The Quarterlife Project
by Cal Newport

If you're in your twenties then brace yourself for some potentially upsetting news: you're suffering from a crisis. Not just any crisis, mind you, but one with a highly marketable name. We are referring, of course, to the Quarterlife Crisis™.

Young people have always wondered about their place in the world. This current labeling of the phenomenon, however, didn't penetrate the national zeitgeist until 2001, when two recent college graduates, Abby Wilner and Alexandra Robbins, published Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties. The book made the New York Times bestseller list, its ascent fueled by a big deal article in Mademoiselle, and an even bigger wave of righteous indignation.

Old people, it turns out, think young people are spoiled. Who knew?

The central idea behind the Quarterlife Crisis is that life after college is hard for the following reasons: (1) work sucks; (2) your friends are more successful than you; and (3) you'll never get married and end up dying alone — probably in your cubicle at your sucky job.

After the publication of this first book there have been over two dozen follow-up advice guides, many featuring exciting verbs in their title, such as "conquer" and "thrive!" Curious to discover what, if any, conquering or thriving I was missing in my own twentysomething life, I contacted Jason Dorsey, author of My Reality Check Bounced, the most recent, and one of the most satisfyingly specific guides in the genre. I asked him to design for me a Quarterlife Crash Course: a collection of rules I could follow for one work week — five intense days — that would help me understand what these books might offer to an average young guy like me. Starting one week, in the middle of April, 2007, I put the rules into action.

Here's what happened:

Day 1

9:56 AM

I boot my laptop and home in immediately on the morning's crop of urgent e-mail. Several forwards from friends clearly require my undivided attention. Without my incisive dissection of their content — aloof but with a taste of ironic enthusiasm — I can't imagine how they'll make it through their day. (Friend: "Sorry boss, I can't get you that report until I figure out what Cal thinks about this video of a shark biting a man's crotch." Boss: "I liked when the shark bit his crotch.")

Sweet Patient Lord! It has taken all of 17 seconds to violate Jason's first rule:

Rule #1: Identify a negative habit that is holding you back. Replace it with a more positive behavior.

I identified checking e-mail compulsively as my negative habit. My replacement behavior is to designate only a small number of predetermined times during which to review my messages. The rest of my day will remain unbroken, allowing me to enter productive states of blissful concentration.

This week might be harder than I thought.

11:15 AM

It's been over an hour of e-mail free work. My project diary reads: "the lure of the internet-connected computer is hard... feel hungry, thirsty, tired. I know I should do the work I am about to do. But I don't want to... tired... woozy." I feel like a recovering addict.

It occurs to me that an e-mail addiction would be, without a doubt, the least bad-ass of all possible addictions.

I vow to take up smoking.

Day 2

8:30 AM

I'm in line at the MIT East Campus Starbucks. The barista omits my usual graduate student discount. I suspect the idea of a student voluntarily being up at this hour is beyond her scope of experience. But I'm here, nevertheless. Focused, and in desperate, desperate need of caffeine. I blame it all on Jason's second rule:

Rule #2: Identify a non-work related activity that is meaningful to you. Carve out one hour, the first thing each morning, to work on it.

As a college student, I used to write comedy — my proudest moment, undoubtedly, being the construction of an elaborate political website dedicated to John Kerry's hair. I chose comedy writing as my meaningful activity and agreed to spend one hour each morning working on a new piece. Starbucks was the natural choice for location — the ultimate haven for self-aware writer types. I anticipate the bohemian energy of so many creative souls will invigorate me.

I am wrong.

Maybe it's the location, or maybe the time, but there are few, if any, energy-emanating bohemians at the MIT East Campus Starbucks. There is, however, a catatonic undergrad, barely surviving the last shift of an all-nighter, and two sushi chefs from a nearby cafe, taking a break from their early morning fish preparation.

I realize three things. First, I'm not at all in the mood to be writing comedy. If I wasn't following this rule I would not be here. No way. Desire to live a meaningful life be damned. Two, there is nothing in the world that I want to do more than check my e-mail. Three, sushi chefs get awesome hats.

9:45 AM

Surprisingly, after ten minutes of hating the world and thinking about hats I find myself in a bit of a rhythm. I even manage to eek out a funny line or two. Not John Kerry hair funny, but good nonetheless.

5:30 PM

"This is a problem that a lot of young people seem to face. They're quick to despair — very, very, quick to despair." Mohammed Al-Ghanim explains this to me over coffee in the lobby of the Cambridge Marriott. I've met him here to fulfill Jason's third rule:

Rule #3: Meet someone interesting and ask them about their life.

Mohammed certainly fits the description. He was recently displaced to the United States — where he now attends Tufts — from the American University in Beirut, Lebanon. He was driven here by the recent Lebanese-Israeli war. Raised in Kuwait, Mohammed became a top Middle East youth activist. He's worked with the UN and the League of Arab States. He's a co-founder of Mentor Arabia, which helps prevent drug abuse among young people and is the Arab Region Coordinator for the Global Youth Action Network. Most impressive, he has an awesome English accent.

