Ten years ago I wrote a blog post about where I thought I’d be in 2024. We’re finally here! Looking back at the blog post now I can remember exactly what my life was like back then, and I can imagine what I would think of my life now. I’m going to address my predictions and then make some more for 2034. I’d also love to hear your ten year predictions and may link to a few if you email them to me.
One thing I said in the original post, referring back to the previous years was:
The two big themes I noticed in the changes I went through were first that they would have been pretty much impossible to predict, and second that they were all good surprises.
That has continued to be true, and will hopefully be true for the next decade.
The 2014 predictions:
Family
Have long term partner: 90%
Have at least one child: 85%
I do in fact have a long term partner. I predicted that we would only be married if there was some logistical reason to be married. That also ended up being true, though I think I would have been surprised at just how much I like being married and how I now value marriage vs just being in a committed relationship.
I have no children! That was a big change over the past ten years, where I went from being 100% eager to having children to now thinking there’s about a 30% chance. I’ll write more about that in 2034 predictions.
Finances
Have net worth of >$5MM: 80%
Have net worth of >$40MM: 20%
Have a real job: 1%
I didn’t predict that I would become uncomfortable giving specific financial information, so I won’t be addressing the net worth predictions. I do not have a real job.
I did also predict that Bitcoin would mature, which was true, and that I would still be a minimalist and live below my means. I’m not sure I can entirely say that I’m a minimalist, but I do live well below my means and I still only wear two shirts.
Learning
Learn at least 5 total languages: 70%
Learn at least 20 total languages: 50%
Learn at least 50 total languages: 25%
Learn to paint: 70%
Learn ballet until I perform once for an audience: 75%
Learn to fly (IFR/VFR): 95%
I did badly with this prediction. At the time I was really into learning languages, as you can see. My criteria was “at a basic level”, and I think you could say that I have that for English, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. I can bumble along with basic phrases in German and Hungarian, but I can’t say that I speak them at a basic level. 70% of 5 is 3.5 languages, so I’d say I sort of got it right on the first prediction in terms of EV but that’s a generous interpretation.
I never learned to paint or any do anything artistic. At the time I remember wanting to grow Sett, sell it, and become a painter. My interest level in that waned over time.
I was actually fairly on track for ballet, but once I moved to Las Vegas the ballet training wasn’t nearly as good as San Francisco, and I stopped going. In San Francisco I was probably 6 months away from performing at a retirement home (the teacher really liked me and kept bringing me to more advanced classes, and she set up small ballets for retirement homes). I think the 75% guess was a good one for this.
I did learn to fly a little bit and flew with 100% control of the plane from LAS-LAX (Thanks Miguel!), but the instructor did the radio and I never got any farther. As buying a plane became a more realistic financial decision and I actually looked into what it took to maintain and operate a plane, I completely lost interest. I was way off on this prediction.
Renown
Most people I meet know who I am: 65%
To quantify it, I think that I will at least be well-known enough that most people I meet (which is a massively biased sample) will know of me. I don’t think anything I do will result in people I’m unlikely to meet knowing who I am by sight or name.
It’s hard to decide whether this is true or not. By the letter of the law it is, but mostly because I’m less interested in meeting new people, so new people I meet tend to be within my circle and have probably at least read something from my blog.
But I think spirit of the law, I was wrong. 2013-2014 was probably the peak of my mainstream exposure. Since then I have become far less interested in being well known and have, if anything, made decisions to reduce my renown. At the time I expected the opposite to happen.
Random Odds
Seven or more books written: 80%
This was true. I had 3 at the time with one in production, and I now have seven out. I’m impressed that I nailed the number.
Record deal/Guest track: 5%
At the time (see renown section) I was excited to become famous and was excited to rap a lot. I would say I did approximately zero towards this goal in the past decade, which I must have known was true because I gave it a 5% chance.
Island is really awesome: 99%
This is a neat one because we had just bought the island and had done zero work on it, but it is in fact awesome now. It’s suffered a few setbacks due primarily to covid, but I’d say I got this one right. We have a yurt and a cabin, an outhouse, trails, a fire pit, and we love going up there. I predicted that I would spend a month there per year and the real number is 2-3 weeks.
No medicine taken: 55%
No non-prescription medicine taken: 90%
This is still true. I haven’t even taken a tylenol.
