☝️What Do We Want to Be 1% In? ☝️
🔥Welcome to volume #00059!🔥
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.
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☝️What Do We Want to Be 1% In? ☝️
"In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time—none, zero." - Charlie Munger.
When I first read that quote, it felt like I saw the grand finale of a fireworks display at Disney. I immediately made it one of my mantras, read books to find wisdom.
Luckily my love of reading started before the third grade when I won the Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza monthly book award every damn month (which is still around).
It's a helpful hack to line up our desires with things we like doing. For example, if you want to read many books, it's helpful that you find a way to enjoy reading books. Adding enjoyment creates unstoppable habits. Reading becomes automatic, and not reading becomes the challenge.
When you want to do something well and enjoy doing it, you unlock the ability to be in the top percentages. It's a simple process. First, we need to figure out what we want to do well. Then we need to do it, figure out how to do it better, and repeat.
My list of 1% goals includes reading, wisdom, helping others, being a good dad, bringing good energy to others, and greeting people.
Yes, that's right, greeting people! So I get to combine greeting people with bringing good energy to others for a nice double-tap both. But, of course, bringing good energy helps people too, so it's like a triple-double.
Most people don't think about greeting people. When I'm out, I always try to acknowledge anyone near me with a head nod. It's just saying I see you and leads to interesting conversations and future possibilities, including helping folks by introducing them to other people, places, or ideas.
The weirder your 1% goal, the greater the odds of success. A more unconventional aim means fewer people running in your lane. The critical part of the 1% goal is that where we end up doesn't matter; it's about doing more of what we set out to do.
Which leads us back to what do you want to be in the 1% of?
How do you make sure you wake up every day and get a little bit closer to that outcome?
📓Articles to Read📓
Maria Popova on an artists being like a tree
I’ve had the tree metaphor in my head recently. How ideas and opportunities branch out for us and from us. All leading to different outcomes depending on which ones we chase.
Considering “those elements in the creative process which, during the growth of a work of art, take place in the subconscious,” Klee likens the artist to a tree and writes:
The artist has studied this world of variety and has, we may suppose, unobtrusively found his way in it. His sense of direction has brought order into the passing stream of image and experience. This sense of direction in nature and life, this branching and spreading array, I shall compare with the root of the tree.
From the root the sap flows to the artist, flows through him, flows to his eye.
Thus he stands as the trunk of the tree.
Battered and stirred by the strength of the flow, he guides the vision on into his work.
As, in full view of the world, the crown of the tree unfolds and spreads in time and space, so with his work.
Investing feels like Astrology by Kris Abdelmessih
Investing is one of the most interesting games that we get to play. In this piece Kris breaks down the different approaches and how we need to understand what game we are playing.
Investing is ultimately human behavior and that is what makes it so damn interesting.
As I’ve listened to interviews, read, and thought about what the hell is happening, I’ve come to believe that markets are not absurd. It’s our illusions about how tidy they are which is absurd. By asking ourselves meta-question about who the marginal buyer is and what their focus is we can tranche the investing world into different games. Not every tranche is driven by the same inputs. Some layers in the stack are concerned with extrinsic and others intrinsic.
🎙️ Ideas from Podcasts/Videos 📺
Most Things Suck by Paul LeCrone
When we do most things we suck at them. Even the things we like doing, we originally suck at too. We are good at sucking. Use that to our advantage.
This video sucked at sucking.
The Get Doing Things Podcast featuring Cam Houser (Spotify)
Try things and try more things - experiment especially in low-risk environments
Give Zero Fs and the quicker you get there the more you can do stuff and share it
Help others and see what happens
Fail a lot and try things out to see what works for you (Cam wants a name for this process)
Making videos, which Cam teaches, takes time, and just continuing to do it
All Cam’s ideas need feedback from reality and need to be shared early
Trust doesn’t scale well, but that is doing things and sharing them
We get a faster rate of learning by using quick feedback loops
The Tropical MBA Podcast - Five Things We Can’t Stop Thinking About (Spotify)
How many projects do you need to find a successful one?
Yeah this week I’m all about doing things and doing a lot of things.
He highlighted a story that was posted over at Indy hackers and he said, yeah, 3 to 5 years and 25 to 50 projects with one successful stable revenue generating project. Let me say that again, 25 to 50 projects with one successful stable revenue generating project seems to be the range for people who get successful. So he's essentially saying the 1000 a principal plus a couple years and a bunch of f ups.
Rackets with Reddy
I made a couple Rackets with my friend in play, Ritesh aka reddy2go. We set a timer for nine minutes and then just went for it.
💣Words of Wisdom💣
Double Cup Love - Eddie Huang
I’d forgotten my own maxim: no one or no thing can speak for you, you have to speak for yourself.
The Second Mountain - David Brooks
“There is joy in self-forgetfulness,” Helen Keller observed. “So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others’ ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.”
Josh Waitzkin on Mastery
"When you watch an athlete over the decades their progression is from doing more to doing less. One of the fascinating and mystical looking things about really superb virtuoso fighters, martial artists, is that they can move much slower and always get there first."
The biggest circle of competence one can develop is a fair assessment of one's abilities, based on objective standards. I cannot be under a delusion that I am a good musician if I am not one. Should not be that different in investing.
Bitterness repels. Happiness attracts.
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it.
Naval
Naval: The things we’ve made fungible are largely manmade and rare.
Almost everything you see in the manmade world is a non-fungible token. There's an infinite amount of art. The question is, how do you stand out?
🙏Thanks for reading🙏
What are you trying to be in the 1% of? How are you working on getting there?
Any thoughts or comments, please share!
Namaste,
Christian