A letter to your future self

About this tool

Letter to your future self: what it is and how to use it

A letter to your future self is a note you write now and read on a date you choose, months or years later. This free tool lets you write it, pick when it opens (in a month, six months, a year, five years or on a date) and keeps it hidden until then. It runs in your browser and stores the letter only on your device.

Looking at a life over a longer stretch

Judging a life over its length, not by one day, is an old idea. In D. P. Chase's translation of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes that "it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring", and that one short time does not make a person happy either. A letter opened a year on lets you look back over a stretch rather than an afternoon. Our guide to what makes a good life has more on his view.

Picturing a later self also turns up in decision-making. In a 2001 interview, Jeff Bezos described a "regret minimization framework": he wanted "to project myself forward to age 80" before a big choice. Our pre-mortem worksheet has that question.

This page makes no claim about what writing such a letter does for you. It is a reflection exercise, and the prompts beside the box are our suggestions.

How to use it

1. Write your letter in the box. The ideas beside it help if you get stuck.
2. Choose when it should open: in 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, or on a date you pick.
3. Press Download a copy now, and email that copy to yourself if you like, since the letter lives only in this browser.
4. Press Seal the letter. It waits under Your letters with a countdown and its first line hidden.
5. On or after the date, come back to this page in the same browser and open it.

An example

Say you are starting a new job. You write about what worries you this week, what you hope will have changed by next autumn, and one question: "Did you keep cycling to work?" You pick In 1 year, download a copy and seal it.