All seven continents visited: 95%
So close! I’ve been to six and will probably go to Antarctica this year. I had been to 35-40 countries at the time, predicted I’d be up to 70 by now, and am actually around 95. I was pretty close on this one.
Live in San Francisco: 80%
I predicted that I would live in SF, and specifically that I would spend 6+ months there per year. I now spend the minimum time possible to visit my friends there, so that was certainly wrong.
I also predicted that I would move out of the RV, which was true (and probably obvious), but I thought I would keep it. I didn’t, but my friend owns it, so not that far off. I also said that I would spend at least 2-3 months out of the country traveling, and that’s true. I average around 4-5 I think (or maybe 2-3 exactly if you count nothing for covid).
Eat healthier than now: 85%
Nope. I can’t remember exactly how healthy I was eating then but I think now I eat less healthy, primarily because I travel a lot more and have favorite restaurants in a lot of places. I still eat very healthy when I am home and don’t have guests, but those days seem fewer and fewer. My weight is about the same, but my body fat percentage is a little bit higher. This probably means that I’m eating less healthily, but I also just finished 2 months of cruising, so it’s not the most accurate time to sample.
Work out 3X/Week: 65%
Hard to score this one. I’d say it’s probably wrong because I think I work out 3x a week less than 65% of the time. Some of the time it’s for good reason, like because I’m doing strenuous manual labor at home, but sometimes it’s not. I’d ballpark it as 50% of the time. Ok prediction, not great.
Tried alcohol, pot, etc: 0.5%
Tried LSD or mushrooms: 50%
I haven’t tried any drugs (or “plant medicine” as people like to say these days). I’m pretty surprised now that I put LSD / mushrooms at 50% back then. I’d put the number much lower now, which probably says something about the popularity of them and my interpretations of my friends’ experiences with them.
Blog still active weekly: 90%
Blog still active monthly: 99%
As you may know, I write monthly or so, not weekly. I did a “write a blog post daily” challenge with a friend around this time and had no idea how much it would burn me out. I also have increasingly larger areas of my life that I’m unwilling to share publicly, and I think that destroys some of the magic of the blog.
Thoughts on the Predictions
Overall I did okay with my predictions, but the 2014 blog post was about how unpredictable life is and I think the predictions really failed to capture the unpredictability of life.
In those ten years, besides the things I predicted, I bought three shared properties with friends, learned Japanese tea ceremony, did a ton of scuba diving, built CruiseSheet, bought a house and did a ton of cool projects on it, learned how to 3D print and build electronics from scratch, got really into pinball, moved to Vegas, started coaching and having live events, began collecting art, got a pet tortoise, finished 12th in a World Series of Poker event, went on a crazy amount of cruises, made and deepened friendships, have become somewhere in the realm of world class at crossword puzzles, got really into (watching) hockey, and became an uncle. There are also 3-4 massive things that are either too braggy or too personal to write here, but suffice to say that it’s been an absolutely incredible 10 years.
Will the next ten years be as wild? I have no idea. It feels like they won’t, but after writing that previous paragraph and seeing so many massive things happen in a decade, it seems inevitable that the next decade will be somewhere as transformative.
I’ll also take a second to say that I’m pretty proud of the decisions I’ve made over the past ten years and the actions I’ve taken. If 2014 year me could see the results of what he was about to do, he’d be blown away. I think I’ve maintained really good priorities and have stuck to deeply held convictions while also keeping an open mind and exploring different things.
2034 Predictions
All 7 Continents: 99%
Sort of a gimme, but I’m throwing it in since I predicted it for this year.
More Shared Properties: 15%
I think we’re all set now, but once in a while a friend has an idea for one, so you never know
Buying a yacht: 70%
I’m bumping up the % for this one because I think it sounds crazier than it actually is. I think I will get a group of friends together to buy a yacht of some sort. On the other hand, I may give up on it like the plane thing once reality hits.
Top 1% pinball player: 85%
I don’t know how to actually quantify this, but if I keep playing pinball I think I will be ridiculously good at it. For reference, my average Avengers score is 145MM, Godzilla is 80MM, TMNT is 11MM. Top scores are 1.7B, 628M, and 87M respectively. Total plays are 272, 131, 412. I’m including those so we can verify if they got better and maybe do some math.
