Focus – Julie Fredrickson

One consequence of consistent writing is having a large number of data points on my past predictions. I can go back and see how often I am right.

There is predictive value in back testing is clear. And in five years of writing I have lots of opportunities to apply my current dilemmas and compare them to what I’ve seen. If you’ve not heard of back testing here is a little summary from my Claude query.

Backtesting is a form of retrodiction—a special case of cross-validation applied to past time periods, used across finance, meteorology (where it’s called “hindcasting”), and other modeling domains.

In investment contexts, the underlying logic is that if a strategy performed poorly historically, it’s unlikely to perform well going forward, and vice versa.

The year 2026 has gone pretty well for me. I’ve made some good calls even as other situations globally look very chaotic. I feel like I’ve largely published my predictions and taken my shots and this is working out for me. The more I can look back on where I’ve been the better I get at acting on my calls.

I do continue to wonder how much anyone is paying attention to anything even as a huge amount of attention is being paid to manifestations that are only being seen as secondary or tertiary effects of bigger geopolitical and monetary events.

I don’t know if going into the future this corpus of guessing and noting and committing to thinking on the issues of the day will matter. Or might make life worse. But tomorrow on day 2027 maybe I’ll learn something new and put it into action and continue turning myself with the tides.

I’ve got a gift for generating momentum. If I can summon the energy and the willpower, I’ll put my total focus on unlocking whatever blocking issues hinder my goal.

The trouble is that this process doesn’t allow for multitasking. Once I turn my eye on a blocker, I’ll fixate on it until it is solved. I’m incredibly prone to tunnel vision.

I’m usually quite competent at prioritizing and ordering priorities correctly to take advantage of the is tendency toward focus. But sometimes I’ll get fixated on the wrong thing and I’ll stay stuck on a problem that shouldn’t be my first priority.

And it’s really hard for me to pull away from a problem if it’s an emotionally charged issue. Those typically involve my personal life. Problems with my friends, my family and my husband can easily hold my energy hostage. Even if it’s not a top priority, if it feels emotionally like it should be a top priority I’ll struggle to let it go.

Over the spring, one of my fixations was finding a stable living situation. In May when Alex and I went scouting for our second time in Montana I poured all my willpower and focus into removing blockers to purchasing a home. It was a grinding emotional process as where to live and when to make a major investment are hard questions.

Now that I’m less than a month out from the move, I can feel my focus shifting. The creative generative driving energy that secured us a homestead is now searching for its next home. It makes me shiver a little bit. Like I’ve got my own personal Eye of Sauron probing my reality for it’s next target. I know what it should be. But sometimes my focus isn’t well behaved.