opinions – Page 21 – Abhinav Bhatt

Books I read in 2017

I am not an avid reader of books. I read a lot of articles, blogs, and ‘Terms & Conditions’ thoroughly on websites before clicking ‘I agree’. Alright, not the last one but I have not been a book reader types person in the past, even if I look like one. If you count articles and blogs maybe I do do a lot of reading and if you add all those articles up, they might constitute 2-3 books or so. But not proper books. I mostly end up reading 5-6 books a year, at max. This had been going on for a long time.

In case you are not aware, on the Goodreads.com site, there are Reading Challenges every year. People enter a number of books they wish to read that year. When you are done reading a book, you can mark that book as read. That’s a good way to check your progress from time to time.

Sometime in late 2015, I bought a Kindle. That helped a lot in increasing my book reading ability so I read 8 books in 2016. At the start of 2017, I aimed to read one book per month i.e. 12 Books per year. For actual book nerds, this might be a number they could be reading per month. But I am a normal person (some of us work also) so I thought one per month is a good number.

I would like to apologize by saying that I failed. 2017 ended but I could read only 10 books in 2017. Yes! That’s how life is, sadly. But I am very proud to say that most books I read this year had a profound impact on me. It was about quality and not quantity. These books not only reduced my social media time but also helped me become a better person. I also found my liking to non-fiction genre which I didn’t delve into much earlier. So, long story short, I am sharing the list of the books I read in 2017. The books which are bold are the ones I recommend. You can try reading them. No harm. As far as I know.

**The Secret of Leadership by Prakash Iyer**

**Faster than Normal by Peter Shankman**

Some of these have been reviewed here and obviously, those are the ones I recommend.

So I recently watched: Justice League

Has it ever happened to you when you took a turn anticipating less traffic but ended up getting stuck with no turning back? Now, when you have taken the turn you decide to continue with it, albeit with a sore mood.

DC, with its movies, is at a similar crossroad/junction where it knows that it has taken a path which leads to nowhere so it thinks okay what the heck, let’s buy something on the way, enough with the somber mood, time to light up and make the trip slightly merrier.

After getting hugely disappointed with Batman v Superman (and later ending up finding some sense in BvS Ultimate Edition), getting immensely saddened by Suicide Squad, liking Wonder Woman a lot, I thought, alright we can surely give one last try to the Justice League. So, I recently watched it and following are my thoughts for your perusal.

Lee Bermejo Justice League Movie Poster Released for MondoCon

Throughout the movie, except a handful of moments, I didn’t feel any excitement for any character. I liked Barry Allen of course but probably because of the Flash TV Show knowledge. Not sure from where Aquaman and Cyborg came into being and it was left for future movies to tell about their origins. This is a somewhat similar treatment to Hawkeye in Avengers where the character is just a character for whom we don’t need to care about much. Batman cracked some PJs and suddenly fell in some bro-love with Superman only when Superman had left after BvS. There was a scene where Wonder Woman looks at Batman’s bruises and then suddenly turns like a Hindi Movie Bhabhi and helps him get at ease with his muscle pull. Seriously? The antagonist was also as forgettable as the villains in Marvel movies. Do you remember any good one?

There are some positive points though. And that’s the lighter mood brought by Aquaman and the Flash. And the return of the MAIN DC CHARACTER also brings some sort of hope. I don’t want to comment on his lack of mustache though as enough has already been said. This light mood saved the movie from being a total bore and I hope future movies take some lessons out of it.

They also did a comic-animation-tie-in in the post-credit scene where the Flash and Superman compete in a race. That was a good note to end with. (I didn’t see the other post-credit scene during the movie but later on Youtube which turned out to be okayish)

Sometimes, if we do take the path which didn’t turn out to be as good as expected, it is better to enjoy it with much more confidence and moving on from the regret. Hopefully, DC would have realized now as to which path would be best to take from here.

So I recently read: ‘Faster than Normal’

This is going to be weird. Although the book ‘Faster than Normal’ is about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or popularly known as ADHD and how to make it work for you, by a renowned Author, Speaker, Ironman Triathlon Athlete, Podcaster, etc. named Peter Shankman, the title might also be my own Tagline, if I do get a tagline.

Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHDBrain — Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD brain

Let me share some of the traits (as I would refrain from calling them symptoms) of being Faster than Normal:

Speaking fast. Very fast. I mean really fast. (Although in my mind I am being normal and others are being slow to understand me)
Getting easily distracted from uninteresting things (BORING!)
Being a Morning and Monday Loving Person / Extra-Energetic / Borderline-Hyper (Yes!)
A believer in ‘Either my way or highway’ philosophy (Although this doesn’t work in real world. Still, I try.)
Suffering from Imposter Syndrome often.
Uncontrollable hands. Sometimes tongue too.

