Take Ownership of Your Future Self (2020)
hbr.org
hbr.org
What I did was to have a very strong introspection over a few weeks. I thought about each important aspect of my life - social life, family, career, hobbies, health, even my daily structure - and formulated a very specific target for each area. Basically a well thought out fantasy character. This was hard work, it took many nights of thinking and it's honestly a process that never stops, even nowadays I still update that document from time to time.
Once I had a list I was reasonably happy with, I started thinking of the type of person that would reach that goals and what kind of habits they had. And then I started implementing them. The most important part here is a habit of doing stuff. I can not stress enough how important that is, everything else pales in comparison. I recommend reading Atomic Habits and personally follow the "Getting Things Done" system. But once you have written down everything you need to do and actually do it, you have a superpower and the ability to transform every part of your life in a few months. I found that most "hard" things in life are actually quite easy to do, it's just that doing stuff consistently is extremely hard.
I agree with the author, simply telling people about your future self also helps massively. The first time it will feel extremely weird, like talking about a fantasy character. You will talk about some guy you seemingly have nothing in common with and talk about future achievements with absolutely nothing to back it up. But do it 2-3 times and suddenly that future self will feel familiar. Do it some more, take some steps to be that person and suddenly you'll be far more similar to that guy than you could've ever envisioned.
At least for myself this process was the most important thing I've ever done in my life. I've gone from a pretty shy, boring, somewhat depressed and risk-averse guy to moving across the country for an awesome job, restarting my entire social life and solo-travelling across the world. And most importantly, I'm happy now, it feels like I'm finally me and not just the product of my upbringing and surroundings.
I read a quote recently that said that great things don’t just happen, they’re the accumulation of consistent daily efforts.
I really want to make a publish a game after ~20 years of making (the majority of some) games as a hobby.
My route there, as someone who also has a hard time forming habits, is to really push to do _anything_ to further my game every single day.
That might be just sketching a mechanic in my notebook, or starting the MC’s character model, or even just emailing my game dev friends asking for feedback.
My hope is that the accumulation of these daily acts will get me there. It may take longer than others who can stay focused for more than 30 mins at a time, and that’s ok.
This is my path and my game.
I have experience with programming and audio so the only thing I’m missing is art skills. So my routine is 30 minutes of programming and 30 minutes of art practice per day. It seems to be working so far.
The idea of your "future self" is actually what helped me improve my ability to form habits.
"If I do X, Y, Z, today, then tomorrow I only have to do A and I have all this free time. Let me be miserable today so I don't have to be stressed tomorrow and I can do anything I want."
It allowed me to unleash my ADHD and kind of embrace it almost on alternating days.
One of Hal Hershfield's talk's had mentioned that we always imagine our "Future Self" will be less busy than we are today, so we won't over extend ourselves today, because tomorrow you'll be less stressed. But this isn't usually the case.
For example: You won't have any more ability to make it to the bank tomorrow, than you do today. So if you do it today, tomorrow you won't even have to think about it. Your ADHD is less likely to fire off with all the other things you "have to do". If you only have one task, you can kind of just do it.
This has been a game changer mentality for my executive function disorder.
I assumed this was depression, and after some questions, the doctor insisted that it wasn't depression and asked if I had been diagnosed with ADHD in the past.
Then, he asked me to try Wellbutrin as an off-label use for ADHD, which dramatically changed my ability to function. I have since stopped taking it as I have a lot of systems in place that help with my executive function, but I still feel that taking it would make my EFD better.
The feeling of "depression" has since subsided, but I do still suffer from brain fog frequently when I get overwhelmed with scheduling or tasks I deem "insignificant" that I need to do, such as:
Send a short email. Deposit a check. Put gas in the car. Send that Mutual NDA.
But large tasks like:
Run a 5k every day. Study a language for an hour. Design that app flow. Help a friend develop a business plan Organize and event for 50 people that serves dinner
are typically easy.
It's really the small tasks that break my brain. Big easy are fun and enjoyable because there's a tangible outcome, but small tasks that should be easy but have some sort of barrier just break me.
> simply telling people about your future self also helps massively.
However, this is something I’ve found hit or miss. Telling people you know can set expectations, especially if you are passionate about it. You can set the bar incredibly high for yourself and be satisfied with partial success, but you won’t feel as satisfied if you didn’t match up to a friends expectations after hyping it up, even if they are still incredibly supportive of you. In the end, I’d rather show them my actions and results than overhype them with words that shoot for the moon.
