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No One Knows What They're Doing

A Companion for the Years When Nothing Feels Certain

The reassurance you didn't know you needed — for anyone navigating their twenties and wondering why no one warned them it would feel like this.

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No One Knows What They're Doing — watercolour of a solitary bench on misty moorland

About the book

Something rarer than advice: permission to slow down.

You've finished education. You've started adult life — and somewhere along the way, nobody told you that not knowing what you're doing is completely normal, because almost everyone feels exactly the same.

This isn't a book that will fix you, motivate you, or hand you a five-year plan. It's a companion for the years when life feels uncertain, unformed, and quietly overwhelming — written for anyone who suspects they're behind, without knowing what they're supposed to be ahead of.

Covering everything from money and work to relationships, health, and how to build a life that stays open, No One Knows What They're Doing offers something rarer than advice: permission to slow down.

From the pages

You were not supposed to arrive at adulthood already knowing how to be an adult. Nobody does. The ones who look like they do are performing.

The pressure to be certain — about work, about love, about who you are — is one of the cruellest things we do to young people. Uncertainty is not a flaw. It is the correct response to genuinely uncertain things.

You are not behind. There is no schedule. There is only your life, which is still very much in progress.

What's inside

Six honest conversations about the years no one prepares you for

Using freedom well

What to do when no one is telling you what to do — and why that's harder than it sounds.

Money, honestly

A clear-eyed, non-judgmental guide to understanding money without the lectures.

Work and identity

Why your job doesn't have to define you, and why that's actually good news.

Relationships

Friendships that change, love that's complicated, and learning who you trust.

Health and capacity

Taking care of yourself without turning wellness into another thing to fail at.

Building a life

Choosing well without foreclosing your options — a life that stays open.

The author

Simon Kerridge

Simon Kerridge is a writer who believes uncertainty is not a problem to be solved. He wrote this book because he needed it at twenty-two, and no one had written it yet. He lives in the UK.