Circle Three: the seventeenth

Choosing Fires. Verbs. Shoes.

Mar 16, 2021

Spring is closer than we think. Meanwhile, here’s a snowy picture of my view snowshoeing in Utah. Last week’s most-clicked link was on learning how to level-up your brain like Elon.

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

“We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing...an actor, a writer...I am a person who does things...I write, I act...and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.” — Stephen Fry

This is a concept I’ve returned to on occasion. It can be confining and/or frightening to define yourself as a noun, especially if that identity suddenly changes. We are what we do. What do you do?

Circles of Thought

Nike’s Flyease Go shoes are the company’s first hands-free shoe made for extreme use cases. I love the specificity of the design: the shoe is designed for those with physical limitations, “from a pregnant woman in her third trimester to an older adult with arthritic hands.” But usable by everyone.
Tom Friedman shares his thoughts on the future of learning and his 5 pieces of advice for his daughters, including “Think like a waitress at Perkins Pancake House in Minneapolis”. Insightful anecdotes. Also, scroll down on the page to find a bot-generated college recruitment script.
This neat background generator creates geometric, customizable backgrounds for all sorts of uses: from phone backgrounds to slide backgrounds to social media. I often use it for my phone background.
Here’s a checklist for creating the perfect charts that relevant for people interacting with chart graphics as well as those designing the graphics.

Inner Circle: Choosing Your Fires

Reframing “Find your passion” with “What struggle is worth it?”

“You know when you wake up, and right before you're actually awake, where there's that split second where you're not bombarded by the weight of everything. You know what I mean?”

Jack Antonoff gets deep with his introduction to Bleachers’ live track Goodmorning.

I find it incredibly relatable and a great lead-in to discussing fires.

The problem-free life is an illusion. We will never outrun problems or move beyond them. The problems will evolve and change.

Receiving MBA rejections or spending nights doing engineering problem sets are certainly not highlights of the application or college experiences, respectively. But it’s what I signed up for; they’re fires I willingly went through even knowing the pain or struggle that might result.

We all have weighty things that result from our choices. Different for each person. As Jack continues, “right as you wake up, everything is beautiful. Then you remember specific things...but also those deep guttural weighty things.”

Relationships, finances, retirement, life’s purpose, unfulfilled dreams. You get the gist.

These are all serious contemplations. And I’m certainly not alone in enjoying that split second in the morning.

But I also am learning to appreciate the pains. Because they too are a choice. It’s a level of maturity I'm striving towards: understanding and embracing the struggles that result from past choices.

Mark Manson and James Clear both discuss this understanding is important.

“Learn to sustain the pain you’ve chosen. When you choose a new value, you are choosing to introduce a new form of pain into your life. Relish it. Savor it. Welcome it with open arms. Then act despite it.”

Knowing that my values will introduce me to new fires, I’ll be more aware that the shiny goal ahead of me might have a dark side. And therefore more prepared to endure.

“Many people delay taking action because they hope to avoid suffering. They keep searching for a path that won’t involve tradeoffs. But some form of suffering is always inevitable. The process of taking action is the process of choosing your pain.” — James Clear

Goals come with problems, and playing it safe comes with problems. As you move to a higher level in your career, a new title in life, or a new location, you will wake up and be “bombarded by the weight of everything.” The choice has always been yours on how you respond to those fires.

State of the Circle

Dan is a mechanical design engineer interested in human-centered design. I love coming up with intuitive solutions. Reply to this email with what you’re working on.

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Circle Three