Also to add to the Atomic Habits recommendation, I'm partial to this William James chapter on habits that was first published in 1897: https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin4.htm
This year I've read "The 12 Week Year" and it clicked so much more with me. The book is more practical and goes deep into processes and steps you can use to achieve your goals.
As this article points out, phrasing those statements in the present tense, as though they were immutable absolutes that must persist into the future, is a static mindset. It takes only a small shift - ‘up to now I haven’t been able to draw but I’m going to learn’ - to re-frame your idea of yourself as dynamic and malleable. This opens the door to actively shaping your future self, and it’s hard to overstate how different that is from a static perspective.
Habit seems to be a quick way to say "an activity repeated with some frequency over a long period of time". I think about learning an instrument and how playing X minutes a day is often a recommendation. I think about American Thanksgiving and how it gives a yearly frequency for large family gatherings.
It is interesting for me to consider the activities that I do on different frequencies: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly. One major change I have considered is to reframe importance away from "how much time do I spend on this" into "how frequently do I do this".
Articles about "goal setting" like this one often seem to fall flat for me. I've set all the goals, many times. What I've found many times over is that once I establish the rhythm of life around the activities, I realize that my lived experience doesn't match my expectations.
I guess what I'm saying is, goals aren't enough. You have to understand the frequency of activity you are signing up for when you take on the goal. And if you cannot stomach the frequency of the activities that are required to achieve your goals then no amount of planning will help you. Striking that balance, between goals and the frequency of effort towards them, is the real difficult task.
I believe that is partly responsible for some spiritual ideas around freeing oneself from desire for particular outcomes. There is some value in focusing solely on the activities you engage in frequently without focusing on your attachment to the outcomes.
I often wonder how successful people manage their foundational activities. And by successful, I don't mean popularly successful. But people really content with their lives and happy.
There are frequencies within frequencies. For example, yes you eat every day, but how often do you eat healthy? How frequently are your meals junk? How frequently do you eat fish or red meat? How frequently do you eat foods high in fiber? How frequently do you eat sugar? I think it is useful to consider the fractal nature of frequency in this way. Repeated activities "break down" into smaller frequencies and "add up" into larger frequencies. (Consider how this relates to cheat days in diet plans).
There are also coincidences, and I mean that in the sense that some frequencies overlap. Consider eating, you can combine that with meeting friends. It's like a two-for-one activity - you satisfy both habits simultaneously. How often do you eat, how often do you meet friends, how often do you eat with friends?
The above ideas mean that even simple foundational activities are rich with possibility.
I accidentally did something similar, which has been very instructive. I play guitar as a hobby, and aspire to able to play improvisationally. I've struggled with this and at one point had all but given up. I realized the silliness of giving up because I can't do it now, and wondered is it possible for me to do this in 10 years? And if so, what can I practice today to be a better player next month?
This has worked. I'm less than a year into this and I'm already a better player. I'm more disciplined in my practice, I'm enjoying it more-and therefore more motivated to stick with it. When I sit in with a band I feel more prepared and am slowly getting comfortable experimenting.
I still have a lot of work to do, and I'm more eager than ever to do it. I've been wondering what other areas of my life would benefit from this attention.
When I lost my wife suddenly to cancer, I lost that ability for awhile… in survival mode, the future isn’t available to you. Only the present.
It was a horror, but also an opportunity. I chose to focus on my fitness, my son’s fitness, health, and nurturing relationships that I allowed to back burner as busy people do.
My offering is that you should be aspiring and working towards the future, but the prerequisite for tomorrow is today, and you may not have a tomorrow. So make today the best today it can be, now. Tomorrow will wait, as it does.
People blog about grit and resilience as a part of the self-help ethos. But in my experience people who have survived real hardship tend to have a much more fatalistic and realpolitik view of life.
And I do think there’s something to that; “luck” is by definition an event in which the individual lacks agency. But some lucky events have preconditions that the individual can influence. Sometimes it’s merely a matter of rolling the dice as many times as you can.
That said, having tanks roll across your country’s border is not going to be influenced by anyone’s can-do attitude.
