Hello!

Welcome to another edition of Saturday Pentacle.

As I’ve been learning more about habit-forming and consistency, I’m also learning about the other side of things, entropy and related things.

EntropyA measure of disorder is not just one state, it indeed is the default state of the universe. If we want to bring some order, you have to apply force to reduce entropy and increase order. Entropy is universal, but it is also personal.

We are struggling every day to bring order in our lives, make everything better. But Entropy is like a time’s arrow, it will always be there. You like it or not. You handle this situation, that situation will come. You may have one moment of peace and the next moment you find that entropy pushed that domino and everything is a mess.

That’s where things like being consistent and building habits, help. We can’t predict everything, but what we can do is – reduce the mess or recover fast from the entropy moments.

I’m constantly finding myself fighting against entropy. That’s why I’m constantly doing more to better on my habits and being consistent. James Clear’s book “Atomic Habit” which I finished last month was a good help.

Moving forward to the newsletter, here is my weekly creative progress –

1. I’m crossed my 50th (consecutive) streak of a new language learning class (on Duolingo), next target is to reach 100 days of learning.
2. My book reading progress – (added another interesting book to reading list this week – 3rd one)
   1. The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons in Creative Leadership from the CEO of the Walt Disney Company – Progress 35% (Audible)
   2. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes – Progress 20% (Audible)
   3. The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry – Progress 15% (Audible)
   4. World War Z by Max Brooks – Progress 10% (Audible)

That’s it for personal and creative updates.

Without further adieu, please enjoy this week’s Saturday-Pentacle.

Issue 198 // Week 34 // 2020

A product which got me excited —

fanttik Electric Screwdriver-Power Meets Precision – For my DIY projects I was looking for an electronic drill which can do “jack of all” kinda work. I found this amazing product on IndiGoGo. It has those little things which makes distinguish the product from good to best –

1. One Hand easy drill bit pull-off.
2. Precision for very delicate drilling and high power for drilling a wall.
3. Digital Display (this is the first time a drill has a digital display)
4. Ergonomics! (I think this is one of the key selling points)

If you are a DIYer, you might love this product as well. It’s shipping soon, so book while you can.

A (unix) nerd fact I discovered —

Apple replaces bash with zsh as the default shell in macOS Catalina – Last year (Jun 2019) Apple replaced the main shell from bash to zsh (called may be zeesh or zish?). Well, this point may only be relevant to you if you are a developer using a mac or may be you are a nerd. If not, then you can move on to the next point.

With zsh basically, you’ll have to link your z profile to your main bash profile (.profile) to be able to access to your normal shortcuts and aliases. Plus there is much more difference in zsh and bash. Here is a link for further reading between zsh vs bash comparison.

Here is why you should move from bash to zsh, if you haven’t yet.

A newsletter I’m loving —

Indiepod Bulletin by Sonologue – If you are a podcaster or aspiring to be one or maybe you love audio (audio engineer? producer?). This is one newsletter you should subscribe to.

My dear friend Chhavi who is a podcasting coach and producer herself started publishing her newsletter few moons back. (BTW she’s been in my podcast too!)

Here is the third issue of her newsletter. Check it out!

You can subscribe to it here.

A song I loved —

You & the Cockroach – This song by Hobo Johnson stole the show last week, Amazing lyrics and a very alternative style for a song. Storytelling, sarcasm, politics, comedy and what not! All in one song.

Check it out.

Quote which I found meaningful –

Plant a bitter crop and guess what you get when it’s the harvest time, it’s Karma Bitch!

— Unknown

Before saying “see you next week”

I’m really excited to share the new Lifestyle Architecture Lab interactive community on Vibely app! 💙

Join today with this special invite link to the group.

Why vibely? Basically it’s a place where we want to make the group and our content interactive. There are daily interesting challenges like –

• Reading for 1 hour everyday and posting your progress
• Doing one act of kindness every day
• Journaling prompts for you
• Travel writing for 500 words

and more such creative challenges.

It’s a really fun place to be. You’ll get gamified rewards and recognitions for completing the challenges. We are trying to make it a safe place for all the like-minded people to join in the self-growth journey. If you are already working on your passion projects then you’ll get all the support you can and no bashing or judgement for being who you want to be.💡

Join today with this special invite link to the group.

P.S.: Our Facebook group is not going anywhere, we are just adding an interactive branch to it.

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu

About Author

I’m Himanshu Sachdeva, a technology professional working in Mumbai, India. I spend most of my spare time making Podcasts, YouTube videos and write on Lifestyle Design and sometimes stories.

Every Saturday, I send out an email newsletter called “Saturday Pentacle”, a list of the cool stuff I explored in the past week, including quotes, photos, books, articles, movies, documentaries and so on!

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.

Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 198 // Week 34 // 2020

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