In his classic book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey famously wrote, “Begin with the end in mind.” Come with me on a journey to the end—the end of your life.
Imagine it’s the day of your funeral. You’ve had a long, productive life. There is sadness, but also a warm remembrance of a life well lived. The funeral service is over and people are telling stories about your life. These are people who knew you personally over the years. They can remember your mannerisms, the tone of your voice, your personality, and your quirks firsthand because they knew you and spent time with you.
Fast forward 25 years after your death. Anyone who knew you personally is now an adult. 25 years is a long time, and their memory is fading a bit. They still have pictures and videos, but those are probably archived on a hard drive somewhere or stored in the cloud on a server. There are still people alive who knew you personally, but the generation born after you died only knows you through the stories people tell about you, or things like pictures and videos that were left behind.
Jump ahead to 50 years after your death. We’re getting further away from those who knew you personally. The only ones still alive who knew you personally, knew you as kids or young adults, and now they are old, if they are still alive at all. Somewhere in a basement, someone might have some pictures or other mementos stored that were connected with your life.
It is now 100 years after your death. Several generations have grown up since you’ve been gone. There’s not a single person alive who knew you personally. Your kids and grandkids are probably gone as well.
The technology and media landscape will have changed so many times that ancient video and audio files, and even social media archives, from over 100 years ago, when you were still alive, have either been erased or archived in some vast collection of human data. But even if your great-great-grandkids generations after you can access all that, what will they find? They’ll find birth and death records, legal documents perhaps, and maybe a bunch of random social media posts if those are even accessible.
But how will they know YOU? What will they know about your story, your hopes and dreams, your ideas, and what your life meant?
There is only one way those future generations will know those things. They will know because you wrote them down.
Begin with the end in mind. Don’t leave your legacy to chance. Write it down so it won’t be forgotten.
Daily Question: Your life will come to an end someday—what do you want to leave behind with your writing?