He said he knows people who are more talented than he is, but they tried to be successful from their keyboard alone, and he became wildly successful because he hates sitting behind his computer all day. Early in his career he was out at clubs meeting people, which led to volunteering in recording studios, which taught him a solid foundation, which led to getting hired for larger gigs, concerts, and then music festivals, a Las Vegas residency, etc. Like you said, he persistently rolled the dice on as many game boards as he could find and his number eventually came up.
Now, another person could have done all of the same things and not been as successful, and those are the two different sides of making your own luck I suppose -- even in making your own luck, there is an element of luck.
In the creative space, where the work or performance can be deeply personal and exposed, that quantity and frequency of rejection can be too much to bear.
If you believe you have little, that you're just a leaf floating on the surface of a river getting tossed about by the current, you will be profoundly miserable. We are active beings and our brains have evolved to help us do stuff, and believing even before we try that we can't do things is a recipe for existential dread and depression.
At the same time, stuff does happen to us outside of our control. We may think we have agency over something and discover to our frustration that we simply don't. Believing that we have complete agency over everything that happens is magical thinking and leads to toxic guilt and self-blame whenever anything bad happens to us or others we care about.
I think there's a sweet spot where you should believe you have a little more agency than you actually do. When you're wrong, it's better to have guessed that you could affect an outcome and failed, than to assume you couldn't and miss an opportunity. A tablespoon of frustration is easier to swallow than a tablespoon of regret.
I'm surprised how rarely I hear people discuss this because if I've learned anything in the past five years of therapy, it's how central our internal beliefs about how we interact with the world are to our emotional health.
But every time I've been clear about my goals but allowed the methods to be shaped by serendipity, it's been successful. This is what I mean by "luck". It works, but I don't know why.
It's very like the Personal Values thing that I learned in therapy: make decisions based on whether they align with my values above all other considerations. Again, it works - I end up getting what I wanted - but I don't know why.
I recently made a few major changes to my life that I felt were my responsibilities as a founder. Mainly, taking care of my health.
I heard Hal's Ted Talk, and decided to give getting into shape another chance. being that it takes a ton of time to begin to see major results, it was always a detriment to putting the time in. "I'm still going to be fat tomorrow."
However, if you spend 30 days working towards something that's incredibly difficult, and put in all of the effort possible, and review your progress after those 30 days, you'll realize you're actually making a ton of progress if you can justify the hardships as a necessity for future success.
If you're a founder, that might sound familiar, especially if you're a bootstrapped founder.
After those first thirty days, I was incredibly proud of the past me for not giving up. I had lost 20lbs. That's amazing. I felt amazing.
Future me would be even more proud if I kept going. Almost a year later, I've lost over 100lbs, and am in the best shape of my life. My company is growing, and I'm free of almost all health conditions.
The idea of doing something for "Future You" isn't necessarily what worked for me, but instead, becoming the future me and having respect and being proud of the person I was to work hard for the person I would become.
But, it's the little things. Like going out drinking, and waking up to a gatorade on your nightstand with a little note you prepared for your hungover self the next day saying "Hey, I'm sorry. Drink this."
Today I would not bother to wear a suite or something. When people are surpised by this I explain them, that I always expect the other party to need me as much as I need them. And wearing a suit would just make me look like I don't bring enough to the table.
Do you really think Bill Gates could not come to a meeting in underwear and people would still take him completly serious? Unfortunately I am not BG.
It's not only about what you wear either. It's that if you want to be promoted, start doing some of the things that would be your job duties if you had the promotion. Doesn't work in all situations, but when you can say 'of course I can do the job, I've already been doing it', it can make the process easier, sometimes.
Also, I'll echo the sibling point that dress standards have changed a lot over time, at least where I have worked. In an interview situation it's best not to come over dressed or under dressed, but it takes experience to know the right things to ask to know. Used to be a suit was right for every interview, but it's way overdressed at a shorts and sandals style company.
Authenticity and skills often weigh more than appearance in many sectors.
My future self is a thing that doesn’t exist.
My present self is all the matters. My story about my identity is intended to freeze it where it is. That’s not a bug. That’s called staying alive.
You don't acknowledge that your past self "owns" you, do you? That would be weird.
To what end? Oftentimes, that tale goes like: "If I do this, I can get more money." Or: "If I do that, I can get a better partner." Once you get what you wanted, it's no longer what you actually want. One solution has caused ten more problems and you never feel any better really, other than for very short fleeting moments.
