Diary

Diary Writing Spring 1988 written 5/25 - 6/30

My manner of keeping diaries has evolved since the first one I began in 1974. The first one was primarily composed of sweeping summaries, interpretations of rather long periods of then recent history, or simply notes of my feelings at certain points. It wasn't until the last 25% of that first book that I began to write more frequently, about shorter periods such as weeks. The former approach covered through the end of 1976, and then I began more frequent writing in January 1977. Jan - Feb 15 '77. This latter technique continued in the second book, written through the third quarter of 1977. + May 1 (has 13-page review of mid Feb thru Apr) - Sep 30

These early writings include not only events, but also analysis and interpretation, and lists of appropriate future actions to take. Hence, they are quite complete in themselves, and relate why I made certain decisions then, and furthermore allowed comparison of my behavior and feelings against a later time, say a year or two later. Using those diaries during those years to track decisions and changes, I could sense the direction and theme of my life.

These writings do not seem explicitly useful to me now, except perhaps as entertainment. I have refined the habits of my life since the days of those early writings, so much so that the writings of those periods seem immature.

Probably the central change that has occurred in my diary writing is that they now contain much less summary and interpretation, and much more detail. Current diaries are more of a "log," and analysis of current events is written in separate essays, and stored by topic in folders or ring binders so that any topic can expand indefinitely. As noted above, the first book was primarily summaries, and the second book was more frequent but I began to mix daily or weekly summaries with my feelings and analysis, and then draw conclusions, and write my decisions therein.

The third book, covering late 1977 to 1980, is again entirely summary and interpretation. I began writing it in October 1978. Interestingly, because the pages are different colors, I began to separate the writings into sections to create structure. As the introduction shows, I was aware of this effort as time accounting and budgeting. "I tend to see this book as an accounting of my use of time and a tool for planning the future use of time, just as my small accounting book has these qualities for money." And sensing that there was a lot of trivia in the parts written frequently of the prior diaries, I intended to write about significant events only. "Just like my money system now emphasizes the major and spends little time with day-to-day expenses,

so this book also will be my record of important thoughts." The introduction also summarizes the first 3 quarters of 1978 in Albuquerque, and shows great stability and focus, in contrast to the unbridled searching of 1977.

The other colored sections of the multi-colored diary are written on given dates as small essays, as follows: Pink: October 78 to early January 79 work, compensation, self employment, managing, Biz school goal was to achieve social and intellectual skills Brown: October 78, April 79, July 79 finance, investing, responsibility, budgeting, emotions Green: November, December 79 spiritual self-assessment, goals, HBS, adaptability, direction Orange: October 78, December 79, 1980 social, Chip, my gay life, leaving HBS, more self-assessment Blue: written during Summer 80 cash analysis & summary, categorized checkbook, budgeting discarded 10 sheets in 10/80, hazily written 8/79 before HBS Yellow: Spring and early summer 80 in O.C. Getting setup in O.C., working, playing

Again these early writings were very helpful for analyzing and tracking my life at the time. I have no interest in using them right now, except for the studying the evolution of my format. However, the self-assessment in the green section (based on Lakeside days) is especially interesting even now.

Note that it is not possible to make an ultimate summary of any given period. The interpretation would clearly change over time, so I have held onto all contemporaneous writings from the past, rather than discard them. Nothing can replace the actual current writing of a certain time. The motive to discard is to forget past trivia or dump a messy format, much more than just to prevent embarassments or even blackmail. Yet this advantage must be weighed against having detailed information that can be very helpful in the future. Consequently, I have so far kept all my diaries.

This paper will not try to summarize the content of old diaries, as that has been done as needed over the years. Instead, I mainly want to show how the form of my diaries has developed over the years how it has paralleled the evolution of my personal accounting and how it should continue into the future This interest is part of my study of the philosophy of intelligence. How much information, and in what form, do we need outside of our brains to be able to act as intelligently as possible? Can computers and mathematics help?

The period covered by the first three diaries through HBS and early Orange County, through mid 1980, has long felt conceptually closed, because I grew so much at HBS that the early stuff just seems immature. But after those, I began a rather long journey of discovery in personal writing and in personal accounting and budgeting, all of which culminated with the development of Microsoft Works. Now, after this long trip, I am taking another sabbatical. Once again, I have the confidence and enough money to take some time to find my way in life.

Free-form Diaries

Somehow all my ideas seemed to fit ok in the third book, the multi-colored diary, but for the next diary, starting in mid 1980, I wanted more flexibility for structure than multi-colored pages allow, so I made the diary one continuous stream with topics all mixed up, but with index pages so I could subsequently find all relevant parts of a topic. I simply wanted not to have lots of bits and pieces of ideas on miscellaneous pieces of paper, but I guess I did not consider a sectioned ring binder to which I could add ideas on each topic (section) as they developed, and also keep them physically in order, as I do now. (Just due to the dizzy summer of 1980, I guess.) Also, I wrote the problem, considerations and action each in a different color ink. This trichotomy was influenced by HBS marketing analysis, then recently learned.

