The Future Self
The person you’ll be in five years is being built by today’s choices. What do you want that person’s relationship with food to look like?
The Short Answer
Your future self is a construction project, and every choice today is either adding to or subtracting from the person you’re building. If you want your future self to have an effortless, healthy relationship with food, today’s actions need to be the building blocks. Identity isn’t declared—it’s accumulated through behavior. What you do today is quite literally who you’re becoming.
Something to Sit With
Close your eyes and picture yourself five years from now—the version you want to be.
What does that person’s relationship with food look like?
What brick can you lay today toward becoming that person?
Learn More
The Construction Metaphor.
Imagine your future self as a building under construction. Every action is a brick:
- Skip the late-night snack: one brick toward the person who doesn’t eat after dinner
- Honor your eating window: one brick toward the person with defined meal times
- Choose water over soda: one brick toward the person who drinks water by default
- Walk past the candy bowl: one brick toward the person unaffected by workplace snacks
One brick is nothing. But five years of bricks is a building. The person you are in five years is made of the bricks you’re laying now.
What Do You Want That Person to Look Like?
Be specific. Vague goals produce vague results. Consider:
Their daily pattern: When does your future self eat? Do they have an eating window? What’s their morning routine? Their evening routine?
Their relationship with temptation: Does food call to them constantly, or is it just fuel and occasional pleasure? Can they be around problematic foods without struggle?
Their automatic behaviors: What does your future self do without thinking? Are their defaults healthy, requiring no ongoing willpower?
Their identity: How does your future self describe themselves? “I’m someone who…” what?
Their physical experience: How does your future self feel in their body? What’s their energy like? Their relationship with clothing, movement, physical activity?
The Gap Analysis.
Now compare that vision to today:
What habits does your future self have that you don’t have yet?
What does your future self not do that you currently do?
What’s in your future self’s kitchen that isn’t in yours? What’s missing from theirs that’s currently in yours?
Each gap is a construction project. Each gap is closed through daily actions that accumulate.
The Voting System.
James Clear’s concept of “casting votes” applies perfectly here. Every action is a vote for the type of person you’re becoming:
- Each time you eat within your window, you’re voting for being a time-restricted eater
- Each time you choose whole foods, you’re voting for being someone who eats whole foods
- Each time you handle stress without food, you’re voting for being someone who has non-food coping strategies
The votes accumulate. Eventually, majority rules. Enough votes in one direction, and that’s who you are.
The question becomes: what are you voting for today?
The Compound Effect.
Small daily choices compound dramatically over five years:
- Skipping 200 calories of evening snacking daily = 73,000 calories annually = meaningful weight change
- Walking 20 minutes daily = 600+ hours over five years = significant fitness accumulation
- One small habit improvement = 1,825 repetitions over five years = deep automaticity
The person you’ll be in five years is the compound effect of thousands of small daily choices. The choices feel small today; the compound effect is enormous.
The Present-Future Connection.
Your future self doesn’t exist independently. They’re not waiting somewhere for you to become them. They’re being created right now, by you, through your actions.
This is both empowering and sobering:
Empowering: You have complete control over who you’re becoming. Every choice matters. Every day offers building opportunities.
Sobering: There’s no escaping the construction. If you’re not building the person you want to become, you’re building someone else. Inaction is also a choice.
Further reading:
- Clear J, Atomic Habits, 2018 — On identity-based habits and voting for your future self
- Hershfield HE, “Future self-continuity: how conceptions of the future self transform intertemporal choice” — Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2011
- Parfit D, Reasons and Persons, 1984 — Philosophical foundation on personal identity over time