I decided I wanted to be less angry at the people around me, to be somebody who didn't respond with anger unnecessarily. I wanted to be somebody better able to handle criticism. I wanted to be more emotionally/psychologically stable, and be less co-dependent in my relationships. I wanted to get over my social anxiety and become more comfortable around other people. I wanted to finally start a career in software development for money and stability.
These are all things I've achieved to a large degree, and it's made a huge difference in my quality of life. Yes, I have other goals now, but does that negate the value in achieving my previous goals? No. Achieving my previous goals means that I'm in a better place now to achieve other goals that can further improve my life.
Respectfully, I think that's your interpretation rather than reality.
What I said is far from bitter or critical. Quite the opposite. Maybe it's your own bitterness that's coming through in what you read in my comment?
What you describe in your habitual changes are not ends - those are means. And you always change them now by letting go of some self concept. It's quite the opposite of imagining yourself being so and so in the future and then everything "will be fine". But I asked "To what end?" and talked about something completely different than you are, obviously? Please re-read what I wrote.
>to what end? Oftentimes, that tale goes like: "If I do this, I can get more money." Or: "If I do that, I can get a better partner." Once you get what you wanted, it's no longer what you actually want. One solution has caused ten more problems and you never feel any better really, other than for very short fleeting moments.
That says a lot about why I made that comment to begin with. It’s this way of jumping to conclusions and feeling attacked that seems to be quite deeply conditioned in many of us. Hence, I admit my comment was kind of provocative.
To clarify: By no means did I want to indicate that betterment and improvement aren’t worthwhile endeavors generally speaking. My point is rather that they should be embedded in something greater. Otherwise, they might yield counterintuitive results which can, in extreme cases, become dangerous.
To support my point: Look at what’s currently considered “successful” in our contemporary society. Then look at its detrimental effects which become more and more pronounced in many areas. A bit more balance would be desirable at times.
A lot of this stems from the deeply entrenched believe in a false conceptual self. At least that’s what I am convinced of. That’s why I made that comment in the context of this article.
Part of this is a human inclination to focus on problems that need fixing, and forget what is working well.
As an example, my initial gut inclination is to agree with your condemnation of social definitions of successes (materialistic, commercial, ect). However, when I slow down question it, I don't think it actually matches my personal experience of society. I certainly don't think it is true for myself, my friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, who mostly have views I find much more attractive (e.g. they all think success is living a life of integrity, thoughtfulness, happiness, and love).
Maybe I have done a great job of building a bubble and my personal data is driven by selection bias. However, I am more inclined to think that something similar to the fundamental attribution error[1] is at play when making general judgements about society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
That part of your posts that I don't understand is what seems to be a hostility or cynicism around introspection in general. You say things like:
>[it] actually reveals what they are really more useful for specifically: gain power without any purpose or meaning.
>To what end? Oftentimes, that tale goes...
This comes off (to me), as if you genuinely think these things are bad. If not, Im curious if you expect people to understand you are intentionally being provocative by steel manning a position you dont hold?
Look, if you believe that my perception of society is warped, you are of course entitled to that opinion. I think if you look at what's currently going on in the world and come to the conclusion that everything is fine and we should just continue the way we were used to, then that's actually quite cynical in my point of view. Having said that, it was only an example to better explain why my point might hold actual value. Not an attempt to start a discussion about the fundamental attribution error.
> That part of your posts that I don't understand is what seems to be a hostility or cynicism around introspection in general.
I think you are exaggerating a bit. Nowhere have I said that introspection is bad in general. Again, that's an interpretation which appears to stem from a certain kind of (left brained) conditioning in my opinion.
Here's the original context of the comment you seem to be referring to:
> These techniques and mantras for grounding yourself in the present are useful for panic attacks and anxiety, but being honest about your past and future direction are more powerful.
To which I responded:
> Your claim sounds generic, but it actually reveals what they are really more useful for specifically: gain power without any purpose or meaning.
If you have a stone on the one side of the scale, a feather on the other won't balance it. Indicating that the aforementioned techniques are only useful for "panic attacks and anxiety" could come across to some in the same way my comment came across to you? I think such generalized claims deserve similarly direct and generalized responses sometimes as a means of reflection.
