Circle Three: the ninth
Newness. Romance. Strength.
Welcome to Circle Three!
Products define our lives. We are in the heart of a new era of consumerism, both digital and physical. Award-winning designs like the Casper Glow Light are intuitive and simple; they improve our experiences. Casper created this consumer product that is so well-crafted, it’s a wonder it took so long for it to be created. “Why didn’t I think of that?” Ha!
After reading Creative Confidence, I can’t help but wonder what kind of design thinking practices went into its development and what might have been hundreds of iterations.
This week find a Big Idea from M. Night Shyamalan, links about peanut butter, knots, and datasets, and my writings about seeking out newness.
Enjoy the ninth issue! And as always, reply to this email to start a conversation with me.
-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
“Pliability is the definition of strength.” -M. Night Shyamalan
Pliability? Strength? This might seem like an oxymoron, but the award-winning director touches on an inescapable truth. The ability to shift and adapt to the changing landscape enables success and longevity. How can you adapt to something that’s causing friction?
Circles of Thought
“The notion that we would be not only married but happily married only roughly dates back to the middle of the 18th century.” Watch this funny (in a British way), intellectual presentation to understand how we are the heirs of romanticism.
It’s estimated that 5-15% of the population has dyslexia. This website is an exercise in empathy: it simulates the reading experience of someone with dyslexia.
A brief history of Peanut Butter, because I bet you didn’t know that peanuts were a form of meat-rationing during WWI.
Google has a powerful Dataset Search Tool to search the internet specifically for datasets. This is really helpful for learning about data analytics and finding scientific data not easily accessible with a normal search.
This website has easy-to-follow animations for all your knot-tying needs.
Inner Circle: Newness is Hard
Nobody knows what they’re doing.
When’s the last time you tried something completely new? It’s not an easy question to answer, though 2020 certainly gave plenty of opportunities for newness.
My 2020 had running challenges, apartment moves, transitions to Zoom, and a spontaneous Vanagon trip to Maine.
Why is it often difficult to try something new?
Seemingly simple tasks of beginning a new project, cracking open the study materials, or looking at to-do lists bring pause or hesitation.
Part of this hesitation is fear. Fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, and fear of the unknown creep in.
But fear not.
Nobody knows what they’re doing.
Meg Jay writes this sentence in The Defining Decade.
“When we try to do something new, we don’t know what we’re doing. That’s the biggest challenge.” - Jeffrey Kalmikoff, designer (The Defining Decade, p. 143)
Nobody in the entertainment industry knows what they are doing, either. It’s often the first time something is being done or the first time that an individual is doing whatever it may be. There is a lot of prototyping, learning, testing, failing, and communicating before anything works perfectly, especially things like this.
Jesse Itzler, entrepreneur and doer of all things, writes: “The fact is, we live life in routine. And creating NEWNESS is hard (especially as you get older). You have to PLAN IT or it likely won’t happen. At the end of the day, all we have are our experiences. In 2021, if you have a chance to create a memory...TAKE IT. You may NEVER get another chance.”
Nobody knows what they’re doing the first time. It’s so important to keep this in mind and to be careful comparing yourself to others who have spent years or decades on projects and designs. Learn from others. Experience newness. Comparisons are detrimental.
Perfection cannot be the expectation the first time, the tenth time, or even the hundredth time. Learning and improvement are metrics that can make a difference. We’re all just making it up as we go.
State of the Circle
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