But the pages reserved for the index were never developed in that diary or the next, and I subsequently quit reserving pages for an index in subsequent diaries and dropped the ink trichotomy as well.

I have shredded that first Orange County (mid 1980) diary entitled The Change from Programmer to Investor because the title is obviously misguided or at least premature the index idea and ink trichotomy are silly essays during that dizzy summer are irrelevant, superficial or trivial it included to-do lists, all of which are long completed daily events were pretty trivial and time stamping not like now it is adequately reviewed in the first book written in Seattle in '82 two-thirds of it is sophomoric discussion about stock trading

But I did read it quite carefuly as I shredded it, and kept a page (for old accounts notebook) describing my mammoth accounting effort in October. This is one of the most important things I achieved in that period. Also, I kept a page outlining the categories of finance and investment books at UCI

Subsequent diaries were quite free format and written at least every few days, with much more detail. Besides daily events, I still wrote little essays and also included to-do lists. In total, ten books with free format span November 1980 to August 1985. Late in 1985 I wrote a summary with Mac Word about year-end activities.

From time to time I have summarized the diaries written in O.C. and Seattle:

Period Theme Years Books Summary Nov 80-Jan 82 Orange County 1.25 3 May 82 May 82-Apr 83 Sortm and Stocks 1.00 3 April 85 Sept 83-June 84 Transition to Apps 3 August 84

There was also one other free-form diary written from April - August 85, which covered the period closing the Personal Accountant project.

It is not important to examine those summaries here. Hopefully they have been helpful in the past when they were relevant. I had considered discarding the original diaries and keeping only the reviews, but as reasoned above, I have decided to keep all diaries except Summer 1980 in O.C. In reading over the summaries, it is interesting that the same issues seem to keep coming up over and over and over again: where to live & work, especially when I have the freedom to move where to play and how to find long-term friends that fit me. SF vs LA whether I can become more social for work or for play how unstrategic I am business chess how happy and stable I am when I work on software, money, history several periods studying finance, leading to no competitive advantage

This is by no means a complete list of similarities, but by reading the oldest summaries, I see much habitual behavior. Advances also do occur. being comfortable not managing people, just playing with them understanding finance, fitting in, not winning the game love of closure and commencement working on hotter projects with more advanced software tools

Some things do not change much, but other things do evolve. The point of analyzing diaries and writing summaries is to learn what can be improved, and to understand and accept what cannot be changed.

New 1986 Scheme

In January 1986 I began using the format I am using today, which presents just the facts, very tersely, and with a time stamp on the left edge for every entry. How simple... But it seems that this information is only useful in the short-term. Consequently I have periodically written memos with Mac Word which elucidate my direction and theme at that time of my life. This has

been much more helpful than writing the summaries into the diary itself, as I had done during 1982 to 1985. I have also kept loose-leaf binders on numerous financial and software work topics.

It should be pointed out that none of this information in a diary helps at all unless it is flowing through one's brain and being developed. Quite often writing just helps to focus one's attention. Other times it serves as a way of detailing and freezing a hunch that one's brain has already had. Other times it serves just as a memory device to stretch over years.

But if all information in a diary was already in our mind at some point, and there is lots of processing power to spare, why do we need to write it down? The fact is we don't, but the problems and issues involved must be expressed somehow so that the brain knows the problem must be worked on subconsciously. Writing also gives a feeling of having accomplished something, because one can point to the written paper as external evidence. So all that is needed is to thin, write to foucs, meanwhile discarding the extraneous writing, keeping only the recommendations and valid rationale. This is essentially what I converted to in January 1986. And note that in the log, I keep track of time spent writing so that I can enjoy a sense of progress.

Parallel to Accounting

In a strong sense, this technique is analogous to my accounting, where facts are like transactions and you can generate reports from them. Its evolution has even paralleled that of my personal accounting somewhat. Before October 1980, I had only summaries of the events of my life and pretty rudimentary accounting. The budgets were presented in the diaries of that period! But in October 1980, I pulled together all my accounting back to January '78 in a ring binder and began to update it monthly and I started writing transactional diaries that also contained analyses and goals. This went on until early 1985 when I had finally automated my accounting, and I refined it through late 1985. In late 1985, I wrote my first summary of events with Mac Word and in January 1986 I began writing my current style of diary, and my personal accounting routine had stabilized. Since then, in ring binders I keep essays and notes on diverse topics as my ideas evolve.

Probably having the accounting well organized and structured freed me to concentrate more on categorizing my less quantitative thoughts. When I had my finances squared away, and freedom to move in late 1985, I wrote my first paper external to a diary that considered LA versus SF versus Seattle.