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Saturday-Pentacle – Week 38 – 2017

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Saturday-Pentacle, Week 38 Issue

“Saturday-Pentacle”

Saturday-Pentacle - Week 21 - 2017

App of the week –

Rainmeter – Desktop Customization Tool

This is an amazing tool for customizing your windows based desktop. It can literally be used to customize your desktop in any way possible. With putting life into your music player into or visually delightful active desktop screen. It can do it all plus it’s free and open source.

Take a look at my recent customization to get a feel of it –

P.S.: The dock used here in this example is Rocket Dock app which is also open source and free.

Just in case if I got you curious, you can go check out these two apps –

My most popular Instagram post recently —

Chai is always a GOOD idea!
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When rainy day, cool breeze and great ambiance set the mood of the evening. Chai is usually a GOOD idea!

Article(s) I’m enjoying (and pondering) —

The 10-Minute Exercise Tony Robbins Does Every Morning to Have More Energy – Tony Robbins is a legend in personal growth space from past few decades. He has so much energy that it inspires you. If you want to start your day the same way he does you only need to set aside 10 minutes.

Summary of the article – Tony Robbins calls this 10 mins exercise – ‘Priming’

  1. Breathing Exercise – Robbins created his own version of an ancient yoga technique called Kapalabhati Pranayama breathing. The breathing exercise should take around a minute with each of the remaining three steps lasting around three minutes.
  2. Express Gratitude – Take a few minutes to think of three things he’s grateful for, spending about a minute on each.
  3. Experience connection – Imagine a light flowing into the top of your head and then spreading into the rest of your body, strengthening and healing you. This makes you feel connected.
  4. Visualize success – Last three minutes visualize what it is like to achieve a goal. “Don’t think about making it happen, see it as done”.

I’m reading/watching/listening to —

Inside the mind of a master procrastinator | Tim Urban – Tim Urban is one of my favorite bloggers and writers. But he too faces the same problem we do – procrastination. But I din’t imagine he would show his world of procrastination with this detail. It blew my mind in a funny but eye opening way.

Quote I’m pondering on lately – 

“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”

― Victor Borge

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu

A couple of things I could use your help with:

  1. Have a relevant topic, which I should be covering? Write to me directly or fill out this form and let me know.
  2. Join my reader’s list – It helps us a lot when you become a subscriber, it smoothens you experience on Lifestyle Architecture Lab. Being on email list provides you additional benefits like some exclusive content, webinar’s, free goodies and all of it will be FREE. Please click the link above to join now or put your email address in the below box and hit subscribe.

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.

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Saturday-Pentacle

Saturday-Pentacle – Week 37 – 2017

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Saturday-Pentacle, Week 37 Issue

“Saturday-Pentacle”

Saturday-Pentacle - Week 21 - 2017

App of the week –

Trello

Time for a new app this week. Trello is a modern app for organizing about everything in your life. A work project, a healthy routine, a kitchen redesign project? Trello gets all these done in a beautiful way. It has a refreshing design and logic. It has four main components in it’s design as an organizing app –

  1. Boards – For each project you create a board.
  2. Lists – In each board you can put tasks into lists.
  3. Cards – In each list you can put a main task as a card, each card can have more details of the task and sub tasks as checklists.
  4. Menu – Like it’s name, menu is for certain tasks like filtering your cards, changing board background and activity log etc.

As I’ve been following Trello from past few years but not until recently I started using it more than just glancing. I found it quite satisfying for organizing purpose and design wise. In earlier days of Trello I couldn’t digest it’s horizontal design but now I’m growing more and more fond of it as I’m using it.

Just in case if I got you curious, you can go check out this app –

My most popular Instagram post recently —

Paint the world you need to see!
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When you don’t know how to exist in the world you are in, paint the world with your imagination on the canvas of life as you need to see.

Article(s) I’m enjoying (and pondering) —

To Eat or Not to Eat? The Skinny on Intermittent Fasting – You are doing strength exercise for fat less or getting lean but it’s not working? This article might have something helpful for you.

Summary of the article – This article suggests intermittent fasting along with strength training to speed up your fat burning process. As the name suggests the logic is to put an extended gap between your meals. Intermittent fasting can be done in many ways, few ways mentioned in this article –

  • 16/8 method – Skip breakfast, and consume your first meal at noon and keep eating up to eight o’clock in the evening, then repeat.
  • 5:2 diet – Fast for 2 days in a week and those 2 days need not be back to back. Calorie consumption should be cut to 500-600 calories.
  • Eat Stop Eat –Eat what you want for 24 hours and then take a complete break from food on the following day. Repeat once or twice a week.

In all these methods Calorie-free beverages are allowed and food you take in the non-fasting hours shall not be compromised by eating burgers or other junk food. Be conscious with what you put inside your stomach.

I’m reading/watching/listening to —

1% Better Every Day – This is a keynote speech by one of my favorite Author James Clear. In this speech, James puts his habit forming theories across with Stories and tells us how being 1% better every day in even seemingly trivial things of our every day life can expand our potential exponentially.

