An honest review of work life in your 30s.

For all the 20-somethings out there wondering what is next.

1. You will spend a lot of time in meetings. When you’re 25 meetings seem exciting and you want to be involved. When you’re 35 meetings are mostly pointless conversations that could have been emails. When you’re 39 meetings are the reason you can’t do any actual work and you opt to voice note people instead.

2. You will most likely at some point in your 30s, make enough money to feel financially free, before getting a mortgage while the weight of student debt crushes you and then you’ll completely lose your mind and have children too, all of which will make you feel very not-free. The time you spend in the middle of the Financial freedom x Now x You Venn diagram is fleeting - enjoy it.

3. In your early 30s you are often deemed too young to be trusted with large, strategic decisions. In your late 30s you are deemed too old to be in touch with the youth. At approximately 35 you are precisely old enough to be experienced and young enough to be cool. Again, your time at the happy epicentre of the Venn diagram is fleeting. Spend time investing in your networking, presentation and conversational skills, it will serve you well.

4. You will find yourself falling off the cliff of the very target audiences you are routinely instructed to chase (women aged 25-34) and you wonder where all the women like you, aged 35 and above, go to buy their clothes and shoes. Somewhere out there, is a large, dark chasm full of tiny checkboxes representing all the women in the world aged over 35 that no-one is bothering to talk to.

5. You will get to the end of your 30s and still not have required an outfit that can go from the boardroom to the bar. You will simply get changed.

6. If you are a woman you will absolutely be asked to do all of the unpaid labour such as buying office supplies, organising birthdays and team activities. Do not do it or you’ll come to resent bulk sized chips.

7. Your heels will get 3ml shorter each year between the ages of 30 and 39 until they are actually inverse, making you shorter than you would be barefoot.

8. Parenthood will take a toll on you, but it doesn’t have to define you and end your career. Find a life-partner that shares your values and will be with you 50/50 through it all. That is how you will find yourself still there on the other side.

9. Don’t job hop every 12 months, it will come back to bite you in 10 years when no-one wants to hire you because they can’t see the value in investing in your training and onboarding. If you find yourself bored or unable to commit to a job for more than 12 months, consider whether a different work structure such as a portfolio career is more suitable for you.

10. Interview your workplaces as much as they interview you. Get good at asking questions - this is a skill that will set you up in every facet of life.

11. You will be scrutinised for the way you manage work and parenthood. No matter what you do, someone will judge you. Start building mental resilience for the constant judgement that comes during this phase of your life now. Meditate, meditate, meditate.

12. You will spend an inordinate amount of time in your 30s talking about the traffic you encountered on the way to work, the weather and the fact that someone didn’t fill the coffee pot up again. Roughly 800 hours over the decade. Not a made up number. Scary. So anyway, how’s that rain?

13. You will send many passive aggressive notes to your colleagues about the state of the kitchen until you give up one day at approximately age 37 out of sheer exhaustion.

14. You will, one unexpected day, stop using exclamation marks to soften your emails.

15. Many men will not hear what you say until another man in the room repeats it. They will proceed to give him credit for your idea in front of you. Don’t let them.

16. You’ll go through a strange, unexplainable and intense period of listening to unsolved murder cases via podcast as a form of escapism until suddenly, listening to stories of people being dismembered does not soothe you in the way it did before. You move on to raw dogging your commutes and having occasional existential crisis’ for 17 minutes each way.

17. You will at some point, become obsessed with how classical music helps you concentrate and you will force it upon everyone around you. They don’t like it.

18. You’ll reach age 38 or 39 and have your version of a mid-life-crisis. You will question everything you’ve ever done and find a new, stronger, wiser, calmer, wilder, free, happier, excited version of yourself that is ready to do everything on your own terms. It’s particularly beautiful as much as the list above reads painful when absorbed in quick succession, it’s everything you went through until now that makes this change and the self belief you hold possible. You realise you can’t skip over any of it. Prepare for it. Embrace it. Own it.

J x