The Importance of Writing

Buffett: "Chain of habit is too light to be felt and too heavy to be broken".

I was never a keen (or good) writer and there was a lot of inertia to find ways around it.  But I've come to the conclusion that writing and reading annual reports are 2 essential ingredients in successful investing.  I need to build a habit in doing so.  After quitting MS, I formed a habit in my diary writing and freestyle kicking.  Both not natural to start with and now i will not do without.  Success breeds success when it comes to building good habits.  When it comes to doing the right thing, delay no more Andy (or I've already delayed for too long)!

The benefit of writing:
- it helps to lay out the logic and assumptions in an organised manner for a specific decision
- writing can help me to become more rational (BRK is the temple of rationality)
- writing (blog) act as an investment journal for record keeping
- most great investors write (think buffett, howard marks, seth klarman, etc), and i believe writing helps them to be a better investor
- writing helps to consolidate the investment process, or it is a crucial part in building that investment process
- it helps with discipline in investing
- blogs can attract constructive criticism
- a checklist is somewhat implicit in the investment write-up and will continue to be refined in this process
- it might (i stress MIGHT again) help with countering over-confidence bias if i am being honest with my writeup
- it is a concrete deliverable with future reference value rather than some wishy-washy random thoughts that cannot be tracked

The downside (or excuses) of writing:
- takes time and effort and discipline (oh well, that's the only way to improve!)
- if published, i may suffer from consistency bias (hence i need to be selective in terms of what to publish to avoid suffering from those bias)
- if i am any good with an idea, i may introduce competition in my investing (imitation is the best complement; and stop flattering yourself Andy)
- blogs can also attract unconstructive comments (life is too short to care about those)
- initially with sub-standard writeup, i will be showing my ignorance

This post is a self-talk in trying to get myself into the good habit of writing, to exploit the consistency bias to motivate myself.  It will take time for me to get to a reasonable standard.  But i gotta start somewhere.  Like my kicking in swimming, despite a late start, if i do it consistently and not giving up, i will eventually get better regardless how long it takes.