If you’ve ever done family history research or just watched “Who Do You Think You Are” on the BBC, you’ll be aware of how time shrouds our knowledge of those who’ve gone before us. Faced with this simple fact, it’s surprising that so few people make a concerted effort to document their own life story for future generations.

Except that when you think about it, it’s not a trivial task. How do you pull together everything you’ve done in your life; where you’ve been, the people that you know, the work that you’ve done, what you’ve achieved; and of all the photos, videos, letters, audio recordings, anecdotes, Facebook posts or WhatsApp chats that together encapsulate your life? There are companies that will write your biography for you, and that’s better than nothing for sure, but in this digital age, printed media is hardly likely to be the answer.

At LifeStories International we developed software to collate all of your media and present it in a coherent LifeStory that runs on its own dedicated iPad or iPhone. We work with high net worth clients to record their own LifeStories based on face-to-face conversations and whatever media they would like to include.

When you do this, you find that leaving a record for posterity is not the only advantage of a LifeStory. In fact, there are two much more immediate benefits. The first is the ability to carry your LifeStory with you at all times. There are few better pick-me-ups than the ability to drop into all of your favourite memories and relive the great times that you had.  Having a tough day? Here’s an anecdote you recorded of the day when you closed a huge deal, or here’s a video of your children as toddlers. It’s called episodic memory and its a guaranteed tonic.

You also get the extra benefit of a fantastic tool for fending off memory loss as you get older. Medical professionals regularly identify the creation of a life story as one of the main tools in the battle against dementia. 

None of us like to think about our own death, but we plan what we’re doing to do with our estate after we die. Perhaps it’s time to plan what we’re going to do with our memories.