Apr 2022 - Intentional Rest

Hi friends,

Welcome to my 4th monthly email, in this segment called “Michael’s Monthly Musings”. If you missed my earlier monthly newsletters, please refer here.

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Again I wanted to share something this month that has been on my mind...

🧑‍🏫 Intentional rest

“He that can take rest is greater than he that can take cities.” - Benjamin Franklin

It now feels like a lifetime ago when COVID first came on the shores of Sydney, Australia in a meaningful way back in April 2020. Our city basically shut down. Everybody stayed at home, and if we went out we all wore masks. It affected a lot of people in different ways.

For myself, I observed it first-hand in my line of work in the equity markets globally. Many major market indexes sold off like 30-35% in a short period of time, whether US, China, Australia, Europe, you name it. That was a very volatile time. The amount of mental strain was immense at that point in time. Things were moving so quickly, and decisions had to be made even quicker to stay ahead. That was as I would describe to a close friend of mine, a "chunky period". Added to that, my parents were still on the Ruby Princess cruise (which obviously turned back), but I was alone by myself, in my own thoughts.

Beyond that period, however, the last 2+ years since COVID, has been a meaningful period of time for me to step back and realise just how busy I had just made myself pre COVID.

People have different personalities. Close friends of mine, will tell you that I have a "workaholic" attitude. It's a double-edged sword. The positive way of spinning it, would be that I am just supposedly so passionate about investing, that my work is merely a hobby to me and it doesn't actually sap much energy from me. Whilst true to some extent, the inverse would be that I am addicted to being "busy" and prioritise picking stocks above anything else.

Whilst I thankfully did not burn out during the last 3+ years of full-time work so far (if you include my prior 3+ years of work at Deloitte, Australian Eagle, Beanstalk, etc that would make it virtually 6+ years of continued working now), nor hit a quarterly life crisis (as of yet!), I think intentional rest was a serious reason for helping sustain me for so long...

😕 Some conceptual thoughts from me (with a sprinkle of economics 101 from Michael)

Contentment is important. I think a big reason why people are "go go go" in this world, is that we are not content with what we have. Whether that is not being content with the money we have, the relationships we have, the career we have, etc...

I only thought about this idea of contentment with helping to rest, when speaking with my colleague at work just last week. He mentioned the book, "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals" by Oliver Burkeman (read here). Those who are mathematically inclined will notice if you divide 4000 weeks by 52 weeks/yr, it would imply ~77 years. That's the implied average life span of a human.

One of the psychological experiments goes in the book (mentioned by my colleague) goes with 2 groups of people. One group gets a gift that they are allowed to refund, but the other group gets a gift that they can't refund. Who was happier? It turns out, that the group who CANNOT refund their gift was supposedly happier. That was because they were content with what they had, rather than the other group who could still trade their gift for something better. I also want to explore this idea in relation to my observations when I volunteered back in Sri Lanka in July 2016, and saw how content people were despite the little they had but that's for another time...

So I know this may be a stretch, but it got me thinking that contentment helps with rest. It's only by being happy with what we have, can we intentionally allow ourselves a break. Of course, I certainly could work harder on this myself... Maybe you can too?

Embracing simplicity helps. Maybe there's some method to the madness of Japanese consultant, Marie Kondo... Some people who know me, will think I am just being overly simplistic when I rationalise certain decisions. But I think that is more an outcome of the influence my first mentor, Albert Hung has had on me. I didn't realise this until the last year, but the principle behind that way of thinking is Occam's razor. The fancy way to describe this is the law of parsimony, which states that "the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred". I guess in laymen's terms, I try to think that explanations with fewer steps are typically better.

An example this week that came to mind, was when a close friend of mine shared this article of Turkey's president cutting interest rates currently whilst the rest of the world is basically raising rates (see here). The crux of the Turkey President's reasoning was to cut rates to slow down rising inflation... I wouldn't be the first to say this, but it just sounds wrong? Me and my friend both agreed that you slow down rising inflation by raising rates (all else equal).

My friend's explanation for why:

• Higher interest rates reduce funds flowing around in the economy

• As RBA sells securities (bonds) etc

• Therefore increasing the cost of credit

• That then drives up interest rates as banks have less money to lend out

• Higher interest rates increase the propensity to save as opposed to spending or investing

• Therefore ur effectively putting the breaks on ur economy

My explanation for why:

• CBs (central banks) generally raise rates which relatively attract move saving > spending.

• Less spending = lower inflation

I appreciate my friend, but I found my explanation simpler and just easier to digest than his... Of course my explanation is not perfect, but I always opt for simplicity where possible (aka law of parsimony confirmed). It helps with storing more information in my head too, and communicating to others who may not have a background in business (aka the Investment Team I lead at Macquarie Baptist Church for example...).

