Last Updated on September 24, 2026 by Michelle
I am writing this while on vacation in Ho Chi Minh City.
It is late morning, and I am sitting with my husband at Opera, the restaurant inside Park Hyatt Saigon.
Loving the space and totally enjoying my time here. This is one of my favourite hotels.
He is sitting beside me doing his own work.
I am doing mine.
Except mine doesn’t really feel like work.
I have just finished a long, relaxing breakfast. There is nowhere I need to rush to. I am sitting somewhere beautiful and luxurious, but also calm. I have a few days here while my husband is on business, and I have been looking forward to this little break.
And right now, I feel incredibly grateful.
Not because anything extraordinary is happening.
Actually, almost nothing is happening.
I’m sitting at a table, with a nice relaxing vibe. With lush green views. It’s supposed to be rainy here but today, it’s rather sunny.
I’m thinking.
I’m writing.
I’m developing an idea.
But I am loving this exact moment.
And perhaps that is the point.
The Life We Keep Waiting For
We spend a lot of our lives preparing.
We study so that we can get a good job.
We work hard so that we can progress in our careers.
We save so that one day we can have financial freedom.
We exercise so that our future bodies will be healthier.
We raise children hoping they will eventually become happy, independent adults.
We build.
We prepare.
We work towards something.
There is nothing wrong with this.
In fact, I believe deeply in thinking about the future.
Much of my own life has been shaped by decisions made for a version of myself I had not yet become.
But sitting here this morning, I found myself thinking about something else.
What if the things we do for our future could also make our lives better today?
What if we didn’t always have to choose between enjoying now and building later?
What if some of the best decisions in life could reward us twice?
Once today.
And again in the future.
I Am Building My Future Right Now
For the past few years, I have been developing something called Be Your Own Role Model.
BYORM started as a personal idea, one I believed in solely for my own self.
Increasingly, I think it may become my life’s work.
I think a lot about what it means to live well as we get older.
Not simply to live longer.
To live well for longer.
What would make us excited about life at 60?
At 70?
At 80?
How do we maintain our health, our independence, our curiosity, our relationships, our financial freedom and our sense that there is still something ahead of us?
These are the questions I want to spend the second half of my life exploring.
And this morning, sitting here at the Park Hyatt Saigon, I am doing exactly that.
I am thinking.
Writing.
Testing ideas.
Trying to understand what BYORM really means.
Every hour I spend doing this contributes to something I hope will exist years from now.
Perhaps one day there will be a book.
Perhaps talks.
Perhaps long conversations on podcasts.
Perhaps BYORM will help people think differently about how they design the second half of their lives.
I don’t know exactly what form it will take.
But I know that the thinking I am doing today is building towards it.
So this morning benefits my future.
But here is what suddenly struck me.
It is also benefiting me right now.
Because I love doing it right now.
The Best Things May Reward Us Twice
I could think of many examples from my own life.
I strength train because I want to be physically strong and independently mobile when I am older.
That’s the future benefit.
But I also like how my body feels now.
I like feeling that I’m getting stronger.
I like having energy. I like hearing that I am full of energy from people around me.
So exercise rewards me twice.
I invest because I want financial freedom in the future.
But financial freedom isn’t something that suddenly begins on the day I leave my corporate career.
Every dollar I have saved and invested has already given me more freedom.
It is part of why I can sit here this morning, in a beautiful hotel, without feeling that enjoying this experience threatens my financial future.
The future benefit is financial independence.
The present benefit is peace of mind, feeling of yeoyu and freedom of choice.
Again, twice.
I learn languages because I imagine versions of my future life where I spend extended periods living in places like Tokyo and Paris. I also like the feeling that I am improving in the languages I love.
But I also genuinely enjoy learning them today.
I write because I want to develop a body of work.
But I love the process of thinking through writing.
I spend time with my children because I hope we will have wonderful relationships when they are adults.
But I also simply enjoy being with them right now. I love how we laugh with each other.
I invest in my marriage because I want us to still enjoy sitting beside each other decades from now.
But here we are today.
Sitting beside each other at a relaxing breakfast table.
Each doing our own thing.
Perfectly content.
The future benefit doesn’t require sacrificing the present.
The present is already part of the reward.
Maybe This Is What Life Design Should Be
When we talk about designing our future, there is a danger.
We can turn life into one enormous self-improvement project.
Exercise more.
Save more.
Learn more.
Build better relationships.
Develop expertise.
Eat better.
Create good habits.
Be disciplined.
Optimize everything.
All in service of this magnificent future person we hope eventually to become.
But what happens to the twenty years in between?
I don’t want to spend my 40s and 50s preparing to enjoy my 70s.
I want to enjoy my 40s.
My 50s.
My 60s.
And hopefully my 70s too.
So perhaps good life design isn’t about sacrificing today for tomorrow.
Perhaps it is about increasingly finding choices that serve both.
Things that make today’s life richer while quietly building tomorrow’s.
