Trust Your Past Self

Or more cynically, don’t trust your future self.

This is a mindset I use to avoid screwing myself over later. Any time I’m in a situation where I should prepare for the future but feel the pull of laziness or procrastination, I picture my future self going about his day, assuming past-me handled things. That image pushes me to do the work now.

Take meetings at work. Someone assigns me an action item, and my first instinct is always, “I’ll remember that.” But I won’t. I know this. So I bring the framework to mind and force myself to write it down immediately.

Later, when I'm going about my day, there's a real sense of comfort in opening my to-do list and knowing everything important is right there. I've already done the responsible part. Past me took care of it.

A reminder I set for myself a year ago...

Another place this shows up is in code. It’s so easy to ship something slightly messy because “future me will understand it.” But he won’t. He’ll be annoyed. Taking a few extra minutes now to simplify a function, name something clearly, or refactor a confusing edge case makes a huge difference later. When I come back to that same file weeks later and everything clicks immediately, it’s the same feeling of trust. Past me put in the work.

This mindset has helped me cut down on irresponsible laziness. My future self shouldn’t have to clean up after me. If I want him to move through life with confidence, the work needs to happen now.

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