Have You Ever Seen Your Future-Self? I saw mine…

… and it was an exact replica of my present self.

Reading Time ~4 minutes

About a decade ago, I participated in a Dale Carnegie training program organized by my employer. In that program, the trainer asked us to imagine ourselves five years in future and write down our goals or habits. Only condition was that we should write it in the present tense.

We were explained that if we imagine our future-self doing certain things, then our current self will be motivated to change, and eventually we will chisel the future self we want from our current self.

Great insights!  I thought.

I immediately got to work and wrote down a whole bunch of goals (both personal and professional) with great excitement. With so many awesome goals to achieve for my future self, I was totally pumped during the rest of the program; and was really looking forward for the insights in the rest of the session.

Unfortunately (perhaps not unexpectedly), once the program was done, what I had written down quickly went under a pile of papers back at my office and was soon forgotten. 

After about five years, I came across that piece of paper again in one of the folders where it was patiently waiting for me. The document had unintentionally become a “time capsule”!

When I read what I had written five years ago, I realized that while I had checked off on almost all of my professional goals, when it came to achieving my personal goals/ habits (that I had so excitedly written down), I embarrassingly was just where I was 5 years ago. I had not moved at all. It was as if time had stood still, and I was absolutely the same person (only with a lot less hair on my head & with unwanted extra pounds around my waist).

In all the busyness of life, five years had slipped by and I did not even notice it. I had excitedly written down about waking up earlier in the mornings; and getting physically fit, only to be just where I was. An exact replica of my past self. And it was extremely embarrassing.

On the contrary, when it came to my professional goals, I was actually doing quite well. For these goals, I noticed that I probably had both the key elements to achieve success. I had:

(a) the basic motivation. (I needed to be paid so that I can pay my bills), as well as a drive to perform well (who doesn’t like a happy boss, or a happy set of customers/ clients?); and

(b) on-going motivation. Even a slight dip in performance at work is quickly identified, and a corrective action is usually put in place immediately. Also, even if I sometimes didn’t feel like doing my work, a client deadline or a submission deadline meant that I had to sit and get work done (whether I like it or not).

So now the question was how do I transfer this motivation when it came to personal projects/ goals? I became restless.

A few days after I found this ‘time capsule’, my wife was to go out of town for a couple of days, and I was alone at home. That day, rather than keeping a book I just finished back in the bookshelf, I let it lie on the couch. Upon her arrival, much to her dismay, that book was still on the couch to greet my wife (If you’re wondering… Yes! She made me keep it back).

And that’s when it hit me!

Had my wife returned after few more days, the book would have still been there. It was like keeping the book in a time lapse video (and I going about my day in the house leaving the book untouched). Time had moved through the book and nothing happened, until I intervened to put it back.

It was now time to move the book through time rather than moving time through the stationary book (please read the sentence again)

The realization was profound. In order to achieve things/ get things done from that list of mine, it was only up to me to move myself to get things done. No one was going to do it for me. No one was going to remind me to do it as well.

Now I had to be my own parent.

Only I could push myself to wake up early in the morning. Only I could get myself to move my body and get some exercise. No one else can, and no one else would. If I did not, then no one else would suffer but me.

* * * * * * * * *

I did not want to be my past self anymore. I needed to change. But I was a procrastinator. I wondered how I can get the motivation to do the things I really want to do in my personal life (especially with so little time available at my disposal in my regular routine). I clearly needed help.

I knew that I decide to do a lot of things when the initial motivation is high, but then life takes over, and I procrastinate. I thought I now needed a system where I can get a constant reminder of my goals.

And that was it… I thought why not simply pin up the sheet of paper (where I have all my goals listed) prominently on the door of my closet? That way, I can see those every day, and if I don’t work on those for a few days, I’ll immediately get a reminder that time is slipping by.

However, since those were all long-term goals, I took one more step. I sat down for a few hours, and broke those down into yearly, quarterly, monthly and weekly goals, each in a different column. Satisfied with my efforts, I then pasted the big charts on my wall & kept updating those as I hit my weekly and monthly targets.

The charts constantly served as a reminder to what I needed to do each day to move the needle forward.

* * * * *

Fast forward to today, I have been able to achieve, or at least move a lot closer to most of my goals (point to note – a lot of my goals changed mid-way, and on some goals, I had to course correct several times. Writing down gave me a lot of clarity on each of those. I will write about that separately).

To sum up, the biggest learning for me from this exercise is that one should not underestimate the power of repetition. By constantly keeping those goals in my radar; and reading those often (also breaking those down to bite sized pieces), there was no option but to move towards achieving them.

Concluding Thoughts

There is a famous Marathi saying तूच तुझ्या जीवनाचा शिल्पकार (i.e. You Are the Architect of Your Own Destiny). And it perfectly sums up what I want to say here.

Just a few days ago one of my colleagues mentioned “for the last few years I’m trying to get some exercise. Work just doesn’t allow me to do so.” My advice to him was “Go start working on it today! Not tomorrow, but TODAY.”

Likewise, I want you to take a pause and think about all the important things in your life where you are procrastinating. Unless you take action on it today, there is a strong possibility that you will say the same thing even in 2025.

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^{cover photo by Harsch Shivam from Pexels}