This isn’t written in the book but rather my own traits if I may be frank here. So, I don’t know whether I really have ADHD or not but reading this book gave me so many examples of my own life. And even if I might have had ADHD, this book continues to state that ADHD is not a disorder. Rather, ADHD is a superpower which can be utilized to maximize one’s output. The best part of this book is that the suggestions, tricks, and tips given in this book would work for anyone who wants to be optimal at their game, ADHD or not. I would pause here and state that if someone really has ADHD, I cannot even comprehend what all would be going through their minds all the time. But when this book tells about people who have been diagnosed with ADHD and still made it big, that is very reassuring. For instance, names like Seth Godin, Richard Branson, Will Smith have been diagnosed with ADHD at some point in their lives.

So, reiterating here that whether you are normal or faster than normal, this book has a plethora of tips by which you can enhance your general productivity. Peter gives his own examples at every instance and also brings in guests who share their experiences with how they used their faster brain to accomplish great things. From getting up early, journaling your schedule, keeping your room tidy, choices minimum, following rituals, and making the best of the time when you are in your zone, are some of the tips which are explained in details with daily life examples.

In the modern day life where we have more distractions than a normal sane person can handle, focussing on a single task at hand is certainly a huge deal. When you know that if you are to be given only one hour of time with no distractions, you can wrap up the work which otherwise might take a day with distractions, then you probably you would enjoy this book.

I have gained a lot of insights about things which I had kept on the backburner due to laziness but after reading this book, I am pumped up again. This review is the 7th blog post on my blog in 7 straight days. I think if I am able to continue this streak further, this book would be one of the reasons behind that.

The actual title of the book is: Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain. You may buy it at the given link.

What’s Social Media for you?

What’s Social Media for you? A place to connect with friends and like-minded people? Right. That’s the original definition though which was somewhat true a few years ago.

What is it now really?

A place where your friends and like-minded people give their opinions all day long.
A place where your friends (read acquaintances) and (so-called) like-minded people share what they had for lunch.
A place where all your friends have become highly political and ready to chop everyone down from their armchair via WiFi if there’s any disagreement.
A place where you are given a notification about your as distant as Pluto relatives liking the photos of their as close as Charon relatives whom you don’t care about.
A place where you hate to go now… You get the drift. Right?

In my previous few posts I have shared that I have been successful in, to a good extent, subsiding myself from the main crowd. I have tried to curb my FOMO if I may by indulging in discussing irrelevant things with strangers. I have basically made myself distant from the happenings, trendings and the agree-to-disagree endings.

Today, I came across a very interesting episode of the Ask Gary Vee show where his guest was Seth Godin. The show format is mostly audience asking the guests questions and them replying to that.

Here’s the episode for your entertainment and enlightenment:

In this, Seth Godin said a beautiful thing when asked about how he can only blog in today’s day and age and why not he is on all the social media platform which could further enhance his brand. As in, who doesn’t want that?

I will try to summarise his answer to that below:

On the Internet (or even in traditional media format), there are 2 kinds of people: Consumers (for whom the modern day algorithms of social media sites are optimized on regular basis) and the Creators (who have to work hard in order to get noticed).

All websites want to keep the consumer addicted and stuck to their sites. They make logging out difficult by keep feeding stuff to Like and Retweet. There has been so much said already about this so I don’t even need to say anything more. Even Facebook recently admitted to the fact that people who just like others end up feeling depressed.

Creators, on the other hand, are people who are trying hard to create worthy stuff. They are the producers. They are constantly learning and updating themselves so that they can be better. If creators only consume, they won’t be able to create. This is as simple as that.

Seth went on to give the examples after examples. But he also mentioned that if you are consuming things for your entertainment and for self-improvement, then that’s understandable. However, there must be a limit of how much one should consume if one wants to be a creator.

Check that video out and ponder, whether you are a consumer or a creator?

Pictures:

Are you a Consumer? (Designed by Freepik)
Are you a Creator? (Designed by Freepik)

Ungoogled

If you wake me up at 3AM in the night and ask me do I love Google? My answer would be, without flinching an eye, YES, Of course I love Google. Also, you should not wake me up at 3AM. But coming back to the topic at hand, I indeed love Google and its products. Till few days back, I would have said:

My main email is Gmail. Search = Google.com. I use Chrome on all my devices. I keep all my notes in Keep. Me and Google Calendar are inseparable. When I get reminded of a thing called ‘my health and its importance’ from time to time, Google Fit is my Fitness app. Google Documents are life savers. Maps, please don’t even get me started. Photos, Drive, I could go on and on and on… I ♥ Google.

