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A couple of weeks ago, I received an email. It was from myself, having sent it precisely a year before, packed full of predictions for the coming year: learn to do a backflip (90% likely) still living in Cambridge, UK (75%) England to win the football world cup (5%) (...) I wrote it to see how my view of the future would compare with how events actually turn out. The results showed me a lot about how we see the future, so I'm sharing them with the community here On average the predictions were reasonable. Out of 8 items I'd considered to be 40% likely, 3 happened (38%). Out of 12 things at 60%, 5 happened (42%). Both things at 85% did happen. However, my view for the future was clearly a lot more exciting and action-packed than my predictions! I didn't realise it at the time, but if my predictions had been accurate, I'd hardly have had time to catch my breath amongst everything else. To simulate this, I took some random numbers and interpreted these to determine what would happen in an example year - and got the following: still doing weightlifting and football changed career completely and bought a house composed more piano music, and went to another metal concert entered the Mental Calculation World Cup 2014 travelled to 2 new countries had an active love life learned to front handspring, to backflip and to handstand (more minor things) Imagine how much effort it would take for all of that happen in a single year! 2014 was a good year for me, but not quite this busy! Why were my predictions like this? I think there are several connected reasons: [a] We tend to make predictions - and plans - in isolation. Yes, if I made it a priority I could compose a metal/guitar composition, but then I'd be prioritising something else less. Maybe I'd be doing less gymnastics. Yes, I could've decided to change career, but after all the thinking and applying and admin and stuff and indecision, I wouldn't have as much energy for learning to drive or going travelling. I find that the same thing often happens in NF challenges - I choose several goals that would be reasonable if they were the only thing being worked on, but forget that when we have 5 goals like this, there just isn't enough motivation available to do everything One year is a long time! I've just Googled it, and there are various quotes to the effect that "you overestimate what you can do in a year, but underestimate what you can do in ten years". [c] I am overconfident. The items in my list that I assigned the most exaggerated probabilities to were the ones that would have caused me the most pride, for example achieving various gymnastic and strength goals. It's sobering to see this overconfidence illustrated so vividly, but it's actually something I value quite highly. It's so much easier to motivate yourself to do difficult things if you have an unreasonably high confidence in them. Taken to the extreme, you become simply deluded with limited ability to make useful plans. But in moderation, it can significantly help your progress towards your goals. Furthermore, you have more fun in the process if you believe you're always on the cusp of greatness (If you're an underconfident reader, it's worth working on increasing your expectations of the future for this reason) So how will all this change my outlook of the future? I'll still have the same optimistic viewpoint, but I'll remember to act as if life will change less quickly than I expect. And that means that if I want anything to change, it requires me to be proactive about that change, because I can't rely on the random fluctuations of life to bring about those changes for me.