A year or so ago I heard about a pretty cool website that’s a very simple idea with an interesting angle. The name of the site is FutureMe.org and its whole premise is to offer people the ability to write an email to be sent to themselves at a particular date in the future.

At first I thought it sounded kind of silly and couldn’t see a practical use for it. But after thinking it over a bit and reading some of the public entries, I realized how this website could be a really useful goal-setting tool. I then wrote a one year goal recap to myself. In it I stated the things I hoped to have accomplished by the time the email was sent to me. I was actually pretty surprised at how well I had done.

If you read the public entries you’ll also see many more types of emails; from humorous to sad to scary. You really can use it in a number of different ways. Your email doesn’t have to be public either. You can keep it unlisted which allows you to be specific (i.e. using names and places). I went that route and made my goals as specific as possible.

Of course you don’t have to use FutureMe to set goals for yourself. You could just write them down on a piece of paper, like they used to do in the stone age, but who wants to do something so old fashioned? I will admit that it is a fun surprise to see your message in the inbox months or years after you wrote it. If you’re like me you forgot what you wrote the minute you hit send, so the email serves as a nice reminder of what you intended to achieve that year.