that's probably the most popular 30-day challenge on social media, is another example of this.</li><li>Another number that's frequently tossed around in behavioural psychology circles is 21 days, or three weeks, which stemmed from plastic surgeon Dr. Maxwell Maltz's observations of how long it took for his patients to become accustomed to their new faces.</li></ul>

The Reasoning Behind 30 Days

<ul><li>Generally speaking, short-term weight loss and dietary challenges can be effective to help teach better, sustainable eating habits.</li><li>If they are too restrictive, they can also backfire</li><li>Short-term diets do little to help keep weight off in the long run, and can even serve to slow down your metabolism.</li></ul>

The Effectiveness Of 30 Day Challenges

From Whole30 to Dry January: why 30-day challenges are so popular

Many people might want a hobby but don't feel they have enough time. However, we may have more time than we think. According to the 2019 Bureau of Labor and Statistics Survey, Americans have about five hours of leisure time per day and use about half those hours for screentime. The problem with finding a hobby is that we feel our "free" time must involve the pursuit of self-improvement or money. However, making time for non-essential activities is essential as leisure can improve mental and physical wellbeing.

Finding a hobby

When starting a hobby, people often make the mistake of choosing something aspirational rather than something they'll actually enjoy. It's important to be realistic. Find something you truly enjoy. If you want to try something totally new, start small to keep it manageable. Enlist friends in the effort to break down the barriers to entry.

Keep realistic expectations

Earning a part-time income may overlap with our interests, but it’s important to develop hobbies with no financial motives attached. The pleasure of engaging in a hobby should be enough without the added stress of deadlines, demands, and accommodation. A hobby disconnected from your career will likely still improve your work life. Leisure time not only helps refuel us for a busy work life but engaging in deep focus helps us to become better at focusing.

A  hobby is not a side hustle

Creating a website or learning to code may seem like an attractive choice for a hobby, but if you find yourself losing hours to your devices, pick an activity that's not screen-based. Screen time has been linked to depression and anxiety. Phones interfere with our ability to focus. Engaging in active or outdoor hobbies like bird watching, ballroom dancing, or hiking can improve engagement in a hobby.

Escape the glow of the screen

Whether you’re moving to a new city, moving into a new apartment, or meeting new coworkers, the change can be a good time to spark a change in your routine. Ask yourself if you should work at the cafe down the street or in your apartment? When do you exercise, and where? How often do you go out with friends?

Changing your location or routine is a good time to develop a new hobby

Step one: Ignore insidious competition culture.

How to have a true hobby, not a side hustle

<ul><li>Savor the feeling of the air on your skin, the scent on the breeze, the reminder that not everything needs to be taken seriously.</li><li>Consider what goes into the piece of fresh produce you hold in your hand—sun, rain, wind, pollination, cultivation, selection, harvest. </li><li>Feel the earth beneath you, the way night air feels, the silence around you. </li><li>Tune in to the scents, sights, and sounds of a simple dog walk, and let yourself feel the excitement your furry friend is bringing to this daily experience.</li><li>Connect with love. Drop into a moment of connection with a friend, and with your surroundings. </li></ul>

Ways to Find Joy in the Mundane Moments of Life

Here are five ways to capture the beauty and connection available in even the most basic daily experiences.

Finding Joy in the Mundane Moments of Life - Mindful

<ul><li>One thing at a time: When you walk, just walk, and appreciate each step. </li><li>Put space between things: In between meetings and tasks, take a breath. </li><li>Clean as you go: Put away your clothes when you take them off. Wash your dishes after you eat or cook. </li><li>Do less: Reduce how much you’re trying to get done during the day. </li><li>Prioritize rest, so that you’re not constantly exhausted. </li><li>Eat whole foods. Eat slowly</li><li>Move often: Every 30-45 minutes, get up and move. </li><li>Have a cushion: Build a buffer into your life wherever you yourself living on the edge.</li><li>When you’re overwhelmed, take small steps.</li></ul>

Things That Make Life Easier

<ul><li>We read things into what people say and do and create extra meaning out of things. </li><li>We have a lot of things to do today, big and small, and it feels overwhelming, and we get stuck on doing anything because we have in mind how hard it’s going to be to tackle all of it, and how we might not be able to stay above water. When in fact, the simplest thing would be to pick one thing and get started.</li><li>We get anxious about an upcoming event, worried about what people will think about us. The simple thing would be to take some care to do preparation without overdoing it, and then show up and be ourselves.</li></ul>

We Overcomplicate Things

How to Put Life on Easy Mode

We don’t do unhelpful things with the intent to harm ourselves, for the most part. We do them because the unhelpful habit is meeting some need.<ul><li>The need might be something like:</li><li>I’m bored and want a dopamine hit</li><li>I feel bad about myself and want to do something pleasurable to take my mind off it</li><li>I feel awkward in social situations and need a distraction</li><li>I’m stressed and need a coping mechanism</li></ul>But if you just stop doing the compulsive habit, you have removed your coping mechanism without finding another way to meet your need.

