All Grown Up: Must-Listens for Aging Millennials

What better place to start than Because Internet? Gretchen McCulloch’s linguistic romp through the history of language on the internet is as fascinating as it is delightful. Considering Millennials spend 5 hours a day checking our email, not to mention Slack, text, and other chat platforms, the written word is more important to us than ever. Because Internet is a joy to listen to in audio because Gretchen’s passion and sense of humor are literally audible throughout. Plus, I couldn’t not smile when I heard how she narrates ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: sparkle text :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

Next up, I don’t know where I’d be without Kim Scott’s indispensable Radical Candor. Like many Millennials, I manage a team of people at work, and I’ve learned that it’s not the boss’s job to delegate tasks and then watch from on high. I try to put as much effort into developing my team as I would in creating a high-profile strategy brief. Scott’s guide points out that it can be counterproductive to sugarcoat your feedback, but that doesn’t mean you should inspire fear in those around you by channeling your inner Steve Jobs. Her subtitle says it all: we Millennials can learn how to be kick-ass bosses without losing our humanity.

Another key to being a kick-ass boss is learning how to master effective time management. Growing up in a constantly connected world, we Millennials have had our entire adult lives to hone this skill. Nir Eyal’s Indistractable opened my eyes as I searched for more answers about time and attention. The overall gist is to stop optimizing your time and start optimizing your attention—5 minutes of undivided attention can be more productive than an hour of distraction. And, as he so persuasively posits, this goes beyond just work life; it also applies to our relationships with our families and kids.

Wait, did someone say 'kids'? Millennials are waiting longer and having fewer children than our parents, and we’re also more likely to turn to social media when we need quick answers than we are to call our moms or our pediatricians. But we also know that, while the convenience can’t be beat, the advice on social media isn’t always reliable. Thankfully, we love data almost as much as we love asking the hive mind, and Dr. Emily Oster has written some of my favorite data-driven guides to parenting. But she’s not a physician—the 'Dr.' is for her PhD in economics and social science. With an economist’s precision, Dr. Oster digs into all the pregnancy and parenting “rules” we all assume we have to follow. Then, she uses the data to either validate or challenge conventional wisdom like 'a pregnant woman should never drink coffee.' (Spoiler alert: you’re fine.) I never felt like she was preaching to me; she just presented the data and let me, the grown-ass adult, make my own decisions. Dr. Oster’s real-world advice kept me sane throughout both my pregnancies and beyond.

My own kids are now 4 ½ and 1 ½ (the half’s important). And they’re both adorable and infuriating. When I saw a recommendation for ScreamFree Parenting in Audible’s social feeds (see 'more likely to take advice from social media,' above) I assumed it was a how-to guide to get my kids to stop screaming. But no, it’s about how to stop my own screaming. Its advice really spoke to my Millennial heart—things like the importance of prioritizing self-care, because being the best version of myself is the best gift I can give to my children and others. It also reminded me to be realistic about what I can actually control and to take a deep breath and relax about the stuff I can’t change. My job as a parent, after all, is to raise successful adults, which means teaching my kids lifelong skills instead of helicoptering their childhood.

Speaking of self-care, we need to talk about our fellow Millennial, Nora McInerny. On the surface, Nora’s life story might not sound like one you’d want to emulate. She miscarried her second baby, lost her dad to cancer, and also lost her husband, Aaron, to a brain tumor all within six hellish weeks. Depressed, widowed, and a single mom, Nora’s priorities came clearly into focus and she was forced to take a crash course in self-care. She shares it all in It’s Okay To Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too), her surprisingly hilarious grief memoir. Her follow-up, No Happy Endings, continues her unconventional story, granting permission for people everywhere to write their own narratives. And I love how unapologetically Millennial she is! Nora is pro selfies (because we should all be grateful for the bodies we have, no matter the wrinkles or sags), recommends dating divorced dads and creating amazing blended families, and thinks everyone can pull off red lipstick.

While we Millennials have figured out how to put on our own oxygen mask first, we can still struggle with the 'assisting others' part of the instructions, especially when it comes to the defining crisis of our generation. To quote Barack Obama, 'We are the first generation to feel the effect of climate change and the last generation who can do something about it.' But, as I’ve asked myself so often before, what can I do about it? Tackling climate change seems so huge and insurmountable; that is, until I added We Are the Weather to my Audible library. Jonathan Safran Foer dives deep into climate change, but he puts it in the context of other historical events, like World War II. Back then, Americans banded together against a common enemy and planted victory gardens, rationed our meat and sugar, and turned off the lights in our homes to participate in blackouts. If we could unite to make sacrifices then, we should be able to do it now. We Are the Weather finally made me feel like I, a single human being, could have an impact on climate change.