Hi Me in 1 Year
A Letter to Future Me
Hello!
Thank you for reading the Brainwaves newsletter. I’m Drew Jackson, your content curator.
Welcome to this special edition!
Hi Me In 1 Year
Today is 12/3/24.
I’m setting this article to go public in 1 year.
You’re reading this on 12/3/25.
For those of you who are not familiar with this concept or have not seen Mr. Beast’s pre-recorded videos, here’s an example. The premise is simple: write a letter (or series of letters) to your future self and pre-schedule them far in the future as an interesting thought concept you can look back on in the future to see where you thought you would be at vs. where you actually are at (maybe it’s better than you thought or maybe it’s worse).
Here’s the structure of this article:
Where do I want to be in 1 year?
What do I want to have accomplished in 1 year?
What is 1 piece of knowledge my future self should know?
Where do I want to be in 1 year?
Extrapolating from the past into the future is difficult, but here are some ideas of where I believe I will be in one year:
I will be continuing to run this newsletter in 1 year (although it may be slightly different by then). This newsletter has been and hopefully will continue to be, a great creative vehicle wherein I can keep in touch with the world around me, give back to those who are interested, and develop critical thinking skills about key topics influencing our future.
I will be happy with my career and will keep crushing it at work. For those of you who aren’t familiar, I’ve accepted a role as an investment banking analyst at Meridian Capital. So far it’s been a great experience, and whether or not it continues to be that way, overall I hope that I’m able to exponentially learn and grow and become a better, more refined person through the opportunity.
I will be graduated from college and will be moving onto a new phase of my life. I plan to graduate college in the spring of 2025 and will enter the workforce full-time for the next 20+ years. Making the change from schooling for the past 16+ years of my life to working forever will be a stark change, but I’m very excited to have a little more schedule stability.
I will be more in tune with my spirituality and personal values over the course of the next year. I’ve begun to find a good niche of beliefs and a mindset that I really enjoy and hope to continue exploring over the next year. That isn’t to say that I can’t find something else, but I hope either way I purely have some intellectual curiosity in relation to these topics to continue to add depth to my beliefs.
What do I want to have accomplished in 1 year?
As someone who’s always pushing myself to learn, grow, and develop into a better person each day, I have many goals and aspirations I’m always working towards. Here are some of the things I hope will be accomplished in the next year:
Grow the newsletter to 200+ subscribers and get a solid viewership on each post: I hope the newsletter continues to take off over the next year. It’s been a large journey over the past year building, developing, and refining this process.
Make a positive impact on at least one person’s life each week: The overarching goal of this platform (and my life in general) is to make a positive, hopefully lasting, impact on someone’s life each week. With 52 weeks in a year, I could positively impact over 4,000 people over the course of my life, which is a great goal to have.
Outperform at my job/career: As someone who will be freshly entering my career full-time for the first time, I need to push myself to succeed in order to start my career on the correct, accelerated track. I’m a big believer in the thought that your trajectory (no matter what subject/tract you are on in life) is greatly determined by where and how you start. To elaborate, if you decide to start your career lackluster and don’t push yourself to succeed, you may be passed up on critical promotions which potentially will stifle your growth. To set yourself up for the most success in the future, you should push yourself to succeed at all times (especially in the beginning).
Explore the depths of my personal values: Throughout the last couple of years I’ve been able to develop and define my beliefs and values, so I plan to continue reading books, listening to podcasts, and talking to people about their values.
Travel and experience the world: As I’m only taking 2 classes this next semester, I should have some time to go around and travel and hopefully explore the world. No idea yet where I want to go, but I think traveling a bunch would be super exciting and helpful to see a lot of the world.
What is 1 piece of knowledge my future self should know?
Recently I finished the “We’re All Dying” article, and I think you should go back through and read the obituary that you wrote. That’s the life you wanted to have lived (based on your perspective on your life as of a year ago).
Is it all still relevant? Is there anything you would change now?
Keep up the good work! I hope this last year was 10/10.
Thanks!
Drew Jackson
Website: brainwaves.me
Twitter: @brainwavesdotme
Email: brainwaves.me@gmail.com
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