Your Past and Future Self
Show Notes
Journaling / Archiving
- Decision Journals
- FutureMe.org
- 1 Second Everyday (app)
- Narrative (wearable tech)
- 8th grade) (film)
- Mindful Review by Tasshin Fogleman (article) and Mental Calendar by Lebran Sar (article)
Concepts
- The riddle of experience vs. memory by Daniel Kahneman (video)
- What's This All About Journaling? by Hayley Phelan (article)
- Do more good in less time: productivity hacks by A.J. Jacobs (video)
- Why Life Seems to Speed Up as We Age by Derek Alexander Muller Veritasium (video)
- Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns (amazon goodreads): “...you’re the only person in the world who can effectively persecute yourself. ... Would you be so cruel to someone else?”
Music
- Intro music: Vlog Music Cafe Type Hip-Hop Instrumental Chill Lo-Fi Beat by Oliwia Orłowska
- Outro music: Game Over [Super Mario World Lofi/hiphop remix] by Neighborhood Vandal
Transcript
Ulysse: Hey, this is the Growth podcast with your hosts, Ben and Brendan, this episode, we'll be talking about your past and future itself or: data hoarders anonymous.
Brendon: Reflection and journaling, as well as thinking about your past and future self is definitely a really interesting space. And I'm not sure if there's actually one comprehensive term for all of this. I think there are some terms, right? There's like introspection, there's like metacognition, there's journaling, there's reflection even doing a time capsule. I'm not sure if that's encompassed by a broader term, people just kind of do these things and they're all in an attempt to relate to yourself either in the present moment or throughout time. And it's really interesting to think, why do people do that? What are the different forms that people can do that sort of activity?
Ulysse: I think I was thinking about this recently because every three to four months I'll record a video to myself in the future where I just talk about what's going on in my life.
Brendon: Nice.
Ulysse: Like you said, I call it like a personal time capsule, but it originally started because I realized that I really enjoy the feeling of nostalgia. I noticed looking back on journals that I've written in the past that I just really enjoyed hearing from my past self. I'm sort of that weird guy who likes to systematize all the things that are going on in my life. And so I created a system for talking to myself in the future. So yeah, every three to four months I'll record a video. I also write a letter to myself like what's going on? And so far I haven't opened any letters or watch any of the videos. It's only been about three years.
Brendon: Wow.
Ulysse: I also started sending objects to my parents' house in parcels with the intention that I would open it later and the object would be something that meant something to me when I sent it out. And so it just be like a source of remembrance and nostalgia, but there's tons and tons of things you can learn about yourself through decision journals, where you make a decision, you write down what your thoughts were and then you can learn in the future based on what you thought before and see the error in you're thinking.
Brendon: Right.
Ulysse: You've done some video recording too. Right?
Brendon: I do a few things actually. From a written perspective, when I was young, I used to keep journals and we just read about what I was doing in my life. And that was just outsourcing my episodic memory. And at this point in time, I did journaling a little bit less. I think I did dream journaling for a little while as well. And in the present day I maintain a gratitude journal, but that is also, I guess my sort of defacto just like regular journal as well. I'll write down things I'm grateful for, but I'll also share what's happening in my life. I guess it's just become my journal plus gratitude journal. That's what I do from a written perspective. And then from a multimedia perspective, I think I did only one video to myself earlier this year, just to test it out.
Brendon: I had been doing FutureMe.org, FutureMe.org is a service that allows people to write letters to their future self. You just draft an email in FutureMe and then you set a date of when you want that email to actually get sent to yourself. It'll just email you at some point in the future with a message from your past self. I guess it's a little different than what you do because you're speaking to your future self at a particular point in time, rather than just speaking to yourself generally.
Ulysse: Yeah. That's so funny. I just watched this movie, I think it's called Eighth Grade. It's about this girl and American middle school and she's going on to high school soon and it's just going through some of the events in her life. There's not really a overarching story. There's just some events happened in her life coming of age. That's right. It starts with her getting a letter from herself from four years ago or something when she's like a fifth grader or fourth grader. And she's like, are you the new popular girl in school? And by the end of the movie, she like decides to write a letter to herself four years from now. And my English teacher, when I was in the sixth year of school, she had us all write a letter and she took it and put it into a time capsule.
Ulysse: And then, I mean, our time castle was probably like a manila envelope in her file. But anyway, she gave to me when I graduated high school and it was sort of interesting seeing what my thoughts were in the past. And I think it reminded me to go back and chat with some of the teachers I'd had in the past. Hadn't spoken to them in like five years, six years. And for someone who was 15 or 16, 18, that's like an eternity. Yeah, it was kind of a nice spur of the moment thing to meet that person with all those anxieties and emotions. What I was curious to hear about that was we've done several one second, a day video clips or something. Can you tell me more about that?
Brendon: Yeah. I used this app called 1 Second Everyday and I got that idea because I saw a friend doing it a few years ago and the idea there is, there's this app, I guess it became kind of popular. It's called 1 Second Everyday and I have it on my phone. And basically the idea is you fire up the app, you record a video clip and then you crop that clip to just be one second long. It's kind of a video journal. That is like, primarily for like memory purposes, as opposed to say reflective purposes.
Ulysse: So you can remember what happened in the past?
Brendon: Exactly. Yeah. I guess, yeah. It's a great way to get a sense of what you were doing on a particular day. And I think if you maybe a few years from now, if I'm keeping this up or even if I'm not keeping it up, I can go fire up a video from the past, which might be a few minutes long and just see my entire year within the time span of a few minutes.
