On this day

Find ways to remember what life looked like in the past

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to figure out what happened in your life
on this day in the past. Revisiting this specific past

(00:25):
is a great opportunity to recall memories and reflect on
your life. Longtime listeners know that I have been tracking
my time for a great many years. Now. I will
be celebrating nine years of continuous time tracking this April. Yes,
that means that if you want to know what I

(00:46):
was doing at ten thirty am on February sixteenth, twenty seventeen,
I could in fact tell you now. I don't normally
go hunting back for random memories from random times, but
for the past two years I have been doing something
else to reflect on specific days. I finish my weekly

(01:06):
time log on Monday mornings, and since I name my
logs after the Monday, like February five, February twelve, February nineteen,
this means that the time log from six years ago
has the same name. February fifth was a Monday in
twenty twenty four and twenty eighteen, though the leap year
will change that match anyway, On Mondays, I have been

(01:28):
opening the log with the same name from several years prior.
I look at exactly what I was doing on those
dates six years before. Usually, given all the detail I
see from tracking my time in half hour blocks, I
can remember that week. I reflect on what life was
like then, and these memories from daily existence. Oh, yes,

(01:52):
that was the week when the Eagles won the Super
Bowl and several of my kids got the stomach flu.
Life has both good and bad, often wrapped up in
the exact same block of time. Now. I know that
my time tracking obsession is perhaps rare, but lots of

(02:12):
us have some way of checking life in the past.
Think about what you could do regularly to remember what
life was like on this day in prior years. One
obvious way is to look at old photos. If most
of your photos are on your phone, and I am
guessing that is the case for many of us these days,

(02:33):
then they are probably tagged with the date. Likely your
phone offers you up and on this date option, sometimes
open it see what you were doing. If something was
worth taking a picture of in the past, it might
be interesting to see. And even if your phone isn't
creating such a slide show for you. You can do
this on your own. Just go back to months or

(02:55):
years and scroll back and choose this month from a
prior year in to see this time. What were you
doing two years ago this week? If nothing else, it
is fun to see pictures of kids when they were littler,
or you and your spouse when you were younger. You
might have other options. If you have kept any sort
of journal, you can go back and look around at

(03:18):
today's date. You might build this into some sort of
weekly ritual. What were you writing about three years ago
or five years ago? Maybe something that was a big
problem then isn't now. That's good to know and celebrate.
You can even look at old calendars. Go back through

(03:38):
your electronic calendar if you can, and see who you
were meeting with on various dates, or go through your
paper calendars and see what was scheduled. I have wound
up remembering events and conversations that I might have forgotten.
And if none of this is readily available, well commit
to leaving some breadcrumbs for future you to. Lots of

(04:01):
places sell five year journals that allow you to just
write a sentence or two about a date when that
date comes around again next year. If you are still
using the journal, you will see what you wrote about
the previous year, and when the date comes around again,
you will see what you are doing the previous two years.
Keeping this really doesn't need to take much time. I'm

(04:22):
sure it's less than sending that marginal extra email, but
it can be a big boost for your happiness. I
find that acknowledging the past and taking more active control
of our memories can be helpful in life. What I
like about my time log is that it shows everything

(04:42):
I might have remembered a week in February where multiple
kids had the stomach flu as being well. Not much fun,
and parts certainly weren't. But I also did cool stuff
like spend a few hours in the library working on
a book, and of course watching the Eagles win the
Super Bowl. I know my stories cannot be all good

(05:02):
or all bad, and that richness makes memory a lot
more rewarding. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening,
and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks

(05:25):
for listening to before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,

(05:47):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M