3

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 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 Cange 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 reivewed 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 carefully 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 investment books at UCI.