Quote I’m pondering on lately – 

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”

― John Lennon

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu

A couple of things I could use your help with:

  1. Have a relevant topic, which I should be covering? Write to me directly or fill out this form and let me know.
  2. Join my reader’s list – It helps us a lot when you become a subscriber, it smoothens you experience on Lifestyle Architecture Lab. Being on email list provides you additional benefits like some exclusive content, webinar’s, free goodies and all of it will be FREE. Please click the link above to join now or put your email address in the below box and hit subscribe.

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.

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Saturday-Pentacle

Saturday-Pentacle – Week 36 – 2017

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Saturday-Pentacle, Week 36 Issue

“Saturday-Pentacle”

Saturday-Pentacle - Week 21 - 2017

App of the week –

Doodle: Easy Scheduling

As days pass, we are always caught in the illusion of being busy. But the reality is not being able to manage our time effectively.

Usually, when we are doing a full-time job or building a business, we have to get through multiple meetings every day. When you have a team of multiple people working together on something or probably multiple clients. It sometimes gets overwhelming to schedule a meeting where everybody’s time fits in properly.

I had heard about the Doodle app from the Tim Ferriss – 4 Hour work week book. However, I recently discovered that they have a mobile app as well now. Both for iOS and Android. Which makes it super easy now to schedule a meeting.

What you need to do is just open this app and create an event with multiple times slots showing your availability and then that’s it. A URL is created having meeting details and your open time slots. Forward this URL to People and they can just book any time slot available as per their schedule which matches everyone’s open time slots.

Otherwise, this kind of scheduling might involve calling all the invitees individually and asking for their time slots and then putting a meeting invite. Doodle solves that problem with 3-4 taps on this app.

Just in case if I got you curious, you can go check out this app –

My most popular Instagram post recently —

Rustic mystery!
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It was a grey day rather evening should I say.
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My body was drained out of the juice and I wanted to sit somewhere immediately.
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That was when I heard a scratching sound which came from an old abandoned house from the left side of the street.
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In this tiring condition I would never have turned my head towards this house which was rustic and strangely terrifying.
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I saw there was a spiral staircase going up to first floor and then second floor subsequently.
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There was something strange towards these stairs which was inviting, in a weird way….Read more

 

Article(s) I’m enjoying (and pondering) —

Drinking Coffee May Help You Live Longer – What? How can coffee enhance your longevity? Well, this article answers that, scientifically (well…sort of).

Summary of the article – Coffee is associated with longevity in this said research in the article, however before you up your coffee consumption in celebration. You may want to consider choosing the less jittery route, probably, a decaf Coffee? (Less caffeine = Less Jittery feeling). Well, that’s worth giving a shot. More on decaf coffee and how it affects you – click here. This is the one I’ve used earlier.

I’m reading/watching/listening to —

Dare to refuse the origin myths that claim who you are – A deep and a meaningful Ted Talk by Human rights activist Chetan Bhatt, which will force you to rethink about your whole existence. He strikes a chord when he talks about why religion and other origin/identity myths might not a have a place in future.

Get a double espresso and listen to this amazing 22 minutes intense Ted talk.

Quote I’m pondering on lately – 

“A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. But intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.”

— Albert Einstein

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu

A couple of things I could use your help with:

  1. Have a relevant topic, which I should be covering? Write to me directly or fill out this form and let me know.
  2. Join my reader’s list – It helps us a lot when you become a subscriber, it smoothens you experience on Lifestyle Architecture Lab. Being on email list provides you additional benefits like some exclusive content, webinar’s, free goodies and all of it will be FREE. Please click the link above to join now or put your email address in the below box and hit subscribe.

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.

Continue Reading

Saturday-Pentacle

Saturday-Pentacle – Week 35 – 2017

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Saturday-Pentacle, Week 35 Issue

“Saturday-Pentacle”

Saturday-Pentacle - Week 21 - 2017

Post of the week –

26 Things About Life I Wish I Had Known When I Was 20 Years Old – In this post, I share 26 things I wish I had known when I was 20 years old. Of course I don’t know everything, but hopefully, these 26 things will help you become a better person.

Please enjoy and don’t forget to leave a comment on the post.

My most popular Instagram post recently —

Coffee and shelter!

It was raining. Hard. We were all drenched.

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.

Life is such, a cup of coffee after a rain storm.

Article(s) I’m enjoying (and pondering) —

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.

Podcast links – Sound Cloud | iTunes

Quote I’m pondering on lately – Today’s quote is inspired from the fundamental point of my venture Lifestyle Architecture Lab, which is minimalism.

“It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. ”

—WILLIAM OF OCCAM (1300–1350), originator of “Occam’s Razor”

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

Himanshu

A couple of things I could use your help with:

  1. Have a relevant topic, which I should be covering? Write to me directly or fill out this form and let me know.
  2. Join my reader’s list – It helps us a lot when you become a subscriber, it smoothens you experience on Lifestyle Architecture Lab. Being on email list provides you additional benefits like some exclusive content, webinar’s, free goodies and all of it will be FREE. Please click the link above to join now or put your email address in the below box and hit subscribe.

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.

Continue Reading

regular

26 Things About Life I Wish I Had Known When I Was 20 Years Old

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Photo by Caleb George on Unsplash

As Ludwig famously said –

Less is More.

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 –

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