Making the Most of Your Past, Present, and Future

Past, present, and future connected through memory dividends
A conceptual map showing the non-linear relationship between experiences, time, and memory dividends—where active present investments yield lifelong recall value.

In Die With Zero, Bill Perkins articulates the concept of a memory dividend. The idea is simple: some experiences do not end when the event ends. They keep paying you back each time you remember, retell, revisit, or share them.

This overlaps with the idea of a core memory, popularized by Disney/Pixar's Inside Out and its sequel. In the films, core memories are highly significant moments that help shape a person's personality, relationships, and sense of self. A real life memory dividend works in a similar way: the right experience can keep influencing how you see yourself long after the moment has passed.

Perkins puts it this way:

"Your Life Is the Sum of Your Experiences."

"Unlike material possessions, which seem exciting at the beginning but then often depreciate quickly, experiences actually gain in value over time: They pay what I call a memory dividend."

"The payoff from an investment does not have to be financial. When you teach your daughter to swim or to ride a bike, it's not because you think she'll get a better-paying job with those new skills. Experiences are like that: When you spend time or money on experiences, they are not only enjoyable in the moment -- they pay an ongoing dividend. Experiences yield dividends because we humans have memory."

The useful shift is to stop treating every experience as a one-time expense. Some experiences are closer to long-term assets because they become part of your memory, identity, relationships, and stories.

Should We Live in the Past, Present, or Future?

You might say, I don't like or want to live in the past. I only care about the present and future. That is reasonable. But consider a simple experiment.

For a day or a week, study your own mind and ask:

What percentage of my thoughts are about the past, the present, and the future?

Do you spend most of your time reliving memories from the past? If so, you may be living life on rewind.

"What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that's gone forever, impossible to reproduce." - Karl Lagerfeld

Or do you stay in constant "do, do, do" mode with no time to pause, reflect on the past, or imagine the future? If so, you may have hit play and forgotten about rewind and fast-forward.

"I just don't believe in anything from my past. Anything. No memories. No regrets. No people. No trips. Nothing. A lot of our unhappiness comes from comparing things from the past to the present." - Naval Ravikant

Or do you spend excessive time dreaming about a future that never seems to arrive? If so, you may be living life on fast-forward.

"Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what it was." - Zora Neale Hurston

If you try the experiment, one idea becomes apparent: it is hard to categorize our thoughts into neat buckets of past, present, and future. The mind seems to move across time almost effortlessly.

While it is true that the present is all we have, the reality is that our minds navigate across time. Instead of forcing the mind to live in only one tense, we can use its nature more intelligently.

"Unless we manipulate our surroundings, we have as little control over what and whom we think about as we do over the muscles of our hearts." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Why Memory Dividends Matter

There is plenty of emphasis on living in the moment and building your future. There is less emphasis on deliberately investing in a past you will be glad to revisit.

Memory dividends are a useful concept for prioritizing experiences that may not have immediate financial value but can create enormous memory value over a lifetime.

With memory dividends, you invest in an experience now so you can relive it later. And not just once. You can revisit those memories many times, much like a financial investment can keep paying dividends over time.

How to Optimize Memory Dividends

  • Keep a written bucket list of experiences you want to have.
  • Get creative with the list. Travel, learning a language, starting a business, writing a book, or building a family tradition can all count.
  • Trade off time and money thoughtfully. Not every meaningful experience requires a large budget.
  • Start early on the highest-priority experiences. Do not wait for retirement by default.
  • Reflect on past experiences and identify your most memorable peak experiences.
  • Minimize regret by asking, "At the end of my life, will I regret not having done this?"
  • When feasible, act sooner rather than later. The earlier you invest in meaningful experiences, the longer you can collect memory dividends.
  • Capture and preserve precious memories through photos, videos, journals, or shared rituals, then back up the digital ones so a single device failure does not erase them.
  • Use photo-app memory features as prompts to revisit the past and share meaningful moments with friends and family.
  • Use sight and sound to make memories more vivid. Do not just look at pictures. Learn basic photo or video editing so you can turn your media into musical slideshows or short videos, then watch those memories come alive with friends and family.

You may find that, over time, reliving some memories brings even more enjoyment than the original experience itself. That is the compounding nature of memory dividends: the experience keeps paying you back in new ways.

Seneca's reminder fits here:

"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested." - Seneca

For your own life, ask: what experiences will you prioritize this year so your future self can reap the memory dividends from investments you make today?