Hello!

After a previous couple of hectic weeks, this past week was a little better (except for Monday, Tuesday where the residue work of the previous weeks was being cleared up). I meditated on 4 days last week and stretched as well to calm my mind and body. The previous week, I was almost about to freak out with stress.

I was able to write more this week and finished up a few pending copywriting pieces for my blog and also finished an introduction and editing of the guest post of this past week. You can read it here.

I’m working more to improve my writing and specifically writing online. Because I’ve slowly understood that writing for different platforms is completely different. For example –

1. For twitter, dense ideas with clear thoughts in fewer lines.
2. For How to blogs – medium form simple writing with clear bullet forms which are easily consumable.
3. For an essay or article on a specific subject – Spend your time properly on researching on the idea, it should reflect clarity of thoughts but also the deepest knowledge about the subject.
4. For a book – fast and imperfect writing in your first draft, and then 2-3 edit iterations.

The most important aspect of improving your writing is sitting daily and churning out words on the screen or paper. Daily! there is no other way. I’m continuing to schedule writing every day.

Coming to the book reading/listening progress, I moved forward on below books –

1. Highly Productive Remote Work by Darius Foroux – 80% done (Kindle)
2. Breaking Smart: Season One: How Software is Eating the World – 60% done (an amazing book recommended by David Perell) (Kindle)
3. “The Sign of the Four” of the Sherlock Holmes series – 70% done (Audible)

No progress on below ones this week –

1. Becoming a Category of One by Joe Calloway – 20% done only (Audible)
2. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand – 20% done only (Kindle).

That’s it for the personal updates.

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

Issue 185 // Week 21 // 2020

An article I found useful —

How to rewire your brain to beat procrastination – This is a great article which shares the idea that as humans we are now prone to procrastination more than ever. In the world of information overload when we have to focus on a task, we have 100s of distractions ready at your palm (in the mobile phones).

Procrastination wasn’t there in ancient times. as humans evolved and reached the information age, our mind evolved and the procrastination came to light. But the way it came to be, the same way it can be overcome. Our mind can train itself to overcome procrastination, through the process called Neuroplasticity.

This article shares the definition of Neuroplasticity and how to rewire your brain to beat procrastination with different techniques like S.M.A.R.T. goals and much more.

Great useful read which anyone can start implementing in their lives.

A show I loved —

Upload – This Amazon Studios’s original show – Upload is really good. It shows that in the near future a person’s consciousness can be uploaded into a digital space and they can have a digital afterlife which is dependant on the data plan you take from a service provider. So eventually in your afterlife also your monetary value will define the quality of the place you live in. (that sounds sad and capitalistic).

But the human element in this show and all the CGI wizardry is just astounding.

I totally recommend the season 1 (season 2 is yet to come).

Here is the trailer –

A video I loved —

The Toxic World of Self Help – I resonated well with this video. James Jani (The video creator) didn’t say that everything is bad, the way it looks from the title of the video. But he put out quite a good points which one should be aware of.

Here is the summary of the wisdom from this video –

1. Be aware of fake gurus, which are a million in this digitally social world.
2. Keep yourself aware of social media and self-help rabbit-hole.
3. Don’t allow yourself to consume more than you take action on.
4. Don’t just keep on following the self-help advice like a robot, it’s ok to be human and take time for recovery and healing as well.
5. Focus on what your task/business needs right now. Ignore the fluff. (Action Faking – that’s a new term I learned from this video)

To learn more on this, check out the video –

Music I’m loving —

Know Your Worth by Khalid – This amazing upbeat song by Khalid kept me going this past week.

Beautiful lyrics and great music. Must listen (on repeat).

Quote which I found meaningful –

Believe in yourself. Under-confidence leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy that you are not good enough for your work.

— Dr Roopleen

Before saying “see you next week”

Here is the second story of my Lifestyle Design in Action – Story Series which I published this past week –

Also posted this photo on Instagram. You can check it out here or go to my Instagram for the whole story and more –

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Himanshu Sachdeva (@sachdevahimanshu) on May 4, 2020 at 12:30am PDT

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 185 // Week 21 // 2020

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