Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Write a Letter to Your Future Self

futureme.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 111 posts

Re: Write a Letter to Your Future Self

#91

Post by bhattid »

ClaraForm wrote: post #5

Starting at 16 years old I wrote a letter every birthday to my 30 year old self with ideas of who I want to become and how I ought to judge my success. I hoped when I turn 30 to open all of them up and realize how much I accomplished would be satisfying. Through the project, I actually discovered two things. First, I estimated a rate of progress that exceeds the real possible magnitude of accomplishment by about two…

I used to keep a diary (that I stopped keeping due to lack of time) and it echoes your experience to a large extent. I mostly wrote about how I was feeling or what I did that day or what I was planning to do in the near future.

I also vastly underestimated the amount of time and energy it would take to excel in certain things (for example, I wanted to compose and play music, excel at math and physics, write fiction books, play tennis, all at professional levels) and overestimated the difficulty of a few others (namely escaping poverty/becoming wealthy). Though, I suppose this may be the consequence of work being such a major timesink in one's life and my having the fortune of various opportunities in my life.

Similarly, my desired storylines and opinions have all been roughly the same since then. There have been occasions where they shifted, but then returned as if to equilibrium after a brief amount of time. As someone who views themself as having a terrible memory, I suspect it may have less to do with memory and more to do with some stable characteristic with emergent qualities. To extend the equilibrium analogy - a spring doesn't need to "remember" its equilibrium position to reach it - after experiencing friction for enough time, it'll reach it again.

It's nice being able to see a reflection of my past self though. I think I'll try to keep a diary again.

Re: Write a Letter to Your Future Self

#92

Post by KaseKun »

einpoklum wrote: post #83
KaseKun wrote: post #81

Excellent idea. I found the UX after clicking send too tedious, so instead i went to gmail and hit schedule send for 2029

Don't use GMail. Google mines all of your communications - for advertising and other commercial activities of its partners; and also makes those communications accessible and searchable by some branches of the US federal government, and perhaps other parties. There are less-privacy-invading alternatives - both paid and gratis - which you should consider. I'd particularly suggest trying options that are not based in t…

I'm broadly aware that the product is free so "I am the product" with gmail

I don't really care though. None of what you've mentioned, even if true, would stop me from using the product, mostly because of the convenience and extremely high switching-cost.

Re: Write a Letter to Your Future Self

#93

Post by langsoul-com »

Ashbt wrote: post #40

I've done a similar thing using calendar events in the future. It's easy. Just open up your calendar app to a date like 5 years from now and type away. This derisks the possibility that the "future you service" goes under, taking your cherished letters with it.

There's no guarantee that the calendar event will exist 50 years in the future as well.

Gmail might not exist or be replaced, text files might suffer corruption, cloud hosting could go off line or the database could die or a physical letter can be lost or destroyed.

Really need to use a multitude of options to ensure delivery in the future.

Re: Write a Letter to Your Future Self

#94

Post by r00k »

wanderingstan wrote: post #42

I’ve been using futureme for over a decade. Best use I’ve found is for when I have a huge decision to make. I’ll email myself at some time after the decision must be made; right when I might be having regrets. I explain to my future self how hard it is to decide right now and why the correct choice isn’t clear. Usually with some encouragement of “I hope you know we made the best choice we could” Of course, I also sen…

As someone who sometime struggles with doubt after a large decision, I found this really moving. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Write a Letter to Your Future Self

#95

Post by protocolture »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #90
supertofu wrote: post #85

I've been writing to Future Me every birthday since I was 17. I'm now 32. In my very first letter written at age 17 and addressed to the college version of myself, I urged myself to resist peer pressure, keep making art, and maintain my innocent nature. As the years went on, the letters alternated between despair and hope. The letter writer turned into a pothead, then an alcoholic, then an alcoholic pothead who could…

Yeah... I should leave NYC.

Correct

Re: Write a Letter to Your Future Self

#96

Post by vonjuice »

barbazoo wrote: post #41
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #39

I did this once and the resulting message was incredibly depressing so I don't think I would do it again. For me there is no value or point in engaging in such actions. It's probably only worth it if you have a positive outlook on life.

I was wondering too what I would use this for. I'm a bit worried that this would become a depressing exercise if goals or hopes do not come true. And boring if they do come true. I think I'm just not sure yet what a sustainable way to use this service is. Also I wish you the best and hope your outlook on life gets more positive.

Maybe write to your future self as if they were a friend and you were trying to figure out this together.

Re: Write a Letter to Your Future Self

#97

Post by vonjuice »

The way I journal, I have a bash script that looks for today's date in past years, and opens them alongside the current entry.

It was fascinating when I started doing it because before it, I didn't really think about future me reading past entries. So it has shaped how I journal, and it has also made me journal more often, because I don't like the days where there's no past entries to read.

Re: Write a Letter to Your Future Self

#98

Post by nemo1618 »

Over the course of 13 years, I wrote 365 Future Emails to my 2020 self, one for each day of the year. It was pretty interesting to see myself "age" in fast-forward like that. The first handful of letters were pretty lame -- very short, lolsorandom-style stuff. Towards the end I was using it more like a journal, often writing many paragraphs per email.

What did I glean from it all? I don't know. It wasn't as mindblowing as I had hoped, frankly. Mostly I was struck by the sad reality that I had failed to predict what would be interesting to my future self. It reminded me of how, as a teenager, I had filled many pages of my journal talking about an MMORPG I was addicted to, rather than how I felt towards my siblings, or my spiritual beliefs, or a funny joke I heard at school, etc. Another sad irony was that the older I got, the more I wrote -- but when I read the letters, the more recent they were, the less interested I was in them. I wanted to read thousands of words written by my 15-year-old self, but all I got was a few sentences. Oh well. Maybe those longer passages will be interesting to 40-year-old me.

Re: Write a Letter to Your Future Self

#99

Post by ryloric »

supertofu wrote: post #85

I've been writing to Future Me every birthday since I was 17. I'm now 32. In my very first letter written at age 17 and addressed to the college version of myself, I urged myself to resist peer pressure, keep making art, and maintain my innocent nature. As the years went on, the letters alternated between despair and hope. The letter writer turned into a pothead, then an alcoholic, then an alcoholic pothead who could…

Good luck!

Re: Write a Letter to Your Future Self

#100

Post by robador »

supertofu wrote: post #85

I've been writing to Future Me every birthday since I was 17. I'm now 32. In my very first letter written at age 17 and addressed to the college version of myself, I urged myself to resist peer pressure, keep making art, and maintain my innocent nature. As the years went on, the letters alternated between despair and hope. The letter writer turned into a pothead, then an alcoholic, then an alcoholic pothead who could…

This is beautiful.
Post reply on HN