Why Writing to Your Younger Self is the Best Advice You'll Ever Get
Who is the target audience of your content? A lot of advice tells you to consider this before writing. Here's one way I deal with this common question creators face.
Write for yourself. More specifically, write to your younger self. Write to a previous version of you.
Why do I write to my younger self?
The three main reasons I write to my younger self are:
- Context
- Honesty
- Memory
Context
The person that I have the most context on is myself. The most specific target audience I can serve well is myself. Since that's not really useful, the next best audience is people like me. People that share the same journey but are at an earlier point. I get to be the old wise man in someone else's heroic journey. How cool is that?
When I write to my younger self, I have enough context to deliver lessons in a way that I would have understood and accepted. Someone out there needs to hear a piece of advice, specifically from me, because of how I share it.
Memory
Sometimes, I don't have enough time to process an experience. Life gets so busy. The unprocessed experience lingers in my mind and becomes a recurring thought. It takes up mental space. When you finally reflect on it, it's literally a younger you going through the experience in your memory. For me, the recurring thoughts usually fade after writing.
When I write to my younger self, sometimes previous lessons come up, and it's a form of reinforcement. It's a reminder that I've encountered this problem before, and there might be signs that I'm missing. It helps me connect the dots or spot a pattern more intentionally.
Honesty
I'd argue that people's most common form of writing is journaling.
When I journal, I write something to myself. It's an honest conversation about what's going on. I have a hunch that some people hesitate to write because of the clarity that journaling produces. It's hard to face what you're truly thinking sometimes.
Honesty is a good starting point for writing. Making excuses and rationalizations is easy when you're up and about living life. When I set aside time to write, for some reason, it feels pointless to lie to myself in writing. Then, to read it back to myself seems doubly pointless. It makes sense that honest writing is the only option.
What do I write?
I write about what's on my mind and things I need to process further. One of my biggest challenges right now is navigating my new career. So, I write a lot about that.
Focusing on my challenges feels selfish since common advice tells creators to provide value to others. We want to solve other people's problems, not our own. But how many times have you wanted to pick someone's brain? There are many experts out there who I wish had written a book. Writing about your own experiences brings people value.
Writing and reflecting help consolidate your learnings like:
- obstacles encountered
- potential solutions you could choose from
- what you did
These can all turn into pieces for sharing. At this point, I might have some solid takeaways that are reminders or new lessons. As I said earlier, this can be useful to others like me. So, share your lessons where others can find them.
When do I write?
So much happens on a day-to-day basis, and modern life hardly gives us time to pause. The details of a situation get hazy over time. Sometimes, a lesson is in the past because of this. Then, you're more likely to reencounter the same problem and repeat a mistake.
So, it's important to document things as they come up. This way, the fine details are not at risk of being forgotten with time. These could be bullet points to revisit later when I'm not short on time. Even just a few notes about something will help with remembering.
Ideally, I write every day. Some popular systems, like the bullet journaling method, could help. My partner keeps me accountable to this ideal scenario.
How did I start writing?
I remember being younger and having a busy mind. Something about journaling crossed my attention, and I gave it a try. Since then, I've been writing on and off with periods of higher activity when I'm stressed.
This current writing phase is my attempt to write even without stress. The good times deserve reflection, too.
My advice on writing
Write a short snippet about an experience. Try to capture the highlights, the obstacles, and any small wisdom from it.
I do this in short form. Hopefully, the snippets capture enough details to retain the essence of the story. Writing this way means I'll have to review and expand on my writing. That's ok. Sometimes, my mind needs the space between these sessions, and it's processing things unconsciously.
If you're like me and you really want to write longer pieces, the snippets become the building blocks of something bigger. Start small to get going. Save your work. Commit to a bigger effort when you carve out the space to do it.
I still call myself an inconsistent writer, but the advice above has helped push me farther into my writing journey.
This blog post was from when I challenged myself to write one thousand words daily. My Notion note says I created the bulk of this post on January 22, 2024. My writing prompt was writing and the five W's. I dilly-dallied six months before I reviewed it and expanded it to what it is now.