Creating A Better Post & Some Teh Tarik (Tea) Sundays

Teh Tarik which translates literally to 'pulled tea' is tea with condensed milk that is pulled like the picture below to produce a foamy creamy beverage.

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However, how Teh Tarik can really help you create a better post is a post for another day. I amreferring mainly to a rather awesome Sunday event called Teh Tarik Sundays. Apologies if you are here thinking that some creamy tea goodness will help you improve your post.

Teh Tarik Sundays is an event where authors from @teammalaysia would come on and promote their post. It is a great way to learn and better your post, content wise through a myriad of methods. Many of these methods are used in second language teaching and academic learning. Hopefully, this incentivises more to share their posts not just on Teh Tarik Sundays but other avenues as well.

Socratic Questioning

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One of my favorite part on sharing my post is the question and answering segment. I like it for my very own selfish reasons. You see, if you have gone on writing and creating your own content long enough, there is a tendency to follow a certain formula, be it consciously or subconsciously.

While there is really no point in changing what already works, it is a good opportunity to challenge pre-existing assumptions and thoughts on the content that you are used to. That is when socratic questioning comes in. The presence of a question and answering session in Teh Tarik Sundays, opens up the opportunity for others to challenge (in a very nice way, of course) one's assumptions on a certain topic.

I have been a teacher for a rather long time and being in the profession for that long, I see things through a certain lens. It is through being on this show that I get an idea of what others assume a teacher is like, therefore challenging my assumptions. One of the socratic questioning methods is the utilization implications and consequences to help explore new ideas. That happened to me when I was asked of my thoughts on caning and other methods of punishment in schools. That helped me consider how I would answer it. Truth be told, I have never touched a cane in a classroom for more than 7 years. Come to think about it, perhaps never and so the answer required some thought.

That being said, it does provide me ideas to what others are thinking. That, also makes for great ideas for future posts. There are times however, where questions just don't work for you. Fear not, the summarization of your post could help you in creating better posts in the future.

Explain Your Post in Two Minutes

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Albert Einstein pointed out that if you are unable to explain it simply, you simply don't understand. However, if you do really look into summarizing your post into 2 minutes, which is the requirement for Teh Tarik Sundays, it is easy to start questioning yourself a few important aspects of your post.

First, you would probably be looking at the main point of your post. Is it a problem? A story? It could be a product that you are reviewing. Either way, you would have to explain it all in a very short time, perhaps even in a sentence or two. It sounds simple, but more difficult than you may think.

Second, you would have to explain, without overwhelming the audience what did you do and why should people care. As you are summarizing your post and explaining what you are doing in simpler terms, here's what you could do. Write down the main points and explanation on a word document. Divide the points and ask yourself five questions for each point.

Utilizing once again, the Socratic questioning method, you can do the following:

• Challenge yourself to prove that your assumption is right.
• Consider a counter-argument to your assumption.

If you get nothing out of the two points above, you could just stick with asking yourself a question based on your main point and later, ask yourself the question to that question. I know sounds complex, but once you place yourself in a situation where you are challenging your thoughts on a certain issue, you would be surprised what crazy ideas may pop up. Some of those crazy ideas would make for some really great posts.

Cross-Learning

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Even if you are not interested to promote a post on Teh Tarik Sundays, I think just going on and listening to how each author promotes and answers questions on his/her post, is a great opportunity for cross-learning. Cross-learning helps you learn from various subject areas. This could potentially provide you the opportunity to see a certain subject through the lens of others. For two weeks now, I have heard different people speak of money. The topics are relatively similar but seeing how different authors approach the subject is definitely refreshing.

The opportunities to cross-learn can be used to create some great posts by comparing between your niche and a different subject area. I am currently rather inspired to speak of finance and education. I have done it before but I think comparing between achievement and financial knowledge would make for some pretty interesting topics.

Conclusion

I believe our time on Steemit is a continuous learning process. By my estimation, there is no way I could continue coming up with topics 6 months after I have started writing everyday. The number of topics are dwindling, but like any other job, it is important to continuously upgrade our skill set, challenge our assumptions and see our current set of skills from a different viewpoint. I believe Teh Tarik Sundays is a great avenue and I know that there are many more such platforms on discord.

So get out there, share your post, learn from the experience and start creating better posts. Repeat the process and you'll be a better pro in no time. Yes, there's such a thing as a better pro =)

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