Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 183 // Week 19 // 2020

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By Himanshu Sachdeva

Hello there!

Another week passed by. Now as this is becoming the way of life for foreseeable future, I feel the focus from the news has to be reduced a little bit. There is a lot of chaos in the world right now; if we keep focusing on the chaos while being in the limited square footage of our home. It starts feeling like a prison very quickly.

So to avoid that, I’ve decided to provide things of calmness and serenity through my Saturday Pentacle newsletter as much as I can.

I recently published the latest podcast with Indian Tabla Maestro Aditya Kalyanpur. If you want to listen to a conversation around how to pursue what you love and how to hon your craft so much that it takes you places, here is the Podcast episode.

I’ve also started getting back to meditation more, listening to the chirp of sparrows in the morning (yes sparrow’s are back as the humans have stopped venturing out). The inward journey is not very calm though, all the things which I have stopped being sensitive about, as I sit without the ignorance armour in my meditation, they start to come up. But these unresolved thoughts (something from the work or somebody said something and things like that) start to come to the surface and through meditation one can resolve them just by thinking about them. That’s what I’ve been doing in my meditations.

I’m also focused on movability exercises a bit more nowadays which include stretching the core, hamstring, hips and spine mobility. More than the cardio I’ve been working on these and also the posture of my body while sitting for work trying to maintain the straightness of spine.

To improve my focus, I’ve been using the Pomodoro technique. Where I focus for 25 mins and take a quick break. I found that it makes it easy to churn out one single mid-tier task into 1 of the 25 mins session and that way I can actually accomplish better. An app which I’m using for Pomodoro sessions is one of the points in today’s newsletter.

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

  1. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand – 20% read on kindle.
  2. Highly Productive Remote Work by Darius Foroux – 30% (found it via Darius’s newsletter, finding it very useful right now in this situation)
  3. Breaking Smart: Season One: How Software is Eating the World – 30% finished (an amazing book recommended by David Perell)

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to listen to audiobooks in these past few weeks, so the below two books are on pause –

  1. The Sign of the Four” of the Sherlock Holmes series
  2. Becoming a Category of One by Joe Calloway.

But happy to be back to reading. Some way or the other books have to be read. That’s it for the talk.

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


Issue 183 // Week 19 // 2020


An app I’m loving

Forest App for Pomodoro Technique – This app has been really amazing, suggested by Ali Abdaal, it is actually a Pomodoro timer plus much more. It grows virtual trees in a virtual forest as you keep focusing every 25 mins. It provides you virtual coins, if you collect enough coins (like 2000) it provides an option to plant a real tree! (What! No way!!! but it’s actually true) via a Non-Profit, they are integrated with. We are living in an amazing world, where just by focusing on your work you can plant and grow virtual and actual trees. That’s what keeps my excited to focus more now.


A podcasting product I found awesome —

Riverside.fm – This new product just blew my mind, Create a podcast (not exactly a podcast but sort of a link), then share the guest link with your guest. You both login into your links and boom you are on a video call. Press record and your video+audio (in separate tracks) start recording. Once you stop record, you can immediately download your side, guest side audio and the video from the dashboard.

Riverside CEO Nadav Keyson, himself gave the demo to me. Super smart guy. The company is based out of the Netherlands. I think this is going to be a product to watch out for. Especially if you are a podcaster or a live streamer. (Yes you can live-stream your video podcast as well! How cool is that!).

Even though the pricing is there for this and it’s a bit on the higher side at the moment, but still if you want ease and one-click production. This is going to be the way to go.

Here is a demo –


A podcast I loved

The Random Show (part of the Tim Ferriss Show Podcast) – This is one of my favorite aspect of the Tim Ferriss Show, where Tim and Kevin Rose come together every few months on boozie trip (sometimes) and over drinks they talk about life and all things in between. In the latest doze of the Random Show, they talked about –

  1. What are they reading in the lockdown (some good book recos)
  2. How to shape your investment strategies in these times.
  3. Why Tim is so much troubled with the whole pandemic situation, even though he has got it all.

And much more. I loved the conversation, hope you’ll find it awesome too.


Playlist helping me focus again —

Study Playlist by Thomas Frank – As I was not able to focus much in the early past week, so I came back to this playlist, which is really good for calmful focus (that weird right? Calm and Focus together? but I think spiritually they are very similar).

