The internet’s obsession with milestone lists reveals our collective anxiety about aging in an era when nobody knows what adulthood looks like anymore.

You’re scrolling in bed when you see it: another “40 Things to Do Before 40” list. Your birthday is in six months. You’ve done maybe four of them, if you count “try sushi” and really stretch the definition of “learn a new language” to include Duolingo streaks that died after two weeks.

The lists multiply across your feeds like digital fruit flies. Some demand you visit Machu Picchu and master a musical instrument. Others insist you need a signature cocktail and a skincare routine. All of them share the same underlying message: you’re running out of time to become the person Instagram thinks you should be.

Here’s the thing about these manufactured milestones—they’re simultaneously more achievable and more impossible than ever. YouTube University offers pottery classes at 3 AM, but good luck affording the studio apartment where you’d display your wonky bowls. Starting a podcast takes five minutes; finding listeners in the ocean of other pre-40 existential crisis podcasts takes five years. We all know these lists are absurd, yet we screenshot them anyway, adding them to our mental collection of adult failures, right next to not understanding NFTs and still having a Gmail address from 2007.

1. You haven’t “found your passion” (because that’s not how passion works)

By 40, the mythology goes, you should have discovered your One True Calling—preferably one that also pays your bills and looks good on LinkedIn. You should wake up every morning excited to pursue this passion, which somehow materialized during a vision quest in your thirties.

Instead, you’ve had seventeen different career interests, three of which lasted longer than a Netflix season. You’re passionate about your morning coffee routine, sure. Also that one spreadsheet system you created that nobody else understands. And sometimes, on good days, you’re passionate about not having to be passionate about anything.

The “find your passion” milestone assumes passion is a hidden treasure rather than something you build through repetition, failure, and showing up even when you’d rather be in bed. It ignores that most people’s passions are weird amalgamations: urban planning YouTube videos, extremely specific genres of romance novels, making the perfect grilled cheese. These don’t fit neatly on vision boards, but they’re what actually sustain us.

2. You haven’t traveled to ‘enough’ countries (whatever that means)

Your passport should be thick with stamps by now, each one representing personal growth and cultural enlightenment. You should have stories about getting lost in Bangkok markets and finding yourself on Grecian cliffsides. The number varies—some lists say 15 countries, others say 30—but the message is consistent: real adults collect nations like limited edition vinyl.

Meanwhile, you’ve been to six countries if you count that layover in Toronto. Your most profound travel experience was discovering that gas station in Pennsylvania with surprisingly good coffee. You follow travel influencers and save posts about hidden gems in Portugal, knowing full well your next vacation will be to your parents’ house.

The milestone conveniently ignores that meaningful experiences can happen anywhere. That you can have your worldview shifted by a conversation with your Uber driver or a documentary about Detroit. That financial privilege isn’t a personality trait, and that some people’s adventures happen within a fifty-mile radius of where they were born.

3. You haven’t learned to ‘say no’

Self-help culture insists that by 40, you should have mastered the art of boundaries. You should decline invitations with the serene confidence of someone who knows exactly how they want to spend their time. Your “no” should be firm but kind, leaving no room for negotiation or guilt.

In reality, you still agree to help people move, even though your back has been “weird” since 2015. You RSVP “maybe” to events and then panic-decide at the last minute. Your boundaries are less like walls and more like those inflatable tube men outside car dealerships—technically present but flailing wildly.

The pressure to “say no” assumes you’ve figured out what deserves a “yes.” But you’re still experimenting, still discovering what actually feeds you versus what just fills time. Sometimes saying yes to the wrong thing teaches you more than a dozen correct nos ever could.

4. You haven’t mastered a signature dish (unless anxiety counts as a recipe)

Apparently, every self-respecting forty-year-old should have one dish they can execute flawlessly. Something sophisticated enough to impress but not so complex it requires a sous vide machine. This signature dish should reflect your personality and cultural sophistication.

Your signature dish is ordering takeout with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what they want from the Thai place. You can make exactly three things well, and one of them is cereal. When you try to follow recipes, you somehow always end up with twice as many dirty dishes and half as much edible food as promised.

