While most people will argue your teenage years are the most important years of your life, the real formative years don’t start until your 20s. The transition between high school and uni will be the biggest adjustment of your life until you transition from uni life to full-time work.

With so many changes happening over such a short period, it makes sense that it’s the time you become the person you will be for years to come. This is why it’s so important to form good habits now and stop doing the things that are actually sabotaging your future relationships and career prospects.

Thinking you have plenty of time to sort your shit out

In many ways you do have a lot of time – you can change your degree or career path and really figure out what you want to do in your 20s. But the danger enters when you use the excuse of “I have plenty of time” to not do anything. You might not treat your 20s seriously because you still feel so young and you’d rather spend your time partying and bludging. You figure that your late 20s is the time to really get serious and get your life sorted, but if you don’t attempt to start asking yourself these questions now, it’ll be so much harder in your late 20s.

Now is the time to lay the ground work, get an idea of where you’d like to head and make baby steps to work towards it. Even if you don’t know yet, it’s better than ignoring it and doing absolutely nothing.

You’re not nailing the work-study-social balance

If you don’t get it right now, you run the risk of cementing these bad habits for life. You can’t sustain yourself forever by throwing yourself entirely into your job or studies, neglecting everything else in your life. On the opposite side of things, if all you’re doing is having fun, partying and avoiding responsibilities, your marks will probs be suffering. Find the balance and you’ll avoid a stress burnout or regrets over failed subjects.

Putting relationships before friendships

Healthy relationships are important, but no relationship is worth sacrificing your friendships over. In your teens and early 20s, chances are you might not be with that person forever, so it’s never worth it to ditch your friends for that person. Just like the work-study-social balance, you need to figure out a relationship-friendship balance to make sure neither gets neglected.

You don’t want to be known as that friend that disappears off the face of the earth every time you get into a new relationship.

Accepting less than you deserve because you think you’re not good enough

You might not realise that a lack of confidence could be the one thing getting in the way of opportunities you deserve. Consider how you portray yourself in job interviews – while you probs want to avoid coming off as too cocky, you also don’t want to undersell or downplay your talents because of your modesty. You might even find yourself not applying for jobs or opportunities at uni because you think you’re not good enough to get it.

If you want something, don’t talk yourself out of it – give it a go. There’s nothing wrong with being knocked back and trying again, but there is something wrong with not trying at all.

You don’t make changes when you’re unhappy

The worst thing we’re all guilty of is complaining without doing anything about. It even becomes a competition of who has it worse – we’ll bitch to our friends about our degree, job or relationship, but a frustrated rant isn’t going to help you in the long run. Instead of complaining, do something about it.

Figure out what is really you getting down, figure out how you can change it and actually do it. In most cases that’s going to be a pretty hard adjustment, but it’ll be a huge step forward away from the negative in your life.