But not anymore. Now, I am in the process to get my Internet life:

My main email is still Gmail. Search = ~~Google.com~~ DuckDuckGo.com. I use Chrome on ~~all my devices~~ on my laptop with DuckDuckGo as the search. On my mobile, I use Firefox Focus browser which instantly deletes history so it becomes difficult to log in to Facebook and Twitter. Did I tell you that I have uninstalled Twitter & unfollowed everyone on Facebook. Moreover, I have enabled 2 Factor Authentication to login to social media sites. That means, I have made logging in to these sites difficult. Firefox Focus is super at erasing history and thereby going to social media sites very tiresome! I keep all my notes in ~~Keep~~ Evernote and recently been using Wunderlist for tasks and Habit for tracking how am I keeping at my resolutions. Also, thinking of going even more analog with BuJo (I cannot promise this yet though. We shall come back to it after a couple of months). Me and Google Calendar are still inseparable. Occasionally, when I am reminded of health and its importance, Google Fit is was my Fitness app. Now, there is not any app as there’s no fitness also. Point is that you can use Endomondo, Strava, Nike+, Runtastic, etc. Google Documents are still life savers. Maps, that is probably the best application ever. Why not use Dropbox more?

If you have not paid attention to the above paragraph, specially the search part, check again. Who would have thought that life can still go on without using Google search? But it is possible, kids! So, what made that happen?

I have this one huge bone to pick with Google. Bloody, AI part of Google. Google Now (or your Siri, or your Alexa). It had become as annoying to me as AADHAR linkage to everything you have. All your search history, bookmarks, calendar events, contact list, email and whatnot gets fed to it and it provides you assistance and notifications. This is the part I chose to differ with. I think, 2017 is still a bit early to do this much for you. May be a decade later, when people will totally stop using their brain, then this much assistance could be of use.

I had written in past about ways to dumb down the smartphone in which I told about the procedure to make your life simpler with shutting off all your notifications, sounds and vibrations from all the apps which you think are not necessary. This post is about ways to ungoogle your life. There are several great applications and services which still work as good as your Google apps. Just unlinking them to the main Google account giving less feed to Google Assistance will make it less nosey and life will improve. I suggest, clean your browsing data on Google from Day 1, clean up your full web-activity and start afresh.

And, I still ♥ Google but I have blocked everything Google uses to track me. Even if it still tracks (of course it tracks), it doesn’t remind me of it. Give Ungoogling a try.

So I recently read: Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris

So I recently read Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines and Habits of Billionaires, Icons and World-Class Performers by Timothy Ferris or better known as Tim Ferris. Tim is mostly known as an investor, a podcaster, a motivational speaker, an author of multiple best-selling books and a few more things to top all that.

Tools of Titans is basically the book format of some of his podcasts, The Time Ferris Show in which he interviewed some popular figures and divided them into 3 categories:

Healthy
Wealthy
Wise

For example, in Healthy section, you will find Triple H, in Wealthy section, you will find Peter Thiel, and in Wise section, you will find Malcolm Gladwell.

To be honest, and also very clearly described in the foreword and beginning of the book, this is not a usual self-help book. This is rather a collection of interviews which needn’t be read from First Page to Last Page like a normal book. One is free to select an individual and read their discussion with Tim Ferris. After/during these interviews, Tim puts his own take on the answers given by the people who are very successful in their respective fields. The question ranges from how does one define success, to what were their best shopped item which costed 100$ or less.

Now, the book is plethora of tips and tricks which the mentioned people have used as their rituals and habits which make them the people they are. If you like a certain celebrity like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can directly jump to his interview and read about his journey from Alps to being the Governor of california while earning millions of dollars even before he became famous. You can read how Casey Neistat‘s day looked like when he began his Daily Vlogging. You can read about how James Altucher dealt with multiple failures before he became successful.

Some of the people in the books were pretty well knowns. However, some I got to know only while reading them as most of them are popular in US only (I am not living under a rock but not everyone can know about everyone, right? Ask Maria Sharapova) and then there were some voila moments when I read and realized ‘Oh, so this was the person who did that!’.

After reading this, apart from many tips received, the 2 tips which stand out the most are:

Meditate, as much as you can, whenever you can, in whichever way you can.
Journal, something, somehow, as much as you can, whenever you can, in whichever way you can.

These mean that most of