It is easy to spend an hour on the words of a letter and ten seconds on the date. That is understandable, because the date field looks like paperwork. It is also a mistake. The day your letter arrives decides what the letter lands next to: a birthday cake, a Monday meeting, a quiet afternoon.
The date is part of the message
Think of the date as a sentence in your letter that you do not have to write. A letter delivered on your birthday says “Here is a year in review.” One delivered on an ordinary Tuesday says “I thought of you on a day with nothing going on.” Neither is better. They simply do different jobs.
So before you choose, answer one question: what do you want this letter to do on the morning it arrives? Cheer you up, check a plan, mark a change, or make you laugh at who you were? The answer points to the date.
Landmark dates
Birthdays, the first of the month, the first Monday of a new season and the start of a new year are all landmarks. They already feel like beginnings.
There is research behind that feeling. In 2014 Hengchen Dai and two colleagues found, in three sets of real-world records, that Google searches for “diet”, gym visits and commitments to goals rose after temporal landmarks such as a new week, month, year or a birthday. The study does not promise that a landmark changes your life, but it does suggest that these dates make starting feel easier.
Landmarks suit letters about plans, habits and direction. The cost is that they can be crowded. A birthday morning may be full of messages and plans, and your letter may be read quickly, if at all.
Distance dates
A distance date is chosen because of how far it is from today. Exactly one year after a decision. Six months after a move. Three months after you started something new. The date means nothing to anyone else, but it gives you a measuring stick.
These dates work well for check-ins. You write what you expect, what you are worried about and what you hope, and the letter shows up at the point where some of it can be tested.
Ordinary dates
An ordinary date is a day nobody else has marked: a Tuesday in the middle of November, a quiet Sunday in February. These tend to be the easiest days to read a letter. There is no party, no pressure and no sense that the day must be meaningful.
If your letter is tender, or about something that is hard to say aloud, an ordinary date can serve it better than a landmark. You can also pick an ordinary date for a time capsule, since it will tell you what a plain day was like.
Practical checks before you choose
Run through these quickly.
- Will you be able to read an email on that morning?
- Is the address you entered one you expect to still have then?
- Is the morning clear: no early trains, appointments or people to collect?
- Do you want a weekday, when you check your inbox, or a weekend, when you have time?
- Are you in the time zone you will be in then?
On the last two points: the email is sent between 8:00 and noon in the time zone your browser reports when you write, so if you plan to move, think about where you will be. And because the delivery time is somewhere in that window, do not rely on it for a letter that must be read before a nine o'clock appointment. Send that one the day before.
Far dates
The longer the distance, the more the practical side matters. Over ten or twenty years, email addresses change, providers close accounts and phones are replaced. If you pick a far date, use an address you have held for a long time, and write down somewhere else, in a note or a drawer, that a letter is coming and which address it is going to.
A far date also changes the tone. You are writing to someone who may have different work, different friends and a different home, so give them context and a few details about the world around you.
Quick choices and the calendar
The writing form offers quick choices from one day to three years: one day, one week, one month, three months, six months, one year, two years and three years. They count from your local today. For anything longer, or for a landmark that falls on an exact day, use the calendar. You can pick any date from tomorrow up to 20 years away.
Today and dates in the past are not accepted, so tomorrow is the earliest you can choose. Once you save the letter, it cannot be edited or cancelled, and there are no reminders, so be sure about the date and keep a copy of the words if you want one.
A one-line rule
Choose the date a letter would want to arrive on. Say it out loud before you pick: “I want this to arrive on the first Monday of spring because I will be ready to start something.” If you can finish the sentence, you have your date. If you cannot, try a different one.
Here is a small exercise. Write the job of your letter in one line, then list three possible dates, and cross out the two that fit the job least well.
A sample letter for an ordinary date
Dear future me,
I chose today because it is a plain Thursday and nothing else is going on. Birthdays already come with a crowd, and I wanted you to read this slowly. It is early spring, the coffee is on, and you have the whole morning. Since I last wrote, I hope you have kept up the Thursday swims. If you have not, get your towel out tonight.
[your name]
Write it now
Write the one-line job of your letter, then pick the date that serves it. Say why that day, even if only to yourself. Then write the letter and choose the day carefully, because it cannot be changed after you save it.