Living in Las Vegas: 90%
I actually think it’s 100%, but I was so wrong about SF that I’m downgrading the odds a bit. I love Vegas and, unlike SF and most other places, it seems to be on a constant upwards trend with a lot of reason to believe it will keep rising. We also have a house I’d best describe as a “modest dream home” that I think we could live in for the rest of our lives.
Still Married: 99%
I can’t imagine any reason we would get divorced but I’m including a 1% chance of divorce just because crazy things happen.
Have Kids: 30%
If we do have kids I suspect it happens in ~4-5 years, because right now we aren’t anywhere near wanting to have them, but I can see a path where priorities change and we become interested.
No Medicine: 75%
I think I will still not have had any medicine. This might be a foolish bet, since I’ll be in my early 50s at that point, but I’ve got a good streak going.
Invent something at least 1000 people use: 25%
I spend a lot of my time now designing and building random ideas I have. I could see a world where I share one and it catches on.
Starting/owning a teahouse: 60%
I think I will probably start, buy, or invest in a teahouse. The ideal version of this is starting one in Las Vegas to try to replicate the impact Samovar had on San Francisco in Las Vegas. The problem is that I am not motivated to do the few things that make tea houses profitable, so I will only open it once I am comfortable running it at a loss indefinitely. Not there yet, but hopefully soon?
Write another book: 15%
I think I’m done with books, but you never know. I sometimes have ideas for fiction books and I go on enough cruises that I might get motivated some time.
Still Blogging: 90%
I think at this point (almost 20 years in!) I’m pretty locked in to blogging. My guess would be that I keep a roughly monthly pace, but we’ll see.
Learn to Paraglide: 70%
I think I’m going to learn how to paraglide. I’m roughly planning on getting into it this summer, but I’ve also said that before.
Live in the Same House: 60%
This is really tough because I love our house and have done a ton of work to it. I feel like we will definitely still live there, but when I look back at the past decade (RV->tiny apartment->cool house) I wonder if something weird happens. My guess for most likely expansion would be to buy a neighbor’s house and try to combine them.
Random Predictions
Just for fun I’m going to make some wild predictions that I’m not thinking a ton about or taking too seriously. It’s more to test whether my gut instincts are correct.
Ethereum will be worth 30-40k, Bitcoin 150k+. Neither will be the global reserve currency, but at least one will be important within the international financial system (countries will transact with each other in it). Ethereum will be established as the money protocol of the internet.
China will have significantly more control/influence over Taiwan than it does now
Trump will be president again
We will have a young (~50 or younger) president as a reaction to recent times
Vegas will be even more obviously established as the entertainment capital of the US and will have improved its relative standing among similar cities.
We still won’t have true mainstream self driving point-to-point cars, but most new cars will handle highway driving and will be primarily electric
AI will feel like it was overhyped in 2024, but everyone will interact with it every day
The important issues of the day will have almost nothing in common with today’s issues. I’d guess that they will be more financial than social.
Paying for internet in any location other than your home will seem insane (airplane, cruise, foreign country, etc).
Some people will fly supersonic commercially
The stock market will average ~5% annually (positive but lower than historic)
Interest rates will be extremely low again (near 0 fed funds)
Work will become increasingly gig/task/contractor based. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was almost “uber for tasks” where employees could do bits of work on demand and businesses build processes using automation.
VR will finally have its moment. In the 2014 post I had just tried a prototype of the first Valve headset. Meta Quest headsets have moments of magic but no killer app. I believe that magic will eventually spread. I’m not super bullish on Apple’s vision of “work inside ski goggles”, but I could easily be wrong.
This is controversial and high variance (since it seems like we are trending the other way), but I think traditional relationships will become more en vogue. In particular, more emphasis on two committed parents vs coparenting, single parents, etc.
I think there will essentially be two consumer environments, one where everything is as bad as it can possibly be to serve its purpose (and priced accordingly) and one where products are made thoughtfully and of good materials. You could argue that this is already happening, but I think the middle will disappear even more.
We will hit a tipping point with renewable energy, attitudes towards nuclear, efficiency, etc where we are on the “right track” towards a sustainable future. This may only be clear in retrospect (i.e. we may be there by 2034 but not know it until 2050). Politicians will still freely exaggerate both sides of the argument for their own purposes, but I think it will no longer be a top 5 issue.
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Photo is a cool cactus garden in Melbourne
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