Why We Have Compulsive Habits

We’re usually pretty judgmental about our compulsive habits. It’s a part of ourselves that we hate or a confirmation that we’re somehow bad or inadequate.This kind of harsh judgment is a defense mechanism meant to help us get better. Beating ourselves up only makes us crave our compulsive coping mechanisms because now we feel bad about ourselves and are stressed out. Compassion is a healthy coping mechanism for stress, give it a try.

Remove Judgment, Add Compassion

<ul><li>Ask yourself if you really want to commit yourself fully to changing a habit. Sleep on it, and ask yourself again, before you half commit.It will come with difficulty, falling on your face, and a new way of seeing yourself. Is this something you want?</li><li>If the answer is absolute yes … then commit yourself fully. </li><li>Tell others about your commitment and ask them to hold you accountable. Promise to report to them every day or every week. Be as committed to this as you’ve been to anything in your life — your marriage, your kids, your job, your best friend.</li></ul>

Persistent, Patient Commitment

Change your environment, so that you aren’t likely to do the old habit. Ask people who live and work with you to hold you accountable. Making it hard to do the old compulsive habit is called “Creating a Moat.” Don’t let your future self, at a moment of weakness, have an easy time of falling back into the old habit. Make it easier to stick to the new habit, even if it’s not especially easy.

Change Your Environment

When we seek to change a habit that we think is embarrassing, we usually try to do it in private, so no one can see our shame. This is a mistake. Doing it alone is very, very hard, and it also reinforces the idea that we are doing something shameful, and that we should be doing this on our own. It’s stronger to do it with the help of others. Using other people’s support is just a more robust approach.

Don’t Do It Alone

When the compulsion to do the old habit happens, if you’re not aware of the urge, you’re likely to obey it without questioning it. It’s an imperative, without awareness.The key is to develop awareness of the urge so that you can notice it and not think of it as an imperative, but rather just a sensation in the body, and perhaps a thought (“Just one time is OK!”). With this kind of awareness, you now have a choice, and can question whether this is what you really want.

Practice Awareness & the Powerful Pause

Curbing a Compulsive Habit: A Primer

You want to eat healthier but instead, reach for junk food. You want your kids to fold and put away their clothes, but you don't want to remind them constantly. You'd like your spouse to remember to do the dishes, but you don't want to nag. There's a way to get people to do more things you need and want to do without nagging. It's called nudge theory.

Encourage people with the nudge theory

Nudge theory is the practice of shaping one’s environment to encourage people to make a specific decision. Nudging uses small, subtle reminders and indirect suggestions to influence behaviour instead of obvious incentives or strict enforcement. A nudge is only effective if the person being nudged does not perceive any restriction in their options. They should feel in control of the decisions they make.

The nudge theory

<ul><li>Reminders at the right time. Telling your partner in the morning to get something from the store in the afternoon will not be very effective, but sending them a text just as they leave work will.</li><li>Planning prompts: getting people to make concrete when, where, and how you'll do something will increase follow through. A parent can ask their child "what time will you do your homework?" and "how will you remind yourself?"</li><li>Discourage certain behaviours by putting small barriers between yourself and the behaviour. Putting your phone in a different room can prevent checking it every five minutes.</li></ul>

How to nudge others

We want to do better, healthier things for our future selves, so it helps create nudges to make decisions in advance. Creating a meal plan on your off day or signing up for a class at the gym a few days in advance will help to get your behaviour aligned with your long-term intentions, not just for what you want right now.

Making choices in advance

There are many subtle ways we can positively influence our own and others' choices.

How 'Nudge Theory' Can Help You (and Others) Make Better Choices

Hedonic adaptation is the tendency of humans to revert to a happiness baseline shortly after new positive or negative events.It becomes a treadmill—the Hedonic Treadmill—a perpetual motion machine that keeps us running in search of the next thing.We create this magical universe in our minds where that one next thing will be exactly what makes us permanently, sustainably happier.We get to that next thing, appreciate it for a moment, and then turn our gaze to the next, next thing, with no marked improvement in our happiness.

The Hedonic Treadmill

Make it a daily practice to write down your gratitude. Either right when you wake up or right before bed, write down three things you are grateful for. They can be big (a healthy family) or small (a good meal in front of your favorite TV show)—the only thing that matters is that you make note of them. The practice forces gratitude for the present into the front of our minds and works wonders for your daily contentment and happiness.