"Despair hits me all the time," he says. "Most of my projects were not successful. But I made a contact here. I now know how this person feels. I became aware of how this program works. There is always something to be gained."

"Accomplishment is a very arduous and time-consuming and upsetting process. You will have an idea but at the same time no idea about how to move forward. It's all serendipity and contacts. You contact someone. They contact someone..." Mohammed lived this lesson. The summer before leaving Kuwait for college in Lebanon, he encountered an old friend, Benjamin Quninto, who had recently founded an international youth activist organization called the Global Youth Action Network.

"Being a friend of Ben, I got involved with the organization," says Mohammed. "I soon joined their advisory board as advisor for the Arab region; then I became coordinator of the region. This is when it all began to happen."

"At the age of 22 I helped found Mentor Arabia. Then, through GYAN, I was able to help found the first youth advisory group within the structure of the UN." Many young people imagine a life of activism to be one of perpetual engagement and fulfillment — much separated from the tedium of the typical school day or workplace schedule. Mohammed experienced a more complicated reality.

"On a terrible week, I would be taking classes, doing phone conferences at night, sending e-mails at all hours, trying to fit in my readings," says Mohammed. "On the weekends I would be flying to Cario and Dubai, then flying back to get to my class. It was an interesting experience, but it completely wore me out. "

"My professors were not understanding. They would say: 'Are you working or are you a student?' I would think: 'Both.'"

It takes Mohammed a few moments to distill a single piece of advice for young people.

"To figure out what you should do with your life you need try as many different experiences as possible," he finally says. "Once you've tried twenty different things then you are in a position where you can choose which you think you liked best."

He thinks for a moment. Then smiles.

"And try not to despair."

Day 3

9:17 AM

I'm back at the MIT Starbucks. My writing stalls as I eavesdrop on a job interview being conducted at a nearby table. I overhear the student say: "as to whether I'll be doing software engineering or finance after graduation, well, I'm still trying to decide between the two." The interviewer nods with grave understanding.

I find myself reeling. The certainty with which this student dropped into the well-worn grooves of the officially-sanctioned MIT career path, combined with my recent experience of meeting Mohammed, and hearing his complicated, but hopeful take on living an "activist" lifestyle, induces in me, for the first time in this project, a small tinge of the quarterlife doubt I had initially dismissed as hype.

4:43 PM

Disaster! In seven hours I've accomplished less than three hours of work. My Rule #1 discipline crumbled as I had to engage in a work-related, prolonged e-mail conversation that kept me in my inbox. A couple days of limited e-mail access as made this return to my old habits a precipitous slide into non-productivity.

I retaliate by planning a heroically productive schedule to follow when I return to my apartment. It involves both laundry and doing sit-ups. I'm that serious.

Day 4

4:35 PM

Back on the wagon, I've made it through the day with little deviation from my low e-mail diet. Unlike yesterday's disaster, I've accomplished, by my accounting, over five hours of productive work. The fact that I now keep track of this statistic worries me slightly. But the exercise has really opened my eyes to my own virtuosity at doing nothing.

I arrive at a new realization: I'm a terrible judge of how much I actually want to do something. Over the past few days, whenever one of Jason's rules has forced me to do something worthwhile, I always feel like there is nothing in the world short, perhaps, of sharing an IV needle with Paris Hilton, which I would rather do less. But here's the thing. With equal consistency, this feeling fades after five or ten minutes of action. Thus I conclude: I have no idea what I really want to be doing at any one moment.

I resolve to ignore myself more.

Day 5

9:19 AM

My experiment in humor writing has yielded fruit. I finish a full draft of an original piece which I send off to a pair of former writing partners for feedback. In an extra burst of productivity, I dash off a small piece to submit to McSweeney's Lists site. (For some reason it involves hatchets). The "one hour a day" experiment may not have made me brilliantly funny (hatchets!?), but I am impressed by the volume of results produced.

5:17 PM

On my subway ride home I reflect on the experiment. I have mixed emotions. My week taught me that our ability to change our lot in life is stronger than most imagine. Mohammed went from a normal college-bound teenager to an international activist in just a few frenzied years. On a smaller scale, Jason's rules highlighted how much of my "packed" schedule was really wasted time. In five days I wrote two humor articles. That's a 200 percent increase over the output of the preceding three years.

The flip-side of this story, however, is that change is not as systematic as we see portrayed in the typical Quarterlife advice guide. Mohammed's path was instigated by a moment of serendipity — the return of an old friend — and was still frustrating and demanding. I could write two articles a week for the next ten years, but to shake loose the opportunities that would make a career as a professional humor writer possible, I would need, most likely, to move to Los Angeles and brush off my waitering skills. Even then my path would remain rocky and uncertain.

In the final accounting, if you're less than satisfied with your post-graduate life — whether you want to call this a "crisis" or just being young — books such as Jason's can play an important role. They expose you to tools needed to make a change. The complexity and frustration of actually making such a move, however, is something each of us will have to reckon with on our own.

For now, I'm off to check my e-mail.

E-mail Cal Newport at calvin dot newport at gmail dot com.

— graphic by Benjamin Chandler (blchandler at sbcglobal dot net)