How to Stop Feeling Like You're Wasting Your Life in Your Early 20s
Author: Andreas Balasis, LCSW
Reviewer: Dr. Mary Perleoni, LMHC ✓
Published January 14, 2026
I've come to believe there is a unique kind of anxiety experienced by guys in their early 20s. It's always been a critical developmental period, but factor in the modern landscape, and the years lost to COVID-19, and you get a dynamic different from that of only one or two generations prior.
The Unique Existential Anxiety of Young Adult Therapy
It's not the anxiety that comes from a reaction to immediate danger. It's not regret or grief of time loss that has mounted over decades. It seems to be quieter, more persistent. It's more of a nagging question, "Is this it? Is this what it's all about?"
Why Life Transitions in Your Early 20s Feel Different
If you're reading this, there's a chance you're doing relatively well on paper. To an outside observer, you may look like you're killing it. Maybe you're studying, you're working, you're socializing, but again, there's this nagging sentiment that the sand is falling through the hourglass faster than you'd like. That there's something valuable about each grain, but they're being spent on something uncertain or unremarkable.
Understanding the "Is This It?" Feeling
The late, great Norm Macdonald wrote in his memoir, "The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast, and if you're not careful it's too late. Of course, the young man will never understand this truth." It's a brutal quote in its honesty. With all respect to the late legend, it is also brutal in its lack of utility when taken out of context.
The problem identified at this point is the awareness of time passing. Simply having that awareness does nothing to mitigate the feeling itself, or more importantly, the impact that awareness carries with it. There will be commonalities, but no two people will dissect the nuance of that feeling the same way.
A Crisis of Meaning and Identity
We want to look and see, particularly to you, what it means to feel like you're "wasting your life." We want to establish a clear framework as to what that feeling entails, where it may have originated, and what it leads to. Then, we can work to reshape what may actually be taking place, to exert greater control over what the true dilemma very well could be.
We go in thinking that the problem is about the perception of time. We struggle to find a solution to the recurrent thought, "I'm wasting it." I might pose a challenge and question whether it's as much about time or the meaning we attribute to it. The word "enough" comes up often. Somewhere a connection is forged, a belief sets in that you're not being productive enough. You're not ambitious enough, or even if you were you just aren't disciplined enough. "If I just had enough of (you fill in the blank) this feeling would go away."
People fill that blank with money, attention, recreation, and adjectives that define character, amongst plenty of other examples. That fix is rarely the case. I don't believe people who ask this question are experiencing a time-management problem or a resource acquisition problem. I believe they are experiencing a problem with meaning and understanding their own self-identity.
When External Structures Disappear: Life Transitions After College
Whether you're finishing school, just finished school, pursuing a job, or contemplating which way to go next, your early 20s are the time where your path becomes less objectively definable. Adulthood doesn't bring with it a rubric or a syllabus for how to do it or when to do it by. As external structures weaken, people can become more susceptible to turning inward, and asking themselves questions that tend to only lend themselves to more questions. "What am I really building towards? Is it really going to matter? What if it ends up not being worth it?"
Why Young Adult Therapy Focuses on Internal Direction, Not External Validation
Without a sense of direction that we can clearly and repeatably ascribe a self-defined meaning to, it makes sense why we may feel like we're wandering a forest without a GPS. A comfort can set in once we internalize that at this stage of life, this meaning can change. It can grow and evolve. The clarity and repeatability is not in picking a path and staying on it, it's in fostering a confidence in what we carry with us, regardless of the path that is forged.
What Makes Young Adults Feel Like They're Wasting Time
For many young adults, the feeling of “wasting time” doesn’t come from inactivity, it comes from effort without reassurance. You may be working, learning, building relationships, and still feel behind, quietly measuring yourself against an invisible timeline you never chose. Social expectations and constant comparison create pressure to have clarity, stability, and success figured out by now, making uncertainty feel like failure instead of growth. When progress doesn’t look linear, it’s easy to assume you’re falling short. But young adulthood is inherently a season of experimentation, recalibration, and becoming. That discomfort isn’t proof you’re wasting time, it’s often a sign you’re actively shaping a life that hasn’t fully revealed itself yet.
