Write This Letter to Your Future Self
Nir Eyal's Future Self Letter builds on the stories that shape us — and it's the most concrete exercise I've found for writing the next chapter.
Earlier this year I wrote about the stories that shape us — the narratives we carry about who we are, what we’re capable of, and where we’re headed. The core idea: storytelling is one of the most natural and powerful ways we shape our experiences, our memories, and what we’re willing to try next. Which is why I want to share this exercise.
I’ve been following Nir Eyal for years. He built his career studying how gaming and advertising companies engineer behavior — then wrote Hooked, the book that pulled back the curtain on how habit-forming products actually work. His latest, Beyond Belief, turns that same lens inward: the science of how we form, hold, and change our beliefs about ourselves. I’ve already preordered it.
He recently shared one of the exercises from the book, and it stopped me. It’s called the Future Self Letter, and it’s one of the most concrete tools I’ve seen for doing something that’s genuinely hard: getting outside your current doubts long enough to see a path forward.
The structure is simple. Imagine it’s December 31, 2026, and you achieved the goal you set at the start of the year. Now write a letter about yourself — in third person — covering four things: what you achieved, the obstacles you expected and how you handled them, the turning point that changed everything, and what you learned about yourself in the process.
The structure does the work. It forces you out of the present tense and into a perspective that’s almost impossible to access when you’re in the middle of it.
Full exercise, plus Nir’s framing on the psychology behind it, is worth your time:
A quick note:
I’m taking a breather and dropping to once-a-week publishing. I talk a lot about not losing yourself in the doing, so I’m taking my own advice. Substack makes it easy to preschedule posts, but real engagement happens around the content — responding, showing up, being present — and that defeats the purpose of a break. Each week I’ll share something worth your time: a recommendation, a piece from the archive, or something I’ve been thinking about. I’ll be back to my full twice-weekly cadence or personal columns and guest mentors the week of April 13. Thanks for being part of this!