Finding Your “Enough”: Develop a Gratitude Practice

Using your gratitude lists, identify what makes you happy. Not what you think makes you happy or what society says should make you happy—but what truly makes YOU happy. Maybe it’s as simple as a cold beer at the end of a hard day of work or listening to smooth jazz by yourself when everyone has gone to sleep. Whatever it is, find those triggers and prioritize them in your life.

Identify Your Happiness Triggers

We all have a horrible tendency to compare ourselves to others. Comparison is like gas on your “more” fire—it tears away the enjoyment of the present and tells you that it’s not enough. When you notice yourself falling into the comparison trap, reset and focus on yourself. If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.

End the Comparisons

How to fight back against the perpetual desire for more

The Beauty of Enough

How you improve yourself depends on two factors: <ol><li>When do I improve myself? When is the most important because you can waste a lot of time and energy if you focus on self-improvement at the wrong time.</li><li>How do I improve myself?</li></ol> Use your best hour of the day to improve your mind, be it after you wake up, before dinner, etc. Doing this every day will result in mental compounding interest.

How to improve yourself

When building an online business, you want to commit to something that you're good at and something that has a future. The most important thing for your business is getting started. The biggest mistake we can make is to never get started. Once you've started, you can modify your strategy until you succeed.

Building an online business

Welcome to Wise & Wealthy! This edition includes tips to stop comparing yourself with others. And 8 online business ideas.

Wise & Wealthy: The Munger Technique and online business ideas

<ul><li>Recent studies have shown that events and forces at work today are making happiness less likely for many people, and widening "happiness gaps" between the most privileged and everyone else.</li><li>People who study happiness and promote ways to get more of it keep emphasizing the same cluster of individual-level tips and tools.</li><li>There's something dishonest in minimizing the role of social forces-and that this dishonestly can be rooted in discounting the experiences of people who are hurt or marginalized by those forces.</li></ul>

Social Conditions and Inequality Affect Well-Being

<ul><li>Structural forces affect happiness.</li><li>Slavery was a structural force, setting a pattern of social, cultural, economic, and interpersonal relationships between Black and white Americans that persists to this day.</li><li>The family is a force structured by laws about marriage, divorce, taxes, reproductive health, and the power men historically had over those laws.</li><li>Your social network is a structure shaped by interactions with other structures.</li></ul>

Structures And Our Feelings

Positive psychology was once revolutionary for the way it turned away from studying and treating dysfunction in individuals toward examining the practices and traits that helped people to flourishUnfortunately, this focus on the individual led many researchers and teachers to consciously reject structural explanations for individual misfortune and unhappiness

Reckoning with Positivity

<ul><li>The evidence for how social forces can undermine or enhance happiness goes well beyond America's determination to marginalize and oppress racial minorities, revealing that any inequality hurts well-being.</li><li>Groups (and often countries) with less power, income, or wealth just aren't as happy as those who have more.</li><li>Only people in the lower half of the income range felt less happy; people who made more money seemed fine as inequality rose.</li><li>A 2011 study found that Americans became less happy as income inequality grew-but not all Americans.</li></ul>

Happiness And Socio-Economic Conditions

<ul><li>Happiness inequality was already rising alongside income and wealth inequality in the years before COVID-19.</li><li>During the pandemic, it appears that well-being became even more difficult for some than others.</li><li>We have created institutions and policies to mitigate the impact of disease.</li><li>The more stringent a country’s policies in restricting citizens’ movements and behavior, the worse they felt.</li><li>These policies were situational, meaning that the circumstances made happiness seemingly impossible for the majority of people.</li></ul>

Happiness And The Pandemic

Many organizations continue to emphasize "easy steps" and "quick fixes" that will make you as an individual happier.These companies discount or underestimate the power of social forces in shaping our happiness and life satisfaction.We need to look beyond tips and tools for individual improvement, toward the ways we can create a social tide that will lift as many boats as possible.

The Limits of Individual Solutions

Social conditions and inequality affect well-being. So, why do we keep insisting 

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Maxwell D.
@maxwellad

When Do You Become an Adult?

From Whole30 to Dry January: why 30-day challenges are so popular

How to have a true hobby, not a side hustle

Finding Joy in the Mundane Moments of Life - Mindful

How to Put Life on Easy Mode

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Maxwell D.@maxwellad

When Do You Become an Adult?

From Whole30 to Dry January: why 30-day challenges are so popular

How to have a true hobby, not a side hustle

Finding Joy in the Mundane Moments of Life - Mindful

How to Put Life on Easy Mode

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Maxwell D.
@maxwellad