Want to Know the Future? Today Will Tell You.

From time to time, we all wish to see the future, to know what is in store for us and how our lives will play out. For good or ill, there is a way to read the ending of the book of our life in advance: look at today.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
Today is more powerful than a crystal ball for predicting your future.

A few weeks ago, the family went to see the movie Epic, which has a gag about a fruitfly being asked  what it’s like to only live one day and then dying before he can finish the answer. I laughed at seeing an entire life from youthful enthusiasm to regret pass in seconds…but it was an uncomfortable laugh. Here at mid-life, the idea of living for only one day hits a little too close to home.

Annie Dillard writes, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” The truth of this observation is self-evident and it’s implications for personal prognostication are intriguing: Today is your life story writ small.

The Truth
How long have you been alive? We tend to answer this question in terms of years: “I am 45 years old.” But we don’t live in years; we live in days. Like the fruitfly, we are born with each sunrise, work, play, and dream our day away, and then succumb to an almost irresistible sleep. Each day may be connected to the one before (and hopefully will be connected one after it), it but it is, in reality, its own discrete unit.

Telling the Future
Are you wondering about your future? Look at today, look at yesterday: they will tell you because your life is made up of days just like them.

If you want to know whether you will be successful at work in five years ask yourself if you were successful today. If you want to know whether your children will love and respect you when they are older, ask yourself if they loved and respected you today. If you want to know whether your finances will be sound in twenty years, ask if your finances are sound today. These questions, if asked and answered honestly, are more powerful than any crystal ball.

Of course, not every day provides an accurate prediction—there are outliers, but they are, by definition, rare: not every day will be graduation, or include a car wreck, or some bad shellfish. A typical week, accurately tracked and honestly examined will provide an accurate look at the future.

Changing the Future
Understanding that our life is really lived in days, and that those days can tell the future empowers us to change. After all, you don’t need to change your life, just change today. This takes just two steps:

  • Plan. There are as many planning techniques as there are blogs on planning, so I won’t cover them here. The important thing is to decide what your one, two, or three priorities for the day are and then write them down somewhere so that you will see them. This can be as simple as a yellow sticky note, or as complicated as a computerized to-do list with timed alarms.
  • Execute. Do what you have planned.

As you plan and execute around your priorities,you will your life by changing your day.

Now here’s a question for you. What does today say about your future? What do you want to change?