I have started thinking of them as double-return choices.
They give something back immediately.
And then they continue compounding.
Life Has More Than Financial Compounding
We understand compounding when it comes to money.
Invest consistently over a long period and something relatively small can become something substantial.
But increasingly I think almost everything important in life compounds.
Health compounds.
Knowledge compounds.
Friendships compound.
Marriage compounds.
Relationships with our children compound.
Skills compound.
Confidence compounds.
Curiosity compounds.
The promises we keep to ourselves compound.
Even our ability to enjoy our own lives may compound.
One workout doesn’t transform your body.
One dinner date doesn’t create a marriage.
One conversation doesn’t create a close relationship with your child.
One book doesn’t create wisdom.
One investment doesn’t create financial independence.
One blog doesn’t create a body of work.
But repeat these things over years and something remarkable happens.
They become a life philosophy and life itself.
Meet Her in Your Imagination
Recently I have been thinking a lot about my 70-year-old self.
I’m 48 now.
So she is a little more than twenty years away.
I try to imagine her.
How does she move?
What does she do on an ordinary Tuesday?
What is she still learning?
Who does she spend time with?
What does she contribute to society?
What kind of relationship does she have with her husband and children?
What does money allow her to choose?
What is she looking forward to?
And most importantly:
Would I want to become her?
I have started to think that perhaps this is what Be Your Own Role Model really means.
Instead of looking outside ourselves for someone whose life we want to copy, perhaps we can create our own role model twenty years ahead of us.
Meet her in our imagination.
Get to know her.
Then ask:
What does she need from me today?
If she is strong at 70, perhaps she needs me to exercise today.
If she is financially free, perhaps she needs me to invest today.
If she has deep relationships, perhaps she needs me to put my phone down and have a conversation today.
If she has expertise worth sharing, perhaps she needs me to read, think and write today.
Then we start.
And we let twenty years of ordinary actions compound.
Meet her in your imagination. Then spend the next twenty years becoming her.
But Enjoy Becoming Her
There is one thing I would add now.
Don’t spend twenty years waiting for her.
Enjoy becoming her.
That might be just as important or even the most important.
Choose exercise you actually like.
Build relationships you enjoy being in.
Learn things you’re genuinely curious about.
Create work that gives you energy.
Spend money intentionally on experiences that make your present life richer without compromising your future.
Build financial freedom, but allow that freedom to improve your life along the way.
Put things on the calendar you look forward to.
Have slow breakfasts.
Travel.
Walk.
Read.
Talk.
Think.
Laugh.
Be around things and places that inspire you.
Sit beside someone you love while you each quietly do your own thing.
Because the process isn’t an inconvenient twenty-year waiting room before your future life begins.
The process is your life.
This Morning Is One of the Tuesdays
A while ago, I wrote that I don’t dream about retirement anymore.
I dream about Tuesdays.
I think I understand that idea even better this morning.
I used to think designing my future meant imagining some wonderful life waiting for me later.
But maybe the real test of life design is much simpler.
Do I like my ordinary days?
Not every minute.
Not every day.
Life doesn’t work like that.
There will be stressful Tuesdays.
Sad Tuesdays.
Boring Tuesdays.
Tuesdays spent in hospitals.
Tuesdays filled with responsibilities we didn’t choose.
A good life cannot mean being happy all the time.
Maybe it means building a life whose ordinary days we fundamentally want to inhabit.
And today happens to be one of the very good ones.
I am sitting at a breakfast restaurant at the Park Hyatt Saigon.
My husband is beside me.
I have had a beautiful breakfast.
I have a beautiful view.
I am enjoying my favourite Seville Orange Bacha coffee.
I have the financial freedom to enjoy being here.
I have work ahead of me that I am genuinely excited to build.
And I am spending this morning thinking about the very ideas I hope to spend the next few decades exploring.
Nothing dramatic has happened.
But I feel deeply grateful.
Because I am thoroughly enjoying the now.
And, quietly, I am also building tomorrow.
A Question Worth Asking
Perhaps there is a simple question we can ask when deciding how to spend more of our time:
Does this reward me twice?
Does it make my life better today?
And if I keep doing it, will it make my future life better too?
Not everything needs to pass that test.
Sometimes we should eat the dessert simply because it tastes wonderful.
Sometimes we should waste an afternoon.
Sometimes there doesn’t need to be a future return at all.
That is part of living too.
But imagine if more of our everyday choices could do both.
Pleasure and progress.
Enjoyment and compounding.
Today and tomorrow.
Perhaps then life wouldn’t feel divided into the years when we build and the years when we finally live.
We would simply be living.
And becoming.
At the same time.
I don’t want to arrive at 70 and discover that I successfully built the woman I imagined while forgetting to enjoy the twenty years it took to become her.
I want both.
I want to meet her in my imagination.
I want to spend the next twenty years becoming her.
And I want to love as much of the journey there as I possibly can.
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