The short answer: no study has tested a dated, emailed letter like the ones written here, but nearby research points somewhere modest and useful. People make more future-friendly choices when their future self feels vivid, similar and likable. Specific if-then plans help people act on goals. Writing about feelings helps a little, on average. In one school study, writing a reply from the future self, and not only a letter to it, made the bigger difference. And one recent experiment found that a kind letter to your past self lifted mood more than a letter to your future self.
The details, and where each claim stops, are below.
What researchers have studied
Researchers have studied future-self thinking, planning and writing for years. This article covers six studies, what each one measured, and where the claims stop.
The six cover different parts of the question:
- Hershfield and colleagues, 2011, on images of the future self and saving money.
- Hershfield, 2011, a review of how people relate to their future self.
- Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006, a meta-analysis of if-then plans.
- Frattaroli, 2006, a meta-analysis of emotional disclosure.
- Sugimori, Yamaguchi and Kusumi, 2024, on writing to a past or future self.
- Chishima and Wilson, 2020, on writing to the future self and writing back.
None of these studies tested Letter to Future Self, so nothing here is evidence about this service. Several were small experiments with particular groups of people, so their findings apply to those groups first.
Future self and today's choices
In the 2011 study by Hershfield and colleagues, people who saw age-progressed images of themselves chose to put more toward retirement savings than people who did not. The experiments were short and run in controlled settings, so they show an effect on a choice in the moment, not on what anyone saved in the years that followed.
A 2011 review by Hershfield, in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, pulls these ideas together. It says people are more willing to make choices that help their later self when that self feels similar, vivid and positive. Calling it a review matters. It summarizes thinking rather than adding a new experiment.
For a letter, this points to one habit: describe your future self as someone you can picture clearly, who is recognizably you, and whom you like.
Plans and goals
This is the part of the research with the strongest support. In 2006, Gollwitzer and Sheeran published a meta-analysis of implementation intentions, which are if-then plans. An if-then plan names a situation and a specific action, such as “If it is 9:00 on a weeknight, then I close the laptop.” Across the studies they reviewed, these plans had a medium-to-large average effect on reaching a goal, with a Cohen's d of 0.65.
That number describes an average effect across many studies and tasks. It is not a success rate. An average across 94 tests cannot tell you how likely you are to succeed, and it does not mean the plan works for everyone in every case. It does suggest that a specific if-then plan is worth writing down. If your goal is hard to measure, choose a plan with a visible action, such as a walk or a phone call, so you can tell afterwards whether it happened.
Writing about hard things
Expressive writing is the research term for writing about emotional experiences. In 2006, Frattaroli published a meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin of 146 randomized studies of “experimental disclosure”, in which people put their thoughts and feelings about personal topics into words. The average effect was positive but small, with a correlation of .075.
That is a useful correction to the idea that writing about feelings reliably helps. The benefit is real on average, but it is modest, and the studies differ from one another in many ways. A letter about a hard season may feel helpful without changing much else, and that is still worth something. Do not expect a single letter to carry more weight than it can.
If you try it, write about the hard thing in plain words for about 15 minutes, then stop. Reread it the next morning, and notice whether the words still fit. The 15-minute limit is our suggestion, not a finding from these studies.
The caveat: the past-self letter did more for mood
The most recent study here carries the clearest warning. In 2024, Sugimori, Yamaguchi and Kusumi reported an experiment with 150 university students in Japan. Each student wrote a compassionate letter to a past self and one to a future self.
In that experiment, the letter to the past self lowered negative feelings more than the letter to the future self did. The study involved university students in one country, so treat it as a reason for care rather than a verdict on future-self letters.
In practice, keep the tone kind. If your letter holds worries, give them a frame: say why you are writing them down, and end with something warm, so the reader is not left alone with a list. If you notice that you feel worse after writing, put the draft aside and come back to it later, perhaps on a different topic. If writing about the future leaves you feeling distressed, pause and talk with a doctor or counselor. If you are in crisis or feel unsafe, contact a local emergency number or a crisis line now.
The closest study to a real letter
One study did test letters to the future self as an exercise. In a 2020 paper in Self and Identity, Yuta Chishima and Anne Wilson worked with high school students on a vocational track. Students randomly assigned to write a letter to their future self and then a reply from that future self showed bigger increases in future self-continuity, the sense of being connected to the person you will be, and in career planning than students who only sent a letter.
It was one group of students, so treat it as a hint rather than a rule. But it suggests a simple step: after you write your letter, try writing the reply too, and keep it until the real letter comes back.
How to use the research in your own letter
If you want to bring the science into your draft, keep these four principles in mind:
- Describe your future self in specific, positive detail.
- Write one if-then plan for each goal you care about.
- Name one hard thing in plain words, without a list of failures.
- Keep the tone kind, and put a frame around any worries.
Here is a short example that follows these choices. It pictures the future self kindly, makes one plan and says one hard thing plainly.
Dear future me,
I picture you a year from now, still walking the long way home past the river, sleeping a little better than I do. I like that person already.
Right now I am working longer hours than I like, and I am not sure the job is right. I have one plan: if it is six o'clock on a weekday, I leave the laptop at my desk. If that does not happen, I will write down why and try again the next week.
One hard thing, said plainly: I am tired of pretending this is fine.
[your name]
A letter is a small, personal act. No study here followed a letter like this one to see whether it changed savings, goals or mood over time.
Write it now
Write a short letter that describes your future self in specific detail, with one if-then plan and one hard thing said plainly. Keep the tone kind, with no pressure and no list of failures. Then choose the day it should arrive, and keep your own copy, because the success message does not include the text.