Of course, this is just a textbook answer, and in reality, there are like a thousand other things at play affecting interest rate/inflation dynamics so that's just our 2c for what it's worth. I think that's enough of my sermon about economics 101...

Segueing this back to intentional rest, I think simplifying your life where possible is a useful principle to live by on the path to resting.

Resting makes us more productive. A quick captain obvious point, but taking time to recoup does allow us a better chance to live our best life. I think the reality is that we are always going to be busy. But in order to sustain the "busyness" we have, I would not be the first to admit that resting is important with operating at your best. For me, the sweet spot is 7-7.5 hours of sleep per day, but for others it will vary and that's OK.

🎒 Some practical thoughts from me

When I think about rest, I think about it like a large red "stop" sign on the road. This was something I struggled with for the longest time. Especially in the equity markets, which move 24 hours, 5 days a week. Whilst I have by no means reached a meditative like state of rest at all times, I have found certain habits that I've adopted which I'd love to share with my readers/friends/family here very quickly.

Something I do personally now is either to set myself to deliberately to "busy" or "away" status. It almost acts like a light switch for me to know I am switching off from work, and trying to focus my time on something else. I think Bob Iger (former CEO of Disney) called it compartmentalising in his book, "The Ride of a Lifetime". I definitely subscribe to that way of thinking. For context at work, we use Microsoft Teams for communicating. I think I struggled with switching off because I always had a "active" green dot status in the past.

When meeting up with friends/family, I do my best to deliberately flip my phone screen to be facing down to the table, rather than my face. That doesn't mean I ignore everything from my phone. For example, if it's a phone call, I will probably pick it up, but if it's just a non urgent FB/Instagram message, it can typically wait (I mute all my social media message notifications). We as humans have a tendency to be glued to our screens. Whilst not discrediting the efforts of Apple, Samsung, etc with their phones which have done a lot of good for us, it also can stop me from being present in the moment.

I intentionally "plan" to rest in my timetable. I set specific time blocks in my timetable to rest. I think recognising that we are ultimately in control of our own lives. Some readers of my blog will recall an article I wrote back in Jan 2021 here, that talked about the "systems" I have systematically built into my life. One of them was a default weekly timetable, and you can see I intentionally have "orange" blocks of "rest" by default. Of course I do not follow this timetable perfectly, but it gives you a sense of what I default to at certain time slots when I have nothing else urgent to attend to.

How do you slow down and find rest? Lemme know via email or comment in my newsletter post below. Would love to hear how you all intentionally rest!

👍 To conclude for now…

Thanks for reading my ramble if you got this far for my April 2022 thoughts. Please do hit <reply> to this email if you have anything to add / any questions. I quite enjoy replying to comments/emails as a source of procrastination. Please share this email with others if you found it value-adding.

Have a great next month!

Michael

🚀 Some of my favourite memories from Apr 2022

• Finally made a longer form blog post after like ~3 months. After much demand and pestering from a lot of acquaintances over the years about how I studied for my CFA L1 exam, here it is.

• Visiting a high school friend's new apartment in Parramatta, and finally delivering him a housewarming gift from an Ikea shopping trip I did ~2 months ago. Thanks for the invite, Jack! Really liked the vanilla/wood like tones in the house.

• Went on a fun excursion exploring Watsons Bay and Vaucluse area for the first time!

• Finally got to catch up with a high school friend, David, who had returned after a few months from Melbourne.

• March quarter earnings season for a lot of US companies (e.g. Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Google, etc).

• Got to hang out with some City Bible Forum friends over board games at a church in Lidcombe during the Anzac Day public holiday. I was originally intending to go to Buff Point (~100 mins north of Sydney, near Gosford) with some high school friends, but a friend got COVID the day before the trip unfortunately!).

• Celebrated a good friend's birthday at Little Snail in Pyrmont (which has really nice French food, rated 8/10!).

• Had a "thank you" dinner from my friend who recently got married for the bridesmaids and groomsmen! We had Korean food in Hanabi Korean restaurant in Lidcombe. Would give it a 7.5/10!

• First time also going to Chinese Palace Restaurant in Piccadilly Tower, and LILONG Chinese Restaurant in Rhodes Central! Really rate both of them if you haven't tried. I've been told the former has really good yumcha, so hoping to report back about that soon!

P.S. I am removing the "upcoming things" for next month section that usually comes after my "favourite memories" from this month section. This is purely just because I've realised I will just talk about these things typically in the next month anyway. Just don't want to double count. Lemme know if there's any feedback about that as I know my emails tend to be pretty long for an individual AS IS.

P.P.S. I am also thinking of including a "prayer points (for my Christian readers)" section to share honestly (where I can of course) about my thoughts. Lemme know what you guys think! For the non-christian readers, don't worry, this is not a bible bash section on you, but I figured it may still be interesting to know what I'm thinking. I'm always open to feedback and things I should include/exclude in this personal monthly newsletter. 🙂