How to write a letter to your future self

A letter to your future self is a short, honest note written today, sealed, and read on a date you choose: one year, five years, or ten years from now. Write it in your own voice, describe your life as it is right now, ask your future self a few questions, and pick a delivery method you trust to still be there on the day. Done well, it takes twenty minutes and is read in two, and both halves of that are worth it.

This guide covers why people write them, ten prompts to get past the blank page, three short example openings, how long to seal the letter, the delivery options and their trade-offs, and a variation that many parents and grandparents prefer: writing to a future child or grandchild instead.

Why do people write letters to their future selves?

Because memory smooths things over. In ten years you will remember that you were a student in Chicago, but not what you worried about in the dorm at midnight, which friend you called first with good news, or the price of a coffee outside the library. A letter freezes the ordinary details that nobody writes down anywhere else.

There are three common reasons:

• To see how far you have come. A letter from a hard year, read in an easier one, is a kind of proof.
• To hold yourself to something. "By the time you read this, I hope you have called your mother every Sunday." Future you will know whether you did.
• To mark a turning point. Finishing school, a first job, a wedding, a new baby, a 60th birthday. The letter is a bookmark in your own life.

Students write them before final exams and at the end of college. New parents write them in the first sleepless month. People at 50 or 60 write them to the person they will be at 70, and sometimes to a grandchild not yet born.

What should you write in a letter to your future self?

Pick five of these ten prompts. Answer each in two or three sentences. That is a finished letter.

1. Where you are right now. The city, the room, the time of day, what you can hear.
2. The people around you. Who you live with, who you talk to most, who you miss.
3. What a normal day looks like. When you wake, what you eat, the route you take, what you do when you are bored.
4. What you are worried about. Be specific. The exam, the job, the rent, the health report.
5. What you are proud of this year. Small counts. A habit kept. A fight resolved.
6. What you believe will happen. A prediction about your life, and one about the world. Future you will enjoy grading these.
7. A question for your future self. "Did you ever learn to swim?" "Are you still friends with Lucy?"
8. Something you want to remember exactly. A phrase your grandmother uses, the sound of your father's old car in the driveway, the smell of rain on your street.
9. One thing you want future you to do. A call to make, a trip to take, a book to finish.
10. How you feel about yourself today. One honest sentence. This is the line that changes most over ten years.

Three example openings

These are examples written for this post, not letters from real people. Use them for the shape, then write your own.

For a student (one year from now)

Dear me in July 2027, right now it is 11.40 pm and I am sitting on the top bunk with the physics book open and not reading it. Results come in three weeks. I am telling myself I do not care, and I am writing this so that you can laugh at that sentence. Here is what I actually want to know when you read this: did you get the college you wanted, and if not, did it turn out to matter?

For a new parent (five years from now)

To the me who has a five-year-old. She is 23 days old today and asleep on my chest while I type this with one thumb. I have not slept more than three hours in a row since she arrived, and I would not change it, though please remind me I said that. Her grandmother came from Toronto to help and has already renamed her twice. I want you to tell me: what is her favourite food, and does she still make that face?

For someone at 60 (ten years from now)

Dear seventy-year-old me. I retired last month, and I am writing this at the dining table where I have eaten most of the meals of my life. The children are in Seattle and London. My knee is fine most days. I want to put down, while I can, what I think the next ten years should hold: the garden, the trip to Sydney we keep postponing, and seeing the grandchildren at least twice a year. You will know by now which of these I managed. Be kind about the rest.

How long should you seal the letter?

If in doubt, choose a date that already means something: a birthday, an anniversary, the day a child finishes school. A date with a name is easier to keep.

How do you make sure the letter actually reaches you?

This is where most letters fail. The writing is easy; the ten years in between are not. Three honest options:

• Paper. Seal it in an envelope, write the open date on the front, and put it with the family documents or in a cupboard you will not clear out. Strengths: nothing to log in to. Weaknesses: house moves, floods, and the temptation to open it early. Tell one other person where it is.
• Email services. Several websites will email a letter to you on a future date. Strengths: automatic. Weaknesses: you need to still use that email address in ten years, and the service needs to still exist. Use an address you will keep, not a college or office one.
• A Future Message on FamRoot. Write the letter as text, or record it as a voice note or video, and attach it to your own profile in Future Messages, set for a date or a milestone. It is delivered on the date you choose, and you can edit or delete it any time before then. Your Vault has 1 GB of free storage, and the Vault has its own password. By process and policy, FamRoot staff do not view this content, except where the law requires. One thing to know: if you delete your FamRoot account, all your future messages are deleted with it.

There is nothing wrong with doing two. Paper for the pleasure of the envelope, a Future Message so that the date cannot be forgotten.

What about writing to a future child or grandchild instead?

Many people sit down to write to their future self and find that the person they really want to address is someone else: a daughter on her 18th birthday, a grandson on his wedding day, a grandchild who has not been born yet. The prompts work the same way. Describe your life now, say what you hope for them, and ask them a question they can answer in their own time.

On FamRoot, a Future Message is attached to the recipient's family-member profile and delivered on the date or milestone you set, once that person is a FamRoot user. A message for a child not yet born waits until their profile is added and they become a user. You can write "On his 18th birthday" today and let the tree take care of the rest. For prompts and examples addressed to other people, read what to write in a message for the future. If the words you want to leave are for after you are gone, the Last Message feature is built for exactly that.

Before you seal it

• Date it, with the place and the time of day.
• Write the open date on the envelope, or set it in the app.
• Name at least three people, so the letter has faces in it.
• Include one ordinary detail you think is too small to mention.
• Do not reread it more than once. The point is to meet it later.

Write it today, read it on the day you choose. Add a Future Message to your own profile, or to someone who is not here yet. Sign up for free.