You’re doing great sweetie

Hello and happy Monday! I recently found out that Whitney Houston was a producer for The Princess Diaries and was the genius behind the iconic “Lana got coned!” scene. This knowledge has changed me for the better, and I hope it does the same for you.

Tunes for today: I may or may not play “Miracles Happen” on repeat whenever a meeting gets canceled…

—Rod

Reminder: You’re Exactly Where You Need To Be

When I was a kid, I really, honestly thought I would have a mansion with a wine cellar and horse stables and live-in help (read: be Nick Parker from The Parent Trap) by the time I was in my 30s. Now that I’m in my 30s? The closest I am to Nick Parker is my obsession with dressing like Chessie.

Like so many millennials, I feel a ton of societal pressure to have it all figured out—home ownership, a dream career, a perfect circle of friends, more than one comma in my bank balance, the whole shebang. Also like many millennials, I don’t have it all figured out.

Meet milestone anxiety, that specific pressure people feel to reach certain life achievements by a certain time. Crazy stat: 77% of millennials and 83% of Gen Z say they currently feel milestone anxiety.

How did we get here? The times have changed but the expectations (read: accomplish all the things your parents did on the precise schedule they did) haven’t kept pace. But that’s setting ourselves up for disappointment. Because…

Home prices: Since 1985, housing prices have skyrocketed around 393%.

• When baby boomers were in their 30s, the average home price was around $82,800, and today it’s $313,000.

• In fact, housing prices are so OOC (out of control) that 25% of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 live in multi-generational homes AKA with their parents.

Salaries vs. cost of living: From 1979 to 2021, work productivity increased by 64.6% but wages only increased by 17.3%. Shout-out to inflation at a 41-year high.

College tuition and student debt: The average annual price for undergraduate tuition including room and board from 2019-2020 was $28,775, up 180% from 1980. And with higher college tuition comes more student debt (about $30,000 per person to be exact).

Bottom line: Being an adult is way more expensive than it used to be. And the price tag for meeting big milestones is keeping lots of us from the timelines we anticipated being on back when we were young and naive.

So what do we do? Repeat after me: We don’t spiral. We simply rethink those silly timelines we expected to be on. They’re made up anyway! And the only schedule you need to be on is yours.

Some ways to keep that in mind →

Things to Slack your work besties

…while you call out sick after seeing the 80-degree forecast for the week.

Gimme a break! It’s good for my KPIs. Research shows that back-to-back meetings can cause a decrease in focus and engagement. Reducing meetings by just five minutes can help eliminate stress and meeting fatigue. A scientifically proven excuse for me showing up late and dropping off early from meetings? Say less.

Real talk, this is the 45-second trailer to my 2000s. Will forever lol thinking about when Jessica Simpson asked Nick Lachey if she was eating chicken or fish. Reply and let me know which one changed your life for the better.

STEPHEN!!! Kristen Cavallari literally took me all the way “back to the beginning” with this iconic Laguna Beach reunion for her jewelry brand Uncommon James.

Thanks for reading! Let’s make it a good week, and I’ll be back on Friday to answer some more of your Qs. :)

IDK WHAT DO I KNOW?! LMAO!

—Rod