This playlist has a rhythmic tone to it and sort of calmness with instrumental music which doesn’t bother your brain to process further information about lyrics. Good one by Thomas Frank.


Quote which I found useful to declutter –

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

— Peter Drucker

Before saying “see you next week”
I’m gonna mention my recent podcast episode again here if you missed it in the top section. Episode 21 with Aditya Kalyanpur (Indian Tabla Maestro).

Also, watch out for the next story in “Lifestyle Design in Action – A Story Series” this Thursday.

Lastly, here are a few pictures from my Instagram. You can check them out here or go to my Instagram for the whole stories and more –

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu


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!


No spam, ever. Only great stuff.

Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 183 // Week 19 // 2020

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Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 182 // Week 18 // 2020

Saturday Pentacle Weekly Newsletter - Banner
By Himanshu Sachdeva

Hello there!

Weeks are passing by slow and fast at the same time. Losing focus and getting into anxiety is very easy at the moment. But I’m finding pouring my mind over a journal page every day and meditating 10 mins every day especially useful to distress. As the lockdown is getting extended it’s still difficult to sit inside, but at the same time, we have slowly gotten used to the whole situation. Even though we are alone at homes but still as connected humans species (thank the internet) we are moving through the rough waters.

Moving on to the book listening progress, I didn’t make any progress on below two books, this week–

  1. The Sign of the Four” of the Sherlock Holmes series
  2. Becoming a Category of One by Joe Calloway.

But I moved forward on below books (added 2 new ones) –

  1. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand – 10% read on kindle.
  2. Highly Productive Remote Work by Darius Foroux – 10% (found it via Darius’s newsletter, finding it very useful right now in this situation)
  3. Breaking Smart: Season One: How Software is Eating the World – 20% finished (an amazing book recommended by David Perell)

So making small progress.

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


Issue 182 // Week 18 // 2020


An interview I loved

Pretty Big Deal by Ashley Graham- Casey Neistat – This was a really casual looking interview but Casey opened up with Ashley in a great way about his process, his journey and I got three big takeaways from this interview –

  1. What should be a deal-breaker? – when a collab/deal collides with your values/social values.
  2. What should you seek with your creativity? – Find the coinciding point between the two circles of exponential growth and longevity of your creation.
  3. What’s the biggest point of growth on any platform? – Honesty and being yourself is the biggest content anchor for any platform.

An article I found really useful —

Lockdown relationship advice – Coronavirus-related anxiety is real and causing serious damage to our partnerships. This NYT article gives great tips to ease the strain.

If you care about your relationship with your partner or your family, then the first and foremost important thing is to take care of your self. Read the article on how to do that. Good Advice.


An info I accidentally found while doing research on a photo

Health benefits of a Torch Ginger Flower – Recently when I posted a picture of a Torch Ginger Flower which I had taken last year in Kerala. It made me learn more about this flower and I found some really good info about it. Especially the health benefits. Hence sharing the key points here (for full detail click the article link) –

Better known as Bunga Kantan is a popular ingredient in Malaysian cooking (like tom yam soup) that could also have health benefits.⁠ It’s also known to reduce inflammation, treat a loss of appetite, reduce diabetes and hypertension.⁠


Music which made me feel alive —

Vex Oh by KAYTRANADA – This artist was suggested to me by Stuart in our podcast episode recently.

But I discovered a lot more songs when I checked this artist out, he’s specialized in low beat (115 BPM) music. I think this music will be amazing while cycling (when we can do cycling! Ermm).


Quote which made me feel grateful again (literally) –

“If I quit now, I will soon be back to where I started.
And when I started I was desperately wishing to be where I am now.

— Unknown

Before saying “see you next week”
Last week, I started a new series on my blog – Lifestyle Design in Action – A Story Series. In this series few of the people who have worked on their Lifestyle Design are sharing their stories as guest posts, The first story I published is of Sumersingh Rajpurohit (from LastMomentTuitions.com), check it out –

More stories to come every week as move along.

I also posted a few pictures on Instagram. You can check them out here or go to my Instagram for the whole stories and more –

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu


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!


No spam, ever. Only great stuff.

Saturday-Pentacle // Issue 182 // Week 18 // 2020

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