How Social Media Impacts Young Adult Mental Health
The constant exposure to other people's life highlights is a powerful force in reinforcing this anxiety from a feeling of wasting our life. It's a beautiful thing to be able to be happy for friends and family and their milestones. Movies, shows, celebrity stories on social media, it can all be entertaining. Consciously, we tend to not be aware of the impact. On the surface it can be helpful to stay connected. Below the surface, we're establishing a basis of comparison, and a timeline that we inadvertently come to believe should be our own to follow. If we're not following it, we're wasting it.
Planting Seeds vs.Expecting Harvests
What may happen if we look at this stage of life as a time to plant different seeds and see what grows, as opposed to focusing on a harvest that has yet to come to pass? Going back to the path analogy, what happens if we view this time as an opportunity to see which path is most fulfilling to navigate, as opposed to focusing on a destination through the trees we cannot yet see, and cannot yet be certain even exists?
How Therapy for Young Adults Reframes "Wasted Time"
The Core Principle - It Cannot Be Wasted Time If You're Learning
I'd find it hard to argue the statement, "It cannot be wasted time if the time is spent learning." We can be intentional and work towards adjusting the focus of the lens. Instead of measuring against outcomes, we can measure through internal development.
Identity Development Questions That Build Self-Esteem
We can ask ourselves questions like, "How do I respond to stress and responsibility, how do I respond to boredom? How do I respond to wins and how do I respond to losses? What do I tend to do in the presence of discomfort and uncertainty?"
Why These Feelings Signal Identity Is Still Being Built (And That's Normal)
These feelings of discomfort, confusion, stagnation, and urgency are not necessarily signals that something is being done incorrectly, they're signals that identity is still being built. Expecting certainty of meaning at this point in life is like expecting to play golf like Tiger Woods in his prime, after just a few years of lessons and practice.
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Breaking the Paradox of Urgency When Young Adults Get Stuck
Why Greater Urgency Leads to Freezing (An Anxiety Therapy Perspective)
This brings us to the paradox of urgency. The emphasis that you place on the value of time will affect if and how you spend it. The greater the urgency, the higher the likelihood of you freezing, while the hands on the clock continue to spin.
The Time Gets Wasted Avoiding Choices, Not Making Imperfect Ones
You're likely reading this because choices are beginning to feel more permanent, and next steps are starting to feel more expensive. You tell yourself a certain action will take place under certain circumstances, but those circumstances depend on you taking action first. The time is not wasted by making imperfect choices, the time gets wasted avoiding making choices altogether. Staying somewhere longer than you should, delaying transitions, waiting for clarity that only action can provide.
How Action Breaks the Cycle (Especially for Men in Therapy)
Taking action by beginning therapy can help to sort through what is most authentic, most self-directed, and most driven by what we desire instead of what we most desire to avoid.
The Power of Counseling For Young Adults
It can help address questions with more utility, like, "What makes me feel more alive than dead inside? What am I shying away from because it scares me, not because I don't want to do it? What are areas of complacency that could be inhibiting growth?"
Through therapy, we can distinguish between what we're avoiding because it genuinely doesn't align with us, and what we're avoiding simply because it feels uncomfortable or uncertain. Often, the things that scare us most are the very things that will help us grow.
This is particularly important during major life transitions—graduating, starting a career, moving to a new city, ending or beginning relationships. These moments ask us to confront who we are becoming, not just who we've been.
Living Intentionally Through Life Transitions
I don't believe Norm is saying that young men need to hurry up because time moves fast. I don't believe he's saying that wasted time is an inevitability. I believe he's cautioning us against allowing ourselves to sleepwalk through life, or to live so far in the future that we end up arriving there with no concept of the route taken.
"How do I stop feeling like I'm wasting my life in my early 20s?" In my professional and personal experience, that question is often answered by the questions we choose to engage with instead.
Young Adult Therapy in Tampa, St. Petersburg & Sarasota
If you're experiencing these feelings of uncertainty, comparison, or urgency in your early 20s, you don't have to navigate them alone. Our therapists specialize in working with young adults through life transitions, identity development, and existential anxiety.
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