> To what end? Oftentimes, that tale goes
I outlined my point regarding that one above sufficiently, I hope. If you don't like it, that's fine. You have at least provided a reasonable response that was specific enough for me to address. Just claiming that someone is "bitter" without pointing out what exactly is the cause for that interpretation is not helpful and hence deserves a different kind of response.
but the parent position in this case was rather extreme, denying any consideration of the future or past, saying all that matters is the present. It is one thing to attribute a generic description to a narrow and specific philosophy, and another to to attribute a narrow description to a generic philosophy.
> I think if you look at what's currently going on in the world and come to the conclusion that everything is fine and we should just continue the way we were used to, then that's actually quite cynical in my point of view.
My point was rather that there is a lot of bias in both domestic and foreign events coverage. If you did a global survey of "what's going on", you would probably find a overwhelming majority of people living peaceably, loving their children, and being friendly and kind, ect.
> My past self doesn’t own me. My past self is gone.
> My future self is a thing that doesn’t exist.
> My present self is all the matters.
This is just a description of how it is. Your past self is gone. It only lives in your memory now. Your future self doesn't exist yet. It lives in your imagination now. Therefore, your present self has to be the only thing that matters. The others do not exist and many people would argue that your present self is also just an imagination.
This doesn't take anything away from betterment and personal development. It just puts it where it belongs, which is now.
It might not look so, but there is a stark difference between approaching this with the idea that "if I do X, everything will be fine in the future" vs. "I will try doing X to reach goal Y and re-evaluate when I am there, but I am always capable of accepting the now regardless of the outcome".
> My story about my identity is intended to freeze it where it is. That’s not a bug. That’s called staying alive.
I don't know what the OP wanted to indicate with that. I am not sure I fully grasp the intention behind it. For what it's worth, as I interpret these lines, I don't fully agree with them.
Sounds quite bitter to me.
Anyone who has read Atomic Habits will surely find this exercise familiar. It's basically what the whole book is about (plus a mental framework to try to control your trajectory that the title eludes to).
Does it work?
Your claim sounds generic, but it actually reveals what they are really more useful for specifically: gain power without any purpose or meaning.
All that matters is the past: you can only try to build the past that you want to have. You can't change the physical past and sometimes the past you have didn't depend on you. But you can build a better past, and you can change how you perceived the past.
You're referring to a thing that you claim doesn't exist. That's interesting.
Do we have proof for existence or existence? We could have an experiment where we attempt to measure the existence at that future time.
I'm worried that leads to a train of thought claiming that the future doesn't exist.
That future time only exists in your mind as a concept. Think about it. It's self-evident for all practical purposes.
Whether the future does exist now in some physical sense is completely irrelevant as long you can't prove/use that for something real.
Your experiment would only prove that there is a now in which the previously described future has become present or not. It's pointless.
Can you define a "single moment" then?
I think it's quite possible to make use of the present. I am doing it now as I am typing this message.
Not worth translating unfortunately, it would lose its charm
EDIT: Sorry all! I'll do my best.
The past is no longer,
the Future is not yet.
The present is like a blink of an eye,
So, where does worry come from?
But it rhymes and has a great whimsical feel which is very much lost in translation
I invite you to speak to all readers here
I'd translate, but it isn't worth it.
Not worth translating, it would lose its je ne sais quoi so to speak
The people I enjoy being around the most are incredible listeners which makes conversations become an enjoyable experience and building friendships easier.
This link is for an older boxed set, but you can buy them individually from Amazon too.
I remember listening to Jordan Peterson a couple years ago and he was promoting it. I haven't used it, as I have my journaling all set up and helping me, but that seems to be similar to what the article speaks (except from the "tell people..." towards the end).
Not true about personality: if you experienced a serious trauma at a young age, most likely you will remain traumatized forever.
If you were a manipulative child, most likely you will remain the same at adulthood: the only change you will see in yourself is that now you are a malignant narcissist with a job attracting people like you.
Not only the core of your personality remains the same, but you also can easily notice that most of your behaviors and feelings are those of your parents. And you will transmit many of your personality traits to your kids.
This article ignores fundamentals of biology, inheritance and determinism (Robert Sapolsky)
This is exactly what the article is arguing against--letting one's past block the present mind from reaching toward the goals of the future self: "Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished."
A person traumatized at a young age can overcome it. In fact, therapy and healing demand introspection and decision: "Am I going to let this trauma define me?" The dialectic view of oneself is to accept that the past event happened while choosing to overcome it in all ways that are possible.
"Taking ownership of your future self" is an excellent description of the idea and how it can empower people to make better choices and move forward toward their goals and who they want to be.