Yearly Focus

2022 Focus: Three Quarter Year Update

Better every year. That is my goal. I believe that through focused effort I can keep improving and ensure my best years are still in front of me.
With that in mind, at the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. By being selective about where I direct my energy, I can achieve results that are exponentially greater than if I split my attention.

I detailed my 2022 focus here (read that first if you want more context) & did a quarter year and half year updates as well.. Here is how I’m progressing.

2022 Theme: Forecasting

I’m 3.5 books into this theme and generally still enjoying it. I’ve found forecasting and optimal decision making are very closely intertwined topics and the book I’m reading now ‘Thinking Fast and Slow” is a bit more focused on decision making and how our brain works, but I think it is still helping me generally understand how I think, the biases behind that and how I can improve my thinking on predictions.

  1. “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction” Philip Tetlock
  2. “Thinking in Bets” by Annie Duke
  3. “The Signal and the Noise” by Nate Silver
  4. Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki
  5. “Noise” by Daniel Kahneman
  6. “How to Measure Anything” by Douglas Hubbard
  7. “Super Crunchers” by Ian Ayre
  8. IN PROGRESS “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman
  9. “Think Again” by Adam Grant
  10. “Data Detective” by Tim Harford
  11. “How not to be wrong” by Jordan Ellenberg

I recently got to make a pretty big prediction about the future in terms of a career move. I’ll write more about that soon, but moving jobs tends to be one of the bigger financial decisions I make and I recently made a pretty big move, that is riding on a big forecast.

2022 Challenge: Become a Superforecaster

I’ve participated in 69 questions this year of which 27 have resolved. Based on those I’ve successfully lowered my average Brier score on GJOpen.com from 0.357 to 0.348 (lower is better).

All of the questions that resolved in Q3 were ones where I was in the middle of the pack. The best I did was the top 1/3 and the worst was ~2/3rds. Part of the issue is the number of people making predictions is pretty small and most of them are decent at this. Part of the problem is I’m paying attention to the consensus and so I’m never going to be too wrong, or too right. I need to get a bit bolder to stray from it (I do have a few upcoming questions where I went the opposite way and things have slowly shifted towards me).

2022 Habit: Spend an Hour A Week Managing Forecasts

I’m 7 for 13 in Q3. I’ve had a hard time fitting these in this quarter, but hope to improve as we go into Q4, especially since a lot of questions resolve at the end of the year.

2022 Exemplar: Steve Jobs

I started reading the Walter Isaacson biography of Jobs which is giving me the insight I wanted. I’m excited to cruise through it.

2022 Bucket List Item: Finish the Cascade Crest 100

I finished the 100 mile race in ~31 hours without much trouble.

I was middle of the pack 72nd out of 126 finishers. Another 45 people weren’t able to finish. Middle of the pack isn’t bad considering every entrant had to have previously done a 100 miler (or mountain 50 miler that year) so no one on the starting line was a chump.

I’ll write more about it soon, but I think I was a bit too conservative, given my last mile was sub-8 pace. Maybe I need to push a bit harder next time.