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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

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 lifetimes. Second, that the storylines I want in my life and the opinions I have about them are stable across time, even if they are dormant for many years in a row. Whether this is the effect of personality or an ability to maintain memory beyond the capacity of attention I don’t know. But then again, maybe those are both the same thing.

runamuck 3y ago
Can you post these letters online? This fascinates me!
- davchana 3y ago
  Not sure about his, but many letters are public and are available at https://www.futureme.org/letters/public https://www.futureme.org/letters/public
- ClaraForm 3y ago
  No promises but maybe. At 16 my family was breaking down so it's all a bit too personal. I'll see if some are worth sharing publicly. If I do I'll respond back here again to let you know.
  - runamuck 3y ago
    I love it, thanks!
OJFord 3y ago
I did similarly (once though, not every year) and dreaded its arrival - I remembered enough to know some misses/failures - it arrived and I instantly archived it, without reading more than I couldn't help but catch a glimpse of. I would say don't do it young and naïve, it's just depressing, except that I am now at least mature enough to realise one's probably always too young and naïve to write like that to the older self. What we really want is to hear from them isn't it, but writing's no substitute at all.
- ClaraForm 3y ago
  16 year old me got more right about the world than I ever predicted he could. I encourage you to read it. Especially to see how much about your younger self your current self gets wrong! The opposite effect of depressing. At the end of all of my reading even though my younger selves couldn't hear it I whispered to all of them: "You turned out okay little one. Rest."
ericmcer 3y ago
I started doing the same thing a few years ago, but on New years day instead of my bday. It is way better to just see where your head was at and what you wanted from the year ahead than to make a list of resolutions/achievements. Really wish I had started at 16 that is invaluable.
- thierrydamiba 3y ago
  I do the same thing periodically, except with voice notes. Whenever I feel like I am in a big moment in my life, or have a new understanding of a concept, I’ll record a note talking to myself. I wonder how different these would be if I wrote them down with pen and paper vs an audio recording.
  - HenryBemis 3y ago
    I journal either on the PC (Scrivener) or on a notebook. I have tried audio but it is difficult to access "that one thing you said about that topic and you want to review it". Unless the messages are 30sec long, it would be annoying to track it. Scrivener (no affiliation) is a word processing SW for writers. So I am writing the book of my life (chapters, etc.)(imagine OneNote enhanced for writing books). You can create a 2030-01-01 Chapter (folder) and drop notes into that about changing your investment risk, etc. I guess you could leave a note to your own Calendar, but when I use Scrivener I flow better - I guess it's the UI that makes the difference.
    - thierrydamiba 3y ago
      Glad you hit the reply button! I’ll check out Scrivener. I haven’t revisited my voice notes in a while but I would probably use some sort of LLM to decode them into text to make them easier to search. You inspired me to dig into the vault. Thank you!
satvikpendem 3y ago
You know what they say, people underestimate what they can do in a year and overestimate what they can do in a month. Now switch out "year" and "month" for other respectively shorter timeframes too.
bhattid 3y ago
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.

runamuck 3y ago

Can you post these letters online? This fascinates me!

davchana 3y ago
Not sure about his, but many letters are public and are available at https://www.futureme.org/letters/public https://www.futureme.org/letters/public
ClaraForm 3y ago
No promises but maybe. At 16 my family was breaking down so it's all a bit too personal. I'll see if some are worth sharing publicly. If I do I'll respond back here again to let you know.
- runamuck 3y ago
  I love it, thanks!

OJFord 3y ago

I did similarly (once though, not every year) and dreaded its arrival - I remembered enough to know some misses/failures - it arrived and I instantly archived it, without reading more than I couldn't help but catch a glimpse of. I would say don't do it young and naïve, it's just depressing, except that I am now at least mature enough to realise one's probably always too young and naïve to write like that to the older self. What we really want is to hear from them isn't it, but writing's no substitute at all.

ClaraForm 3y ago
16 year old me got more right about the world than I ever predicted he could. I encourage you to read it. Especially to see how much about your younger self your current self gets wrong! The opposite effect of depressing. At the end of all of my reading even though my younger selves couldn't hear it I whispered to all of them: "You turned out okay little one. Rest."

ericmcer 3y ago

I started doing the same thing a few years ago, but on New years day instead of my bday. It is way better to just see where your head was at and what you wanted from the year ahead than to make a list of resolutions/achievements. Really wish I had started at 16 that is invaluable.

thierrydamiba 3y ago
I do the same thing periodically, except with voice notes. Whenever I feel like I am in a big moment in my life, or have a new understanding of a concept, I’ll record a note talking to myself. I wonder how different these would be if I wrote them down with pen and paper vs an audio recording.
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  I journal either on the PC (Scrivener) or on a notebook. I have tried audio but it is difficult to access "that one thing you said about that topic and you want to review it". Unless the messages are 30sec long, it would be annoying to track it. Scrivener (no affiliation) is a word processing SW for writers. So I am writing the book of my life (chapters, etc.)(imagine OneNote enhanced for writing books). You can create a 2030-01-01 Chapter (folder) and drop notes into that about changing your investment risk, etc. I guess you could leave a note to your own Calendar, but when I use Scrivener I flow better - I guess it's the UI that makes the difference.
  - thierrydamiba 3y ago
    Glad you hit the reply button! I’ll check out Scrivener. I haven’t revisited my voice notes in a while but I would probably use some sort of LLM to decode them into text to make them easier to search. You inspired me to dig into the vault. Thank you!

satvikpendem 3y ago

You know what they say, people underestimate what they can do in a year and overestimate what they can do in a month. Now switch out "year" and "month" for other respectively shorter timeframes too.

bhattid 3y ago

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.