How to Write a Letter to Your Future Self (With a Short Template)

Why write to your future self

A letter to your future self is a time capsule with one reader. You write down how today looks, then you seal it and forget about it.

When it comes back, you get a picture of a day you’d half forgotten. You also get to check on the worry and the plant.

It’s a cousin of the daily line. If you already write a little most nights, how to daily journal covers that habit. This letter is the once-a-year version.

So the letter can be plain. Aim for specific enough to recognise:

• the bus you take
• the song on repeat
• the job you keep putting off

Write about today. Next year can judge it.

We make an iPhone app, so we’re not neutral here. An envelope and a pen work just as well.

When to write it (and when to open it)

The best day to write is one that already feels like a fresh page. And pick the open date first, because it changes who you’re writing to.

One year is the easiest first distance.

Five years sounds grand. But the envelope will probably slide behind a bookshelf long before then.

Short gaps work too. A letter written on Sunday night and opened on the last Sunday of the month still counts.

Choose a year first. Try five years next time.

Letter to future self prompts

Two or three questions are plenty. Twelve is too many for one letter, and each group below fits one part of it.

The lock-screen question is a sneaky good one.

In a year, the photo will have changed. And you’ll remember exactly why you picked the old one.

A 6-line template you can finish tonight

Here’s the whole letter, one line per row. The example column is a made-up letter, there to show the tone with your own facts swapped in.

Six lines take about ten minutes, and most of that is staring at line 2.

That’s normal. The worry line is the heavy one, and it’s fine to keep it to five words.

Line 5 matters most. A small step is easy to check in a year, because you either read the two pages most nights or you didn’t, and both answers tell you something.

Make line 5 small enough to check.

If line 5 turns into a real small step, the daily version is just as short: do the step, then write one line about it in a one-line journal or a notebook.

Where to keep it until the day

On paper, use an envelope with the open date written in big numbers. Then pick a drawer you don’t clear out often.

A photo frame works too, with the envelope taped to the back.

On the phone, the letter needs a place that won’t sink under shopping lists. You can keep it in Notes in Yumemira, the small-steps journal for iPhone.

Tap the pin at the top of the note, and it stays at the top of the list under Pinned.

Then you need something to tell you when the day comes. The app doesn’t remind you about letters, so your phone’s calendar does that part.

1. 1

   Seal it.

   Close the envelope, or finish the note and pin it.

2. 2

   Date the outside.

   Write the open date where you’ll see it first.

3. 3

   A calendar event.

   Put it on the open date and call it “Open the letter”.

4. 4

   An alert that morning.

   Apple’s guide shows how to add an alert to an event (opens in a new tab).

The event name should make sense at a glance. “Letter thing” will confuse you next October.

Opening it, a year later

When the alert goes off, read it once, slowly. Then sit with it for a minute.

Some lines will land. The worry from line 2 may have shrunk to nothing, and you’ll wonder why it got a whole row.

But some lines will sting a little. Both kinds are worth reading.

Write the next letter the day you open this one.

If the letter reminds you that you liked writing, how to start journaling again makes the daily version small. And how to journal for self growth adds a monthly look back that fits with it.

Tonight, water the plant, then write line 1.

Next year, you’ll know whether it lived.