10 things. I learned from Your Future Self: How to Make Tomorrow Better Today by Hal Hershfield
There are several books about "your future self." This one talks about your future self from a philosophical perspective.
1. There are many versions of yourself simultaneously.
There are versions of yourself that you perceive, and then there are the versions of yourself that live on as other peoples perceptions of you: spouses, children, or coworkers for example.
2. There are versions of yourself throughout time, and potential alternate versions as well
The you of 10 years ago and 10 days ago is different from the you of 10 days or 10 years from now.
3. It may help to think of exercising or saving money for the "you" that is 5-10 years in the future
4. Time is relative: The next year from today might feel like a long time but the year from 20 to 21 years in the future does not feel as long.
We over-prioritize the present compared to the future.
5. Combining this concept with other time compression thought exercises (the 12 week year) can be very powerful
6. Forgive your past self for procrastinating
This act of forgiving yourself reduces future procrastination and helps you let go of the procrastination that has already happened and just get started. You can forgive your past self as if it was a different person and get all the benefits of forgiving another person.
7. Writing down your potential future options as if they have happened can make you more comfortable with the future
It could involve moving, different jobs 5 years down the line.
8. Anecdote: police officer writing letters to his family to be delivered after his death
He relayed an anecdote of a police officer who went through an exercise to write letters to his family to be delivered after his death. He found that this exercise made him more comfortable with the possibility of dying, and, and his job as a police officer, it made him more likely to try to talk to somebody and less likely to pull out a gun because he knew he was going to die. He was less worried about how it would happen. So by preparing for death, it made the death a little bit less likely because he would not escalate the situations as easily.
9. Writing letters from your imaginary future self can help shape the present
10. Writing letters to yourself in the future can be an interesting time capsule.
There is a website built to do this: https://www.futureme.org/. They ask for a $5 "donation" for the whole year. I just wrote a couple.
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