S4E17: Send the right letters to Future You

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Tuesday, and welcome to the LCP, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages, and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway.

So, in Animal Crossing, the video game that I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about before, because I love it, you can send gifts and postcards at the postbox, which is obviously run by Dodos, who also run the airline, to the other animal villagers on your island or real life friends that you play with. But there’s another option that’s really interesting to me, even though, I have never used it. You can send a letter to your future self.

And I started thinking about what we send to our Future Selves, and how effective we are at doing it.  

Psychologist Steve Taylor in his book Back to Sanity tells an anecdote of watching tourists at the British Museum in London, as they stood around the Rosetta Stone. He recalls that they were intent not on looking at the artefact, but on filming it. Of keeping it on their phones and cameras for some kind of future benefit, maybe to revisit or share the experience later on. It was almost an investment for Future Them that they were so devoted to, that they were willing to forego the full sensory experience of being present, in the moment, while it was right in front of them.

And this made me consider all the resources that we squirrel away in our language learning. Most of the time, we are doing it not to get stuck into them straight away, but because we think they might come in useful for our Future Self. The thing is, a lot of the time, we aren’t being strategic about it. We’re like a squirrel who snaffles all these acorns away, only to forget we ever put them aside in the first place.

How many of us have so many things saved, things we want to read, things we want to listen to, people or accounts we want to check out, daily series of videos where we’d love to be listening to them every day but we haven’t properly listened to a single one the whole way through yet? But we stash them away anyway, because we imagine we’re laying the groundwork for Future Us to pick up later. But that Future Self will forget. That Future Self will be too busy stockpiling resources for her Future Self.

Wouldn’t it be so good if we had a system where once a week or at least regularly, we scheduled in time to visit all the treasures we’d collected, and maybe pull one out and play with it for a while? And more than that, once a semester, a few times a year, we went through the things that we’d saved for Future Us, the Us that was more advanced or had finished her assignment or whatever and we looked at what gifts Past Us had left for us for that exact moment? The moment we hit B1 level, or finished that assignment, or had a full week off? Because as it is, it’s like hundreds of letters from Past Us are going unopened.

What if, instead of hoarding in a flurry of “this could be useful someday”, we got really intentional about what we wanted to send Future Us to do or read or look at? 

What if we collected our resources in a way that sent letters to Future Us? Letters that said, when you get to that creative project you want to do, these are the things I’ve handpicked that I think will help you? When you reach the summer holidays, these are the Netflix series that I think you’d love? When you start formally studying grammar, these are a couple of YouTube channels that I’m so excited for you to explore further? 

You’re making these investments and sending those gifts to Future You, so make sure Future You gets them. And when you send those notes or save those files of things to check out later, don’t forget to tell Future You that you’re thinking of her and you believe in her.

And if you like what I do, please support me! The Language Confidence project is growing and all sorts of exciting things are happening in the next few months, and I need your help to make all of this happen. There are so many ways that you could lend a hand right now. If you know someone who would benefit from listening to this podcast, send them a quick message with the episode attached. If you work in or know someone in a language school or a university language department, please suggest this podcast for both them and their students. If you can and you want to, support me on Patreon, because I have a Patreon now, and the link is in my bio! And finally, if you’re new around here or I haven’t met you yet, or come and talk to me! Leave a comment on today’s episode on a positit on Instagram, send me a DM, or even better, book a call as part of the 100 Conversations Project with me! The link to that is also in my Instagram bio at @teawithemily. I would love to hear from you.

Have a wonderful day, and I will see you tomorrow.