Circle Three: the fourteenth
Unused Corks. Creativity. Balance.
Welcome to Circle Three!
Themes run thick this week: corks appear in the links and Inner Circle; I hope you can use this week’s issue to inspire, motivate and connect just a little more.
Cheers,
Dan
One Big Idea
“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” - Albert Einstein
Creative projects keep us thinking and making connections, and that’s what we’re all about here at Circle Three. We are all creative. How can you exercise your creativity in the upcoming weeks or months?
Circles of Thought
Guidance, according to successful entrepreneur Marc Hoag, is the only way forward. And the best guidance he has found is Amazon’s 14 Leadership Principles. You won’t be disappointed as he dives in with non-Amazonian personal examples.
This long-form article from a teacher continues the theme: how to balance work and creativity. “A guide to finding the right day job, protecting your time, and building creative habits.” Targeted to full-time creatives (read: everyone) and applicable to all aspects of life.
Explore these visuals to learn about four qualities of a logo that don’t make most lists, including being “structurally sound.”
Save this page from Slidebean as a resource for your next big presentation. It covers presentation slide design, story crafting, and where to get kick-ass photos.
And to transition neatly into the Inner Circle: here’s an awesome exposé (with pictures!) about how cork is made. It’s fascinating.
Inner Circle: Unused Corks
Battling the resistance of starting, and using what has been there all along.
Resistance is internal. It exists within all of us, holding us back with a paralyzing fear of the unknown, of judgment, of producing.
Around the age of twelve, I began collecting wine corks. For years, I collected and accumulated corks. They, I told myself, were for an unknown project. A few years ago, I finally put the corks to use in that project.
Starting is the most important, and most difficult, part of any project. I had to make that initial crack in the membrane of resistance holding me back from creating.
Surrounded by corks, I sat down and learned the tools of the trade: how to cleanly cut the corks in half, dividing the reds from the whites, etc. Everything was in place, yet I wavered until the last second with thoughts of the unknown, of being 'too busy' to spend my time cutting corks.
The first version never comes out perfectly aligned, written, or designed. But it needs to be done. Feedback and edits will produce the finely-tuned final concept.
Meaningful things take time. The corks don’t cut themselves. The resistance to producing never goes away.
Even in writing, getting words on the page is the most difficult part. We must fight the resistance to bring the words forth. The important part is not success or perfection, but doing the work, writing the draft, opening the studying material. Laying out the corks.
Create habits that breed success. Use your collected corks.
State of the Circle
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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.