"Time Travel" mental model: Audit your life today to prevent a 2035 breakdown
The Energy & Biology Audit (The "Physical Debt")
In 10 years, you won't regret not working an extra hour on a Tuesday; you will regret the chronic inflammation or reduced mobility that prevents you from enjoying your success.
The 2035 Perspective: Medical tech will likely be more advanced, but it will be "proactive" rather than "reactive." If you enter 2035 with metabolic syndrome, you’ll spend your fortune just trying to get back to baseline.
The Action: Move from "weight loss" goals to "functional longevity." Focus on VO2 Max and Muscle Mass. These are the two greatest predictors of quality of life as you age.
The Red Flag: If you are currently trading sleep for "productivity," you are taking out a high-interest loan that your 2035-self cannot bankrupt out of.
The Cognitive & Skill Architecture (The "AI Divide")
The biggest regret of the 2030s will be "Intellectual Obsolescence."
The 2035 Perspective: By then, being a "specialist" in a narrow, repeatable task will be a liability. The people thriving will be "Polymaths"—those who can connect dots between psychology, technology, and ethics.
The Action: Stop learning "How to use Tool X" and start learning "How to Frame Problems."
- Low-Value: Knowing a specific software.
- High-Value: Understanding game theory, systems thinking, and human persuasion.
The Pivot: If your job can be described in a 5-page manual, it will not exist in 2035. Start moving toward roles that require high-stakes empathy or complex physical navigation.
The "Compounding Relationships" Portfolio
We often overestimate what we can do in one year, but underestimate how much a relationship can grow in ten.
The 2035 Perspective: In a world of deepfakes and AI-generated content, Human Authenticity will be the most expensive currency. You will regret having 5,000 "connections" but no one who would pick up the phone at 3 AM.
The Action: Prune the "lukewarm" friends. Invest heavily in "deep-time" rituals—annual trips, weekly meaningful dinners, or shared projects.
The Metric: Who are the 5 people you want to be sitting with at a table in 2035? Are you giving them your best energy today, or your "leftover" energy?
The Regret of "The Unlived Life" (The Hidden Risk)
Psychologist Thomas Gilovich found that in the long run, people regret omissions (the path not taken) far more than commissions (the mistakes they made).
The 2035 Perspective: You will likely not remember the "failure" of a startup or a rejected proposal. You will remember the "What If?" of the business you never started or the city you never moved to.
The Framework: Use the Regret Minimization Framework (popularized by Jeff Bezos). Project yourself to age 80. Will you regret trying this and failing? No. Will you regret never trying? Yes.
The Strategy: Small-scale experimentation. Don't quit your job tomorrow, but start the "Version 0.1" of that dream today.
Predicting the future is a fool's errand, but preparing for its requirements is not. Most people fail not because they chose the wrong path, but because they drifted down no path.
If you had to pick one area—Health, Wealth, or Relationships—where you feel you are currently "drifting" the most, which one is it?







