Something to readWhat's next
Your Turn
A former Stanford dean's book on growing into adult life, and work, one skill at a time
Why it’s worth your time
Your Turn treats being an adult as something you practice and slowly get better at, which can be a relief if your first years at work feel like playing a part. Julie Lythcott-Haims, a former Stanford dean of freshmen, sets her own experience beside interviews with dozens of people who have found their way into adult life.
Finding your footing in adult life and work
The book · About 7 hours of reading · Buy or borrow
How to get it
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- Start with the chapter that matches your week.
Pick the one closest to what's on your mind: fending for yourself, getting things wrong, money, coping, or talking to strangers. Watch for her named lists, one of them on learning and growing at work, and for the people she interviewed, who got to adulthood by very different routes.
- Write down who you'd ask, then ask one.
Three lines: who you'd go to with a work problem, a money question, and a week that's gone badly. A blank line is useful to know about. Then ask one of them for something small this week, like ten minutes on a decision you're stuck on.
Good moments for this: in your first year at a new jobwhen a decision has sat open for weeksafter a week you'd rather forget
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- It actually happensWe’ll put it on your calendar and remind you before it starts.
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
A first job after a career change, after caring for family or after years of study can bring the same mix of freedom and fending. Read it for the stage you're at more than the age you are.
What might make this harder
That can happen in a new city or a first job. Start with whoever's nearest, like a coworker on a neighboring team or a friend's colleague, and ask them something small and specific, which is easier to say yes to.
Questions people ask
What is Your Turn: How to Be an Adult about?
A 2021 book by Julie Lythcott-Haims, the author of How to Raise an Adult. She argues that adulthood is a process you get better at, not a set of milestones, and builds the case from her own story and from conversations with dozens of people from many backgrounds.
Is Your Turn only for people in their twenties?
It's written with twentysomethings in mind, and its subjects, like money, mistakes, coping and relationships, don't stop mattering at thirty. It can suit anyone at the start of something new.
How do I know who to ask for help at work?
It can help to have a different person in mind for different problems: the work itself, a money question, a week that's gone badly. Naming one for each, even loosely, tends to make the next ask quicker.
What it says, and how it holds up
Finish school, get a job, leave home, marry, have children: the book's own description traces those five markers of adulthood to twentieth-century psychologists, and Julie Lythcott-Haims argues that meeting them, or not, doesn't make anyone more or less an adult. She treats being an adult as a practice, so feeling unready at twenty-five is information and not a verdict. In her telling it has three parts, wanting to, having to, and learning how, and you can be further along in one than another.
Work is one thread among many, alongside chapters on character, relationships, taking care of yourself and making things better beyond yourself. For someone in a first job, the chapters on mistakes and on the people around you may matter most, since those habits tend to show early to a manager. Her site has a free study guide with questions for each chapter, and a short piece of tips for young adults that includes a list of five stages of growing at work, from waiting to be told what to do up to simply doing it and mentioning it later.
The book's breadth is the thing to weigh: thirteen chapters cover a lot of ground, so anyone after a deep guide to one thing, a first salary conversation or a budget, may want something more focused alongside it. Its view of adulthood as a process sits close to research by the psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, who since 2000 has described the years from the late teens through the twenties as a distinct stage he calls emerging adulthood.
A general guide to adulthood is the long way round when the real question is whether to stay in one particular job. Writing down what you'd keep, what you'd drop and what you'd add to the job you have tends to get you further.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.