Brendon: And I think that can remind me of what life was like, let's say in the pandemic in 2020 right now--
Ulysse: Oh god, let's not.
Brendon: --or even pre pandemic now. Yeah. Yeah. I could say, wow, these are, let's say the moments I've been spending at home, let's say in the pandemic or this is what I was doing when I was living in the city of Berkeley. I think it's a great way to, I think you've mentioned nostalgia or that being intrinsically satisfying earlier on and I completely agree. I think recording moments like that help you to experience happiness in the future. And in fact, I think that reminds me of a lot of psychology research: whether or not people would want to go on the best vacation of their life, if they couldn't remember it. Kind of an interesting thought, some people would, some people wouldn't.
Ulysse: Right. I think we were talking about that. When you think about whether or not you want to do something you should take into consideration, what is the joy you'll get from it after you do it? I think that's something that we grossly underestimate, how much joy we get from reflection, knowing that we're the kind of person who does the kind of thing.
Brendon: Exactly.
Ulysse: One thing I was reminded of when you said that though, was my friend Tasshin who you've met, I think, right?
Brendon: Yes, I have.
Ulysse: He has this memory technique called Mindful Review. I hope I'm not misrepresenting it, but basically he'll review moments of the past day. He's gotten to this place where he can remember most of each day since he started doing the technique, which is kind of incredible.
Brendon: Wow. That is incredible.
Ulysse: I'm not sure he does it anymore because he does spend most of his day at a monastery meditating and stuff. I'm not sure how useful that would be. It's probably useful if you want to remember when something happened or like we were talking about relive joyful moments, but I just thought it was a cool idea and not something I've heard of before.
Brendon: I think that's a really interesting concept along the lines of writing notes from a book down after you read it, versus just trying to memorize and internalize the key concepts. This seems to be, rather than journal or something to record your memories from the past, actually try to remember those memories better. And that's not something I've spent a lot of time trying to deliberately improve, although I have noticed that like my memory of the past does seem to be a little bit worse than average. It's an observation, I haven't put deliberate effort into improving it. And I think one of the ways to do so would be to either try to reinforce those memories in your mind, like what Tasshin had been doing or to just record it in a journal. And of course there's pros and cons of doing that.
Ulysse: Yeah. One thing I've found very useful about this kind of thing was I occasionally will write these documents. I used to call them, What I'm Doing. It was almost like a justification to myself, why I was doing the things I was doing in my life. I think there's a tendency for all of us to come up with a game plan for the next three months, the next year, and then sort of forget what the whole idea was in the first place and then six months. And you're like, wait, the whole point wasn't so that I could learn this thing. The whole point was so I can get to that other place that I wanted to go to.
Ulysse: I think getting down on paper really forces you to put it all into your mind at once and then confront it all at once and see if it's a consistent picture... considering why you're doing something every day or even why you're doing something once a week. I think it's just good to have that out, so you don't lie to yourself.
Brendon: Yeah. And this came up earlier as well. I remember you were talking about decision journals and just being able to better understand your past self and also previous decisions that you had made. I think that takes us to some of the reasons why people might want to engage in these sorts of activities. For the memory purposes of doing this, whatever you want to call it, life recording, either by writing stuff down or by capturing it with some sort of automated or digital method, like a one second video everyday or something, or even a camera that you clip onto yourself, like takes a photo-
Ulysse: Nerd.
Brendon: Every ... Yeah, that was something I thought about buying never actually bought it though. There was the Narrative clip. That was one such product. But I think some of the benefits there are being able to just look back on your life and there's some pleasure in having, like let's say a greater number of memories or a higher remembrance quality of memories in your past, and you might have otherwise forgotten. I mean, of course, if you can look back in a moment and see it in a photo, that's a lot more accurate and vivid than trying to recreate that image in your mind. From the other perspective is like, there's these archiving benefits of this, of recording memories, but then there's also the reflective and analytical benefits of doing that.
Brendon: That sure reminds me of some research that indicates that better relating to your future self might actually improve the actions you take today for your future self. And I guess that's not a particular surprise, but just the act of thinking about and better relating to your future self is a means to reduce even procrastination in the present moment. In fact, I think I was listening to a talk by an author where they were saying they actually use software. They took a photo of their face, they uploaded it. And the software sort of converted their face into an older looking version of themselves. And they actually suggested as an anti procrastination technique, displaying somewhere in a really noticeable manner your simulated future yourself. And that would actually, they use that to avoid procrastination and take on good goals.
Ulysse: I'm just imagining walking into a friend's room and finding all these photos of him, but older, on the walls or something.
Brendon: I know that would be crazy. I know, like, yourself when you're like 80.
Ulysse: No, but I do like that idea a lot. It reminds me of cognitive behavioral therapy and how one phrase that I hear a lot is, how could you be so cruel to yourself? Your friend would never say that to you. Finding a way of having compassion for your future self and seeing them as loving, meaningful person, instead of just some bozo that you have to take care of because you got stuck with it.
Brendon: It's interesting that the act of recording your life and also reflecting on it relates to how you relate to yourself. And yeah, I mean, I think it's not just of course compassion for your future self, but of course self-compassion, it's really great for mental health and probably very good for goal attainment and a bunch of other things as well. That's a great point. It's how you journal and how you record and reflect on your life may have a big impact on how useful that activity is to you in the present and in the future.
Ulysse: Thanks for listening, all the tools and the research we mentioned in this episode can be found in the show notes. If you take away anything from this episode, let it be to start having conversation with your past and future self today. The beautiful intro music to this episode was created by Oliwia Orłowska. This relaxing melody is by Neighborhood Vandal. Links to both of these songs can be found in the show notes.
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