Circle Three: the eighteenth
Help. Success. Finance. lol's.
Welcome back to Circle Three!
Last week's most-clicked resource was Nike’s touch-free shoes.
Cheers,
Dan
So what’s Circle Three? For new readers, the name comes from Seth Godin’s Linchpin, where he posits that the internet has created a circle beyond family and business: a tribe. Where knowledge is exchanged and our gifts are shared.
Thanks for being a part of this third circle. Let’s create something.
One Big Idea
“Success is a journey, not a destination. The process is often more important than the outcome.” — Arthur Ashe
I am very project-based. As I move through life, I might find myself needing to come up for air. Then I dive back into the journey and enjoy it. How is your journey creating your success? How do you keep a balance during your journey?
Circles of Thought
These financial tips for your 20’s are about more than money. The lessons touch on motivations and lifestyle habits that can help contribute to a sound financial future. I took some notes for this one.
How do people laugh online? Learn how people express laughter online with interactive datasets. lol. lmao. Length, capitalization, and appreciation all contribute to how we express digital laughter. (Even if all we do in real life is force air out our nostrils faster.)
The company Vowel’s mission is to make your interviews more organized. The technology hosts, records, and transcribes customer interviews. A great tool for research projects or media teams.
As drone technology improves, humanity is finding ways to put them to use that we never imagined. These drones are helping monitor environmental impacts in forests by shooting darts equipped with sensors. As a casual drone user, I can’t wait to see more future use cases.
Check out this video exploring a 370 square foot “Tiny Apartment”. Never too small! I love the modular walls and the multi-purpose furniture. When designing for small, everything must have a purpose.
Inner Circle: Turtle Man Asks for Help
Learning how and when to reach out
I Need Help
It's intimidating to learn how to ski.
The chairlift sits as the first challenge, waiting to reveal our incompetence before the skiing even begins. With the gear and the conditions, a first day on the slopes can be a lot to process, not even mentioning the skiing technique itself!
That's why ski lessons are so important. Learning from the expert when the realization hits: I need help. This feeling can even come after years of skiing.
A couple of weeks back I wrote about Hassle and Nonsense. We all deal with the hassles reality hands us, and we handle it with varying degrees of elegance.
But sometimes we have no choice but to look out to the world, or up to a ski instructor, and ask for help.
I’ve been thinking about this more as I receive rejections from MBA applications and look for the next opportunity. I found a one-page anecdote in A Field Guide to Getting Lost about Turtle Man, a blind chocolate seller going business-to-business peddling his sweets. It's an inspiring story about asking for help and vulnerability in the face of uncertainty.
Turtle Man
“And one day I was out on the street right out here and I heard this voice go help...help...and it was the [blind] Turtle Man... standing there on the corner. … His way of crossing the street was to stand on the curb and say help, and just say help until someone came along and helped him across the street.
"... Isn't that really amazing? What an amazing life. You walk along and you reach a barrier and you stop and you just call out help."
"You don't know who you're talking to, you don't know who's around if anyone, and you wait, and then somebody turns up and they help you across that barrier, and then you walk on knowing that pretty soon you're going to meet another barrier and you're going to have to stop again and cry out help, help, help, not knowing if anyone's there, not knowing who it will be that will turn up to help you.”
Resilience doesn't have to be a lonely journey. We can call out for help, even when it feels like calling out into an abyss. Help will come. Help always comes. (Right?)
State of the Circle
(New Format with links! What do you think?)
Dan is a mechanical design engineer interested in the intersection of design and technology. I love making connections between concepts and passions. Start a conversation and reply to this email with what you’re working on.
🔊 Listening: Rainbow Kitten Surprise
📖 Reading: Screwtape Letters
➕ Win: Ran up a hill. And didn’t collapse. Video link is proof.
🔑 Travel Key: Be flexible and willing to adapt.
🍺 Untappd: RoHa Brewing Project
This week was: Exciting
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