With the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. I believe that by being selective about where I direct my energy, I can achieve results that are exponentially greater than if I split that energy across many different goals.

More details about the process are in this blog post and you can review the results from past years (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, & 2019).

2020 Theme: Action Economy

My theme for 2020 is action economy.

This is a phrase I’ve borrowed from board gaming where it describes the ability of a player to utilize their limited turn actions to maximize their ability to score points.

The real life application of this is efficiently using my resources (time, skills, knowledge, network, money, etc.) to achieve the goals that I’ve selected for myself.

This is the second full year of my sabbath cycle focused on preparing for my calling. As I think about achieving goals over the long term, and I realize how thin I am stretched, effectively using my resources has become a top priority for me. I need to get better and doing more with less. This year I want to spend some time thinking about that and building heuristics I can lean on in the future.

This year will be centered around learning how to effectively measure the inputs needed to achieve outputs, how to more accurately predict them ahead of time and how to reduce them.

2020 Challenge: Develop a Strategy Evaluation Model

For my challenge this year I am going to develop a model that I can use to evaluate various potential strategies for achieving a goal. I want to be able to use this to quickly (and hopefully accurately) predict the costs of each strategy, so that I can select the best one.

Some things I want to think through as part of this are; what is the value of my time?, how should I factor in risk potential?, how can I account for other externalities?, what other outputs do different strategies have? and how should I value them?

The end result, I hope, will be a model that lets me answer questions like; is it better to mow my lawn myself or pay a neighbor kid to do it?, should I take on a high paying project that uses my current skills or invest time learning a new skill?, or should I go on another training run before trying to run 93 miles around this volcano? (hint: yes)

2020 Habit: Run 13 Projects & 52 Common Tasks Through the Model

My habit will directly pour out of the challenge. I want to apply the model I develop to 13 of my 2020 projects and 52 of my common tasks. My hope is that by doing so, I’ll find out that some of the ways I spend my time or money are best handled in another fashion.

For the former, I will look at projects I take on during the year and use this to estimate the cost and effectiveness of the strategy, which I will then compare to the reality after the fact. I use GTD to organize my life and usually have ~6-10 projects that are active at any point – things like planning a vacation, getting a new job, buying a house, learning to stand up paddle, etc. These projects range in complexity and duration but what they all share is that they are things I want to have accomplished and if I can accurately define what it is that I want to accomplish, I can better optimize how I get that done.

For the latter, common tasks are something I track via recurring ToDos. I have ~100 that I undertake with various frequencies; 40 yearly (like this blog post!), 10 semi-annually, 17 quarterly, 9 monthly, 6 biweekly, 5 weekly and a few at various other increments in between. Those will be potential place for big impact, especially the tasks that take a significant amount of time due to the compounded impact of saving effort on a task that I repeat many times.

2020 Exemplar: Warren Buffett

I still struggle to find good Exemplars. I need someone that demonstrates the quality, that has documented their thoughts about it and/or that has had a lot written about them. That tends to limit me to famous and successful people. That doesn’t seem altogether wrong – successful people often get there due to the same good choices and behaviors I want to emulate. But they also get there by making certain tradeoffs and I’m worried I’m overexposing myself to those tradeoffs. I am also concerned that this pool of people is disproportionately white men – something that will limit the experiences I have a chance to learn from and relate to.

That said, I’ve chosen a successful, famous, white man this year because I had a hard time thinking of anyone that has had more success prioritizing and think about the value of things. I know essentially three things about Warren Buffett

1. He has made a good bit of money investing in companies he thinks are valuable, when others don’t see the value
2. He is an advocate of ruthless prioritization
3. He has simple tastes and plans to give all of his money away

These things all seem like they fit with this year’s theme of action economy quite well. Buffett’s success and contemporariness also means there is a ton written about him.

Interestingly Buffett is the first exemplar I’ve selected who is still living and I’m actually only two degrees away from him socially – people I know have met him. I don’t think that means I’ll have a chance to spend 1:1 time with Buffett this year to learn from him directly, but I have thought about selecting exemplars I’m closer to in the future as a way to learn more directly from them. This feels like a step in that direction.

2020 Bucket List Item: 100+ Mile PNW SUP & Trail Running Adventure

This year for my bucket list item I’ve decided on the general flavor of what I want to do, but I haven’t yet figured out the specifics. I am going to combine two new loves of mine into something new (to me at least), awesome and thoroughly PNW.

The area I currently live is made up of mostly two things, bodies of water and wilderness areas with trails. I’ve been enjoying both over the past few years – running on the trails and SUPing in the water.

I decided to combine those into a single adventure by undertaking a 100+ mile SUP (stand up paddling) and trail running adventure.

By combining these two modes of transportation, I will be able to get to anywhere within ~100 miles of my house, including many remote spots that there is no easy way to go to via a single mode of transport. By land or by water, I will cut a path and get there. There is something really cool about that idea and it might open up some new camping options for the future.

It is also nice that these two activities utilize different parts of the body, so preparing for both of them should offer me some well rounded fitness this year.

I’m excited to figure out where I can go and then get there. The last time I went SUPing in the sound I had an encounter with a pod of jumping orcas and the last time I went for a trail run I bumped into a mountain lion, so combining the two sports feels ripe for adventure.