One Second Everyday (Going Back in Time)

I remember wanting to capture memories everyday. I didn’t want to miss even a single day of my life.

I used to watch old photos of my childhood and get very nostalgic. I could go back in time and enjoy that moment, even if it was just for a split second of time. I loved to do that.

And it occurred to me that I didn’t want to miss any day or moment of my life.

That might be the reason I have lots of photos on my hard drive. I would take photos of almost anything, everyday. It was because I knew I’d love to watch them when I grew old.

I started to think of alternative ways to capture all those moments. Maybe I could take photos of everything that happened during the day. Maybe I could record videos every time, whole day.

But those ideas were all impractical. So, I started taking lots of photos, just because I didn’t want to miss anything in the future.

I was paranoid about it.

I just wanted something to capture everything so I could go back in time and enjoy those beautiful moments whenever I wanted.

I had given up the idea of saving every moment everyday because it was highly impractical. I need to have lots of hard drive space. Even 1 TB wouldn’t be enough for a years video. And even if I could store in hard drive, I wouldn’t be able to filter and watch all those videos.

Same for pictures. I started to take lots of pictures and I didn’t have any time to watch them. Most of them were crap pictures, which didn’t make any sense.

I thought that there should be a common ground I could settle for. Nothing worked. I even tried writing journals everyday, and even recording audio. And still, it didn’t work. I wasn’t happy with that either.

To this point I had tried almost everything I could to save and preserve worthy moments of my life.

However, I did find a solution for that.

Some months ago, I stumbled across a TED talk about capturing one second everyday. That was one of the coolest idea I’ve ever come across in my entire life. I instantly fell in love with it. I loved the idea of capturing one second everyday for the rest of my life.

That was it! That’s what I’ve been searching for my entire life.

The idea was simple, yet effective. It just takes one second to record your whole day. After I see that one second, I can remember the whole day. So that one second preserves my memory.

You take one second of any event you do during the day. And that one second will help you revert back in time and enjoy that moment.

Here’s the one second video I took from September 13, 2013 to September 12, 2014:

But it requires devotion and persistence. I had questions filtering my mind like, What if I forget to capture one second everyday? What if I lose interest on it?

It just takes one day for you to lose momentum and interest on it. So, it’s very very important that you don’t forget to take one second video everyday.

I took a pledge to do it as long as I could, and started it at September 13. As you can notice, September 13 is a random date. I started it at random date because I figured that date doesn’t really matter. It’s persistence and determination that matters. What’s the difference between starting at October 1 as opposed to September 13, if you’re not persistent at it?

There’s no difference, you just need to start someday and do it exactly when you feel like.

I find it really easy to figure out if someone is really serious about his or her goals. If a person waits for a specific date to start working on his goal then he’s less likely to achieve it. Whereas, if a person starts to research and create steps to reach that goal and work on it right away, he’s more likely to achieve his goals.

A person who waits for New Year or Birthday to start working on his or her dream are less likely to succeed.

So, keeping this thing in mind, I started taking one second video from September 13. It was that day when I had resource available to start taking video and so I started it from that day.

I researched how I can make it seamless and less difficult in the long run. And I figured about an app developed by the guy who gave that TED talk. The app is called ‘1 Second Everyday’ and you can choose one second from your video and manage it.

You don’t have to do editing(which is a huge turn off for some people). The app will take care of everything. You just need to take videos.

The benefits:

1. I’m really bad at commitment. And this project has allowed me to learn to make commitments. It’s easy when you first start because you are inspired and excited to do it. But as time moves on, all those inspiration and motivation wears out and you feel like quitting. This project has taught me to resist that temptation.
2. This project reminds me to enjoy life. We’re so busy everyday that we forget to spend sometime for ourselves. It’s not so fun to watch one second of desk and work everyday. So, I need to go out and take one second video of nature or something interesting, which indirectly reminds me to go out and enjoy life.
3. It’s always good idea to look back in time and see how you’ve improved overtime. How you spent your time some years ago. What you did and all.
   Since, I take one second video everyday, this project taught me to look back and see how you are progressing overtime. Progressing in terms of enjoyment, life, and relationships.

Do you find the idea of capturing everyday appealing? If yes, what are you doing to capture everyday moments? It can be anything: writing, video recording, photographs, blogging, etc.