🔥Welcome to Volume #00104!🔥
I’m Christian Champ. This is ☯️The Middle Way Newsletter ☯️. It is a place where I write, explore, share, and invite you along for the journey.
If you enjoy the newsletter, please share it with your friends.
🍵How we can use TEA Time to Learn Anything 🍵
Drop...
Drop...
Drop...
Damn!
Standing in the middle of the park as my kids ran around, my anger built.
After the third drop, I fired the other two balls into the ground.
I took two deep breaths, peeked up at the sun, and got my self-talk to repeat, "you got this," and "keep going."
I noticed my breath coming in gulps or not breathing at all. I focused on controlling my breath and relaxing.
I spent months working on getting better at juggling, and the results felt like grinding my teeth on an inadvertent elbow from Lebron James.
I knew what patterns I wanted to throw, but my ability to execute felt as futile as trying to score on Lebron.
While frustrating at the moment, I knew that things had YET to come together.
I knew if I persisted, I'd get better.
Picking up the juggling balls, I took another breath, sank into my body, and threw the first ball again.
Enter TEA Time for Learning
We make our learning process like drinking tea. Similar to tea time, we create a daily practice around what we want to learn. We pick a time or multiple times daily to practice and improve.
The most powerful way to learn is by using our TIME, ENERGY, and ATTENTION (TEA TIME).
We became radically focused on all three things to level up our skills.
#1 🕑 TIME
We start with time, our most precious resource. We must spend as much time as necessary on the challenge until it comes together.
We will know how much is enough once we get there.
Like drinking our tea, we want to spend time every day on the things we want to learn. This is reserved for up to three things that are our priority.
We need clear priorities on where to focus.
Four years ago, juggling checked that box for me.
The time component of juggling meant I needed to "touch my balls" for at least five minutes daily.
Most days, I greatly exceeded five minutes and juggled to a couple of music mixes in the evening.
It started slow, but eventually, breathing correctly, throwing well, and conversing while juggling became easy.
#2 ⚡ENERGY
Since we put in the time, we need to find the correct energy levels for the tasks we care about. We need to match up our high-energy moments with our priorities for improvement.
The energy component means finding the right moments to do the tasks.
In my juggling example, I liked to do it at night right before doing some reading, and I mixed in music to keep my energy high.
The better we get to a 1:1 energy-to-activity match, the quicker we ramp up and improve.
#3 ⚠️ Attention
Lastly comes Attention.
Attention is the details and perfecting our technique.
When we attend, we pay attention to and deal with the challenge. This involves us leveling up our practice by digging into the specifics of the task.
It includes watching youtube videos, reading books, and planning our approach.
We pay attention to what is working and what needs to be rebooted.
Like drinking tea, we create set times to implement the TEA approach. We drink our tea daily and continue to work on making it taste better.
What do you want to learn, improve or level up with TEA Time?
🧠Things to Think About🧠
Adam Grant on the Most Toxic Relationships
Adam argues that frenemies tend to be the most toxic relationships.
We all get hurt by the people we love, and unpleasant interactions don’t mean we should walk away. Research suggests that on average, people tend to be happier staying in imperfect marriages and imperfect jobs than abandoning them altogether.
If someone is abusive, though, it doesn’t matter how many positives they bring to the table. You're not obligated to maintain a tie with anyone who treats you poorly.
How Tokyo Became the Best Anti-Car City
I firmly believe life is better without sitting in a car. That is one of the reasons I love living in Chicago since we bike everywhere.
Tokyo shows us how to create a livable city without needing a car.
Part luck
According to Sorensen’s research, 35 percent of Japanese streets are not actually wide enough for a car to travel down them. More remarkably still, 86 percent are not wide enough for a car to be able to stop without blocking the traffic behind it.
🎧Things to Listen, See, and Watch 🎧
Liberty interviews Kevin Kelly on his new book, Excellence Advice for Living, which I highly recommend.
15 Ideas I liked from the podcast
Compress to Impress (a JPEG for your ideas) … Make it short to make it usable for him, easy to share, and easy to remember.
Technological sabbath --> no screens for 24 hours .... people end up very happy doing it.
Rite of Passage for his kids —> at 21 took a red ribbon and cut it with scissors as they tasted wine.
Cut two checks to his kids —> $1,000 if they didn’t drink or smoke until 21 and a second one for $1,000 for turning 21 as their last check from him.
His son wanted to run into the ocean and come out a man during the ritual
AI’s think differently; it is a feature, not a bug, as AI + us will create different things
Scare ideas and concepts will be hard to find… Need help imagining them
Most things we use every day are defacto magic, and we don’t know how they work, just like AI
Hang out with people from different generations; it is easy to do. Like visiting another country as they give you new ideas and shake you out of the ways you normally see things
The American Revolution was mainly for people in their 20s that didn’t know how hard its.
People with money try to solve things with money when they really need grit, innovation, and effort.
School in Austin uses apps and Kahn Academy. Students can only ask teachers how to do something; they need to look it up and figure it out.
We are limited by vision, not talent.
Power laws on youtube. Find the niche and get them to support you for your 1,000 true fans. 1 in 1M still gets you 1,000 people… how do you match them? We need better matching tools.
Your goal in life is to become fully yourself.
💣Words of Wisdom💣
"One unnecessary suffering that we can let go of is the suffering of fear." (Thich Nhat Hanh, No Mud, No Lotus)
"A leader's responsibility is to identify the strengths of the people on their team, no matter how buried those strengths might be." (Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality)
"The alternative is to write your own winning lottery ticket, not by the sudden accumulation of wealth but the gradual reduction to what you decide is essential for your life." (Chris Guillebeau, The Art of Non-Conformity)
"Question 46: Would you be happier with more control over what happens in your life or more control over your response to what happens?” Gregory Stock, Ph.D. The Book of Questions." (Michael Gibson, Paper Belt on Fire)
"Instead of calling everything a game, we should think of everything as playable: capable of being manipulated in an interesting and appealing way within the confines of its constraints." (Ian Bogost, Play Anything)
"Instead of calling everything a game, we should think of everything as playable: capable of being manipulated in an interesting and appealing way within the confines of its constraints." (Ian Bogost, Play Anything)
"False ideas about yourself can destroy you," Frank said. "For me, I always stay a student. That's what martial arts are about, and you have to use that humility as a tool. You put yourself beneath someone you trust. That's extremely useful." (Sam Sheridan, The Fighter's Mind)
"The challenge of your future is to do productive and useful work for and by and with the tribe that cares about you. To find and assemble the tribe, to earn their trust, to take them where they want and need to go." (Seth Godin, We Are All Weird)
"Of course, the ritual always ends. Family members walk out of the ritual space, and the moment they do, they are in the messy world again." (Michael Puett, The Path)
"In a present characterized by an excess of openings and dissolving boundaries, we are losing the capacity for closure, and this means that life is becoming a purely additive process." (Byung-Chul Han and Daniel Steuer, The Disappearance of Rituals)
"Health lies in action, and so it graces youth. To be busy is the secret of grace, and half the secret of content. Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them." (Will Durant, Fallen Leaves)
🙏Thanks for Reading🙏
What needs to be part of our daily TEA time?
Namaste,
Christian
Not the outcome I was looking for, but glad I competed.
🍵How we can use TEA Time to Learn Anything 🍵