The signature dish milestone reveals our weird relationship with domestic competence. As if your worth as an adult can be measured by whether you can braise short ribs or just know which restaurant does it best. As if the real sign of maturity isn’t recognizing your limitations and ordering accordingly.

5. You don’t have a ‘timeless’ wardrobe (because time keeps changing)

By now, you should have curated a closet full of investment pieces that will last forever. Quality over quantity. Classic over trendy. You should dress like a French woman who’s never heard of Fast Fashion and owns exactly seven perfect white shirts.

Your wardrobe is a geological record of every person you’ve tried to be. The blazer from your “professional era” (2016-2017). The yoga pants from your “wellness journey” (every January). The inadvisable romper from that summer you thought you were a “romper person.” Nothing matches because you’re not one consistent person—you’re a rotating cast of characters sharing a body and a credit card.

The timeless wardrobe assumes your style, body, and life circumstances will remain static. It assumes you’ll be the same person at 40 that you were at 30, just with better quality fabrics. But real life means your “timeless” pieces get wine spilled on them, or your job goes remote and suddenly blazers feel like costumes.

6. You haven’t ‘invested wisely’ (because nobody explained what that means)

The financial milestones hit different. By 40, you should have a diversified portfolio, six months of emergency savings, and a retirement account that doesn’t make you laugh-cry. You should understand compound interest beyond “it’s good, probably” and have opinions about index funds.

Instead, your investment strategy is hoping your 401k is doing whatever 401ks are supposed to do. You downloaded a budget app once but abandoned it after it judged your coffee expenditures. Your most successful investment was buying a good mattress, which has definitely shown compound returns in better sleep and fewer chiropractor visits.

The milestone ignores that most of us entered adulthood during one economic crisis or another. That “investing wisely” requires having something to invest beyond emotional energy and student loan payments. That financial literacy wasn’t taught in school, and by the time you realized you needed it, you were already behind.

But here’s the thing about money milestones—they assume a linear progression that fewer people actually experience. Career pivots, gig economics, and the general chaos of modern work mean that forty might find you in a completely different field than thirty did.

7. You haven’t found your ‘community’ (because it’s not a fixed location)

You should have a tight-knit group of friends who gather for dinner parties where everyone brings homemade dishes and discusses literature. Your community should support you through life’s ups and downs, probably while drinking wine in someone’s beautifully decorated living room.

Your community is scattered across time zones and exists primarily in group chats with increasingly absurd names. You’re closer to some internet strangers than people you’ve known since high school. Your support system includes the barista who remembers your order and that one coworker who always has good snacks.

The traditional idea of community assumes geographic stability and social consistency that fewer people actually have. Your community might be spread across platforms and continents, held together by memes and shared Netflix passwords rather than neighborhood barbecues.

8. You haven’t ‘figured yourself out’

The ultimate milestone: self-knowledge. By 40, you should know who you are, what you want, and where you’re going. You should have processed your childhood trauma, identified your attachment style, and developed a personal philosophy that guides your decisions.

You’re still discovering new things about yourself regularly, usually at inconvenient times. Last week you realized you might be lactose intolerant. Yesterday you discovered you have strong opinions about typefaces. You’re less “figured out” and more “in beta testing,” with new features and bugs appearing randomly.

The myth of being “figured out” by any age ignores that humans are works in progress until we’re not. That self-knowledge isn’t a destination but a practice. That the most interesting people are the ones who surprise themselves at 40, 50, 60, and beyond.

Final words

Here’s what the milestone lists won’t tell you: being “behind” is a fake concept invented by people selling courses on how to catch up. Life isn’t a race with checkpoints—it’s more like one of those maze gardens where everyone’s taking different paths and some people are just sitting on benches feeding birds.

You might not have a signature dish, but you know which restaurant makes the perfect drunk noodles. You haven’t been to 30 countries, but you’ve found beauty in parking lots and profound truths in Twitter threads. Your wardrobe isn’t timeless, but it tells the story of every person you’ve been and might still become.

The real milestone is reaching 40 (or any age) and recognizing that the timeline was always arbitrary. That the lists were always more about anxiety than achievement. That being “behind” assumes there’s somewhere specific you’re supposed to be, when really we’re all just making it up as we go, screenshot by screenshot, milestone by imaginary milestone.