Hi friends,

Welcome to my first ever monthly email, in this segment called “Michael’s Monthly Musings”. For a long time, it has felt weird to be writing one of these, but I’ve heard from some friends and family that anything that is worth doing does feel weird to do at the beginning.

What is the point of this newsletter?

The purpose of this newsletter is to write short-form, about the things happening in my life, and hopefully share some useful information, advice, and education to my readers along the way.

As I’ve said in snippets to people before, the purpose of this newsletter is to ultimately share and document my journey and experiences. I’m really passionate about self-development, personal finances, investing, and learning how to study commerce/CFA exams better.

What happened to your original website, The Ordinary Investor?

A few people have asked me what happened to “The Ordinary Investor”, which was the name of my original blog that I started back in 2017. I have terminated that blog and moved all my content after purchasing a custom domain name via Squarespace. All the content can now be found here on my own website: https://michaelli.io/

What is with the logo?

So some have asked me what is with the logo next to my name, of the funny looking eagles with a sun in the backdrop. I drew inspiration (intentionally!) from my first mentor, Albert who co-founded his own hedge fund ~18 years ago. Doing a similar logo to Albert is to pay credit to him.

His fund’s logo is a sun backdrop and 1 eagle. The eagle was to denote Albert and his team “fishing” for stocks selectively. I’ve merely flipped the image and added a smaller eagle to denote me following in his footsteps. Deep isn’t it?

Just a few words on “motivation as a myth”

I want to keep this 1st newsletter short. A topic I’ve been thinking about for a while has been this saying from some productivity gurus I follow who say “motivation is a myth”.

The first quote, I’m reminded of is this:

Motivation is 1%, whilst perspiration is 99%.

I think that is the better way to phrase it.

My problem with people saying to others that “motivation is a myth” is that it suggests the fact that people do things without any internal drive. Whilst I think that is often true (ahem to people who sign up to degrees without thinking twice why they’re doing it), at least from my experience, I had an internal drive to do well in commerce because I enjoyed learning about markets, economy, accounting, business and management behaviour to name a few things. I admit, not everybody is lucky/blessed to know what they want to do during university, so what can they do without motivation?

Here’s an article I’ve read a while back which helps you focus less on motivation, but more on discipline. What the article argues is that motivation is waiting until you “feel” like doing something before doing it. Discipline is doing it regardless of how you’re feeling about it.

For me, studying for the 3 levels of the CFA exams since 2018 has often been difficult. When you’re working 50-60 hours a week, the idea of studying is probably the last thing to do on your mind. Netflix comes to mind instead!

Whilst I am motivated to learn about commerce, it takes a very special kind of person to want to learn after being exhausted from work. Needless to say, motivation alone would NOT have been enough to keep me disciplined in studying the 300-400 hrs per exam required for the CFA program. In hindsight, through my journey of the CFA program these last ~4 years, I found self-discipline a much greater weapon.

In general, at each level, I made a schedule to study for my CFA exam at least 6 months prior to my exam, and I dedicated specific time slots in the morning/nights (excluding Fridays for rest) to study and revise for my CFA exams. And I did not just plan a schedule, I disciplined myself consciously more often than not, to get the study done even when I had no motivation at many times during the last ~4 years.

So I guess, what I’ve learned from this whole journey so far is that whilst motivation is great (I would not call it a “myth” like some people), it gets you only so far.

Cultivating discipline is the more important thing to get right in order to achieve what you want in life. I don’t disagree that getting yourself to “feel” like doing something is usually a fool’s errand.

I like what Ali Abdaal (a famous productivity guru on YouTube) has to say here:

A 3-year old bases their day-to-day decisions on what they feel like doing. An intelligent student/adult recognises that feeling like doing something useful should have absolutely nothing to do with whether they actually do it.

To conclude for now

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 Jan 2022

• Friend getting married soon - got to play a virtual escape room, find an excuse to get a new suit, and plan for his bachelor party (first time for me!).

• Sydney ATP cup - witnessed Greece vs Argentina, and saw the men’s single where the underdog Schwartzman defeated Tsitsipas.

• New mentee (now my 3rd official) - a very encouraging UNSW student with a similar personality to me with whom I have enjoyed sharing my learning experiences with.

• Watching Emily in Paris 2 with friend.

• Having the privilege to get more involved with UNSW I4C society.

• Recalibrate 2022 - Jindabyne Road Trip with City Bible Forum. Most memorable moment there for me was hiking to Blue Lake, near Mt Kosciuszko for ~12km. Lots of steep inclines and declines, but well worth it. Recommend the views/10!

• Not technically in Jan 2022, but at time of writing this newsletter in 04/02/2022… I passed my final CFA L3 exam! This marks the end of my journey in the CFA program.

 🚀 Some public announcements in Jan 2022

YouTube guest talk with Anthony Mai, co-founder of Atlas Academia. Financially supporting the co-founders having had the privilege of meeting them in Sep 2021. They’re young but very considerate and driven individuals who really impressed me with their intentions in building a yr 10-12 STEM tutoring centre. They only started in 2021 so feel free to share about them to any high schoolers you know who need science/maths support!

I’m also doing a personal finance workshop for their recently graduated yr 12 students, but this “FREE” workshop is also open to friends and family who want to listen and support me. Hope to see a few of you there!

Link here to sign up: https://events.humanitix.com/atlas-presents-michael-li-s-personal-finance-workshop-ilvxuuq0