I Did Not Open My Own Book for Seven Years

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It was one of those moments of sheer panic masquerading as elation.

An organization wanted to buy a few dozen copies of one of my older books.

I had a lump in my throat.

They wanted the book that is older than my firstborn son. They wanted Cracking the Millennial Code.

Despite speaking on the contents of that book hundreds of times since its 2019 release, I had not opened it in more than half a decade.

I was terrified of what I would find. Questions started fluttering through my mind. How was my writing? Was there any accuracy in what I wrote? Is this some archaic relic of a text talking about a generation locked in history that has since grown up? Is it completely irrelevant or just plain embarrassing?

Over the summer, I pulled out my laptop, opened the manuscript, and began to read.

What I found shocked me. I am breaking down my analysis of my own book below…

But before we go any further, a new printing of my book is available right now wherever you buy books, and for the next 72 hours, it is at a 50% reduced price.

Now, an important note: I did not rewrite the book.

This book is not perfect. I would write parts of it differently today. But it was the springboard for everything I have built since.

The name on the cover says Millennials. But as you’ll see below, I found that that 2019 manuscript holds keys that unlock more than just Millennials, it hints at Gen Z just as well, and it will likely describe Gen Alpha and Gen Beta after them. There are some new bonus digital resources and a robust works cited at the end that I added back in.

What was already in those pages

Here is how I put it in the preface:

“When I wrote this, I did not fully understand the power of what I was starting to build.”

And here are some of my findings from cracking open the spine on my book, Cracking the Millennial Code.

I described the Generational Pendulum without knowing I had done it. Part One of the original book walks through the generations and shows each one overcorrecting the one before it. The Silent Generation saved everything, so the Boomers spent. The Boomers built the sixty-hour work week, so Gen X went home at five. Gen X came home to an empty house, so they never let their own kids out of sight. I wrote one line to justify spending half a business book on history: history repeats itself, and the best way to predict the future is to learn from the past. That sentence became the Generational Pendulum. I just did not have a name for it for another six years.

I identified the Generational Blur before mainstream research did. The Generational Blur is a titled section in my 2019 introduction. The argument is that a birth year is a starting point, not a verdict, and that no cutoff is ever as clean as a date on a calendar. In May 2023, Pew Research Center announced they would step back from routine generational labeling, and that readers should not expect much new research from them using the generational lens (Pew Research Center, 2023). I was four years early. While I think labeling can be detrimental, I do disagree with Pew on throwing it out altogether. The reality is society and media will keep naming groups of people (Gen Z, Gen Alpha, etc.) whether or not researchers do.

I called the loneliness crisis. I wrote a chapter arguing Millennials were not antisocial; they were lonely, and I put numbers on it, and in the extended works cited in this edition you can find the research. Thirty percent of Millennials were always or often lonely. Twenty-two percent with no friends at all. That was published in November 2019— before COVID, before lockdowns. Really before loneliness became a main part of our conversation about the younger generations.

As I’ve written before, in May 2023 the Surgeon General issued a formal advisory calling loneliness an epidemic, comparing poor social connection to smoking 15 cigarettes a day (Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, 2023). In 2024 the American Psychiatric Association found thirty percent of adults aged 18 - 34 lonely every day or several times a week (American Psychiatric Association, 2024).

The same number I published 5 years earlier.

It worked before it had a name

I gave a lecture shortly after I hit send to the editor in 2019. There was a woman crying in the audience. She said she had gotten in a fight with both her mom and her teenage daughter that day, and she couldn’t understand why. She said my explanation of each generation, and how it impacts the next, helped her understand where they were coming from, and where she was coming from. She said she could go fix these and make things right now.

That was the Generational Pendulum before I named it. It was as true then as it is now.

Not long after, I was on a video call and the person I was meeting with held up her copy of my book. It was full of sticky notes, highlighted passages, and gel-pen scribbles. There were more sticky notes in it than on my brainstorming board when I put it together. She had probably spent more time analyzing that book than I had in six years.

It reminded me of the importance this book had, and how we all start somewhere.

Before you open it

Where the case studies are locked to their moment, I added links so you can go get the current research yourself. Everything else is the book as it was.

The new printing is 50% off for the next 72 hours, wherever you buy books. Get your copy here.

To everyone who bought a copy back in 2019, thank you. You bought it before there was a newsletter, before there was a podcast, before any of this existed. This whole thing started with you.

One more thing. If you read the original back then, hit reply and tell me what stuck with you. If you did not, tell me what you want me to dig into next.