When we talk about power, we’re not just talking about brute force or dominance. Power, in its most subtle and effective form, is about influence, control and the ability to sway situations to your favor. This is where Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power comes into play. It offers a masterclass on the strategies and tactics that have defined the power plays of history’s most influential figures.
Why You Should Read It
If you’ve ever found yourself navigating the intricate web of office politics, trying to understand the motivations behind people’s actions, or simply wanting to sharpen your strategic thinking, this book is for you. Greene’s 48 laws aren’t just theoretical; they’re drawn from centuries of historical precedents. From the cunning maneuvers of ancient rulers to the corporate strategies of modern CEOs.
But let’s be clear—this book isn’t for the faint-hearted. You may feel it at places it’s very mean. But it is for those who understand that power isn’t just about having control over others but also about understanding how not to lose control of yourself. Each law is a tool, not just for gaining power but for defending against it. In today’s world, where competition is fierce and stakes are high, having a deep understanding of these principles can be the difference between success and mediocrity.
Here is this week’s Saturday-Pentacle. A list of things and ideas I found Interesting.
Issue 214 // Week 11 // 2022
An article I found interesting —
Die with zero – This article from Khe Hy (from radreads.co) talks about the book Die with zero and the philosophy it talks about – If you die with > zero then you failed at fully optimizing your life.
It resonates with me. That whatever impact you want to have on the world why you want to think about leaving a legacy when you are gone? Do it while you are alive. You want to work on climate change? Work on it right now.
There is a concept from the stoic philosophy called memento mori which literally means inevitability of death. This whole Die with zero concept works around memento mori.
What are smart contracts in Crypto? – Very well explained concept of Smart Contracts. This video also explains smart contracts in context of crypto. Also their fundamental properties –
They are immutable.
They are distributed.
Great video from Whiteboard Crypto to get started with Smart Contracts.
Quote which I found meaningful –
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
For me, it was a bit slow week than my usual fast-paced workweek. I enjoyed my work when I was able to delegate some of the work and was able to pick and choose what I actually wanted to work on. That was a first in a very long weeks span time.
I was also able to curate this week’s pentacle items almost every day. I have gotta admit, I have to sift through a lot of content to find some good things to share, but I like the process, as it makes me go through some really good stuff eventually and the process of curating and sharing with you all, make it worth it!
Anyway, time for you to read on the good stuff I found the past week. Enjoy!
Issue 203 // Week 28 // 2021
An Article or a quarantine memoir I found interesting –
Quarantined to Room 903— Found this quarantine memoir when the author travelled from the US to Singapore at the end of 2020 and was quarantined for 14 days in a hotel room. How she put herself in a bubble and still kept the social interaction and walked 100 miles in 14 days in the same room.
Really interesting stock on her time in that room.
Sonantic, a firm that specializes in emotive voices that can laugh and cry or whisper and shout, works with video-game makers and animation studios to supply the voice-overs for their characters. Many of its clients use the synthesized voices only in pre-production and switch to real voice actors for the final production. But Sonantic says a few have started using them throughout the process, perhaps for characters with fewer lines.
This is really exciting to see! Because I can even think of the use of these AI voices in e-learning videos very easily. I think the future is already here!
Check out the below video to see it in action!
A Song I loved —
Song – Somebody Else – Found this song from an Insta Story shared by one of my friends and instantly loved the song.
A Podcast episode I loved —
Malcolm Gladwell and Ryan Holiday – I love when two of my favourite interests collide. That’s what happened in this podcast. Malcolm Gladwell one of my favourite writers of all time sat and chat with Ryan Holiday (another favourite author and podcast host) about running, writing and storytelling.
This was an amazing and interesting conversation I listened to in a long-form podcast after a long time (personally).
If you wanna check it out here it is –
Quote which I found meaningful –
A Candle never Loses any of its Light while Lighting up another candle.
— Rumi
Until Next Saturday!
Thanks for supporting and 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 203 // Week 28 // 2021
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It’s been 7 exact weeks since I’m inside my home. Lockdown seems to be extending and there is no clear sight of the remedy to this till now. But I’m keeping my eyes on the research and also the political weather around this, as things might be going towards a political storm as countries are calling out China on this blasphemy. Good to keep your eyes and ears open.
But still, keeping our optimism up and being safe at home for ourselves and the people who can’t be at home, should be our priority.
Over the period of this time, my “work from home” situation has kept me well occupied. I was working like a mad man for many days until I decided to have clear cut-off timings a few weeks ago. Start at 10 am and go up to 7.30 pm, keep a transition from work to personal life. I’m going to write a proper blog post about the tools and techniques I’m using to be productive at home. (Expect it soon in your inboxes).
Coming back to the newsletter and to the book listening progress, While I was not making much progress on the audiobooks till last week. – “The Sign of the Four” of the Sherlock Holmes series and Becoming a Category of One by Joe Calloway. This week I inched further and the sherlock book is about to come to an end very shortly and I read Joe Calloway’s book 25%. Plus I also started reading one of my old half-read book – The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand since last week on my Kindle. So last week was better from reading perspective. So good to progress, even if it’s not huge.
Anyway, without further adieu, please enjoy this week’s Saturday-Pentacle.
Recently I found this collection of photos of the Obama Administration in the Whitehouse (posted by the US govt long ago) and it gave me a lot of new visual stories about this amazing couple.
I just loved the photo album. You can check it out too.
Here is an article he wrote about Ryan Holiday‘s strategy on making timeless products that sell.
Here is a piece from the article itself to give a hint of the entire thing. But I recommend you should read the whole thing, it’s well written and useful.
Ryan’s process for making a perennial seller goes like this:
Adopt the mindset of a creator that makes classics
Create a great product that stands the test of time
Perfect, package, and position into a compelling offering
Promote it through different marketing channels
Capture an audience and build a platform that stands the test of time
A how-to guide I found really useful for making my DSLR into a webcamfor awesome quality —
How to use a DSLR camera as a WebCam – In the lockdown as we are finding it convenient to get on a video call and get in touch with colleagues and friends. Usually, our laptop PC / Mac webcams are not as great.
What if we could use a DSLR lying around in our home as a webcam, awesome right?
But it’s not very easy to do if you don’t have a USB to HDMI cable. So this particular method helped me to be able to use my Nikon DSLR as WebCam.
If you are struggling as well, this video might help you. (Plus I’m making a simple blog post about this the process I took, few additional steps to remove the inconvenience.)
To be noted that Mallika Barot is the daughter of Ranjit Barot, who is a renowned musician and has worked with Coke Studio projects and even with A.R. Rehman.
Please enjoy the song.
Quote I’m pondering on lately –
Write like you speak. Then improve how well you speak.
Before saying “see you next week” I posted a few pictures on Instagram. You can check them out here or go to my Instagram for the whole stories and more –
Hey friends, I’m Himanshu, 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!
A product I’m loving – (If you are not interested in audio equipment in general, you can skip to the next point)
Zoom H6 – This is a field audio recorder I bought it lately for recording my podcast episodes. Before buying this my audio recording workflow was just a mess, but now after buying this and one audio software (which I will cover next time), my workflow has become much more streamlined and I’m able to produce audio recordings of professional quality.
Few things I’m loving about it –
The mobility – The ease of taking it anywhere means I can go to my guest’s place and record with ease knowing quality would still be good.
Ability to use 6 mics at once with it – well I don’t know when I’ll need to record 6 people at once but even recording more than one person (let’s say a couple) gives me so much liberty and peace of mind.
Ability to use it as an audio interface – This is an easter egg, I can even use this field audio recorder as a static audio interface with my computer. It works like magic. For people who don’t know what audio interface is – It is a medium to connect professional quality mics which cannot be connected directly to a computer (mics with XLR ports etc).
All In all, I’m just loving this product since the day I bought it. If you are into Audio I’m sure you’ll love it too.
My most popular Instagram post recently —
The time of dawn
.
Click the photo below to read the entire story.
The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni – This book was recommended a few months back by one of my reader friends and just yesterday someone posted this book one of my book clubs on Facebook. So finally I put this in my reading list for 2019.
This book primarily traces Panchaali’s (wife of five Pandava brothers from the Mahabharat) life, this is half history, half myth and everything in between.
An article I’m pondering upon —
This Timeless And Boldly Optimistic Idea Could Change Your Life – This article from Ryan Holiday looks like a piece from his book “The obstacle is the way” and it tells stories of three men in history who even in adverse condition saw an opportunity and moulded it into their own benefit. Ryan is known to follow stoicism as a guiding line in his life and this article shares the story of where he started this from. It was the book – Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. A good read.
Quote I’m pondering on lately – (from the today’s article)
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
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Everything was on a halt. The city, the transport and the life itself. We were thinking what place we can go to, to be safe and get away from the heavy down pour. After thinking for a while I said, lets check if our cafe (the usual place) is open.
In the hope of finding shelter we waded through the water and crossed a few streets. To our lucky surprise the cafe was the only place which was open.
We were relieved. I looked at her and we both smiled.
We entered the cafe all dripping water from our clothes.
Just two customers were there, few servers and then some.
We were happy that we were safe, we went to the end, the couch setting. It was not the usual place we sat at. But we could recharge our phones to let people know that we were safe and then the coffee came.
Good things happen in most unthinkable circumstances. Sometime back we were worried about survival and now we were having this comforting cuppa joe.
I clutched her hand tight and our hearts smiled as we sipped the coffee.
Sheryl Sandberg Just Gave Some Brilliant Career Advice – Sheryl Sandberg who is the COO of Facebook was interviewed by Inc and she gave a brilliant piece of advice on career and the best part is it will work for someone new at the job or someone as experienced as Sheryl herself. Read on by clicking the above link. It’s a good one.
Summary of the article – Two words – Ruthless Prioritization. Quit wasting your time on the mediocre things or even just the ‘good’ ones. Choose great ones and then put in the work and energy.
I’m reading/watching/listening to —
Amazing Podcast Episode – The Darius Foroux Show – Ryan Holiday: How To Create A Perennial Seller– Ryan Holiday inspires me a lot. So when I recently stumbled upon this new podcast and found Ryan as a guest. I couldn’t stop myself listening to it immediately and as expected it was a treat. So much to learn from this podcast. If you are a writer or a content creator. Get a pen and paper out for making notes.
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We are always running behind something and someone. When we don’t really know the meaning of this philosophy, we may want everything we see.
In the past 10 years of my life, I’ve slowly started to comprehend this fact. That less is more and this eventually became a fundamental value of whatever I do.
There are many other learnings like this which shaped me as a person in past 10 years. I thought to share these with you, as some of you might be in your twenties and find them helpful. So I jotted down these 26 learnings from past 10 years of my life as A to Z below.
How did I learn them you ask? I have learned these from various books, people and experiences.
I wish I had known these 26 things when I was 20 years old but here they are for you. The 26 reminders –
This app will make you teleported to another country, any country you want!
Just kidding, if not teleport YOU, at least it will teleport your IP address to look like one from UK or USA or NZ any country you want.
How is it helpful you ask?
Because there are many apps and services which are available to certain countries for example – Spotify, which is not available in many countries including India. But with a private VPN app like TunnelBear, you can temporarily change your device IP to not only download this app, but it will keep your Spotify app running until next reboot of the device or 14 days, whichever is earlier. But that’s just Spotify app, there are many more services, like Hulu, Netflix (I know Netflix launched in India, but the catalogue of shows in US and India are very much different). So this app magically changes your IP through VPN tunnelling and helps you use any services available in another country.
Plus its totally legal service and free till 500MB use per month. To change your IP just start it and stop this app after some time and your IP will remain changed to the logged in apps. So that won’t let you consume 500MB of the VPN service. Just in case you do, you can upgrade to the paid plan where you get unlimited data of VPN tunnelling.
Just in case if I got you curious, you can go check out this app –
It was a long day, we were so tired that our feet were killing us, somehow we reached the end of the world. We stood there for few moments then sat on the edge of the world. In front of us was the endless ocean. Our tiredness, our failures of the day everything fell away. Then I stretched my legs and before even I knew, I was sailing, sailing on my shoes.
THE CANVAS STRATEGY – This is a gem of an article from one of my favourite authors Ryan Holiday. Originally I read about this strategy in his book ‘Ego is the enemy‘. A very interesting article for anyone who is just starting up their career or a job.
Summary of the article – “Find canvases for other people to paint on.” One way of looking at this quoted statement is – Make other people look good, which may mean a lot of ass kissing (working) and giving up credit for your ideas. But the other way of looking at this approach is finding the direction someone already intended to head and help them pack, freeing them up to focus on their strengths. Ryan points us to a very important word from the Roman history in this article which is – anteambulo and it meant a person who clears the path in front of their patron. But the indirect point Ryan making is – The person who clears the path, ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas dictates the painting.
What I’m reading/watching/listening to —
Billy Graham: On technology and faith– This is a video from 1998 of Reverend Billy Graham’s legendary talk at TED 1998. In this talk, he marvels at technology’s power to improve lives and change the world.
He puts up a very interesting question which is till date to be solved through technology. The question was “How do we solve the evil inside the humans?”
Even though I tend to keep religion and related things away from my writing and articles. But I found this particular talk very interesting when one of the most important clergymen talked about technology and took everyone through the historical times of David.
P.S.: This is a YouTube link below if you want to go to the original TED talk link go here.
Quote I’m pondering on lately – Today’s quote is one of the quotes mentioned by Billy Graham in the Ted talk above.
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of… We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart.”
— Blaise Pascal (French mathematician, physicist, inventor of calculator, writer and Catholic theologian)
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