humans now do everything later than we used to: find a long-term career, get married, have kids, buy a home. these things happen in our thirties instead of our twenties.
the twenties are a "critical period" – when your development speeds up and has a dramatic impact on the rest of your life. surprisingly, she claims that the twenties are when your personality is shaped the most, in addition to your career and relationships.
identity capital is our collection of personal assets. it's the currency we use to obtain the jobs, relationships, and other things we want in the marketplace.
two-thirds of lifetime wage growth happens in the first ten years of a career. on average, salaries peak (and plateau) in our forties.
some kinds of underemployment are better than others (the ones that give you more identity capital).
strong ties are people you are close with and interact with regularly (urban tribe, family, best friends). weak ties are people you don't currently know well or interact much with. weak ties become stronger ties when the other person is very similar to you, which provides more intimacy, support, and sympathy, but it can also hold you back.
Weak ties feel too different or, in some cases, literally too far away to be close friends. But that's the point. Because they're not just figures in an already ingrown cluster, weak ties give us access to something fresh. They know things and people we don't know. Information and opportunity spread farther through weak ties than through close friends because weak ties have fewer overlapping contacts. Weak ties are like bridges you cannot see all the way across, so there is no telling where they might lead.
restricted vs unrestricted speech: we talk in "restricted speech" to people we are very similar to (inside jokes, similar paradigms, worldviews). weak ties force us to be more thoughtful about our ideas and our language, pushing us to grow.
getting a weak tie to do a favor for us can actually get them to like us (whereas we tend to think someone needs to like us before doing us a favor). just "asking for coffee" is too vague and burdensome. ask for a more clearly define favor, a need that that specific person can meet (e.g. Ben Franklin borrowed a rare book that a fellow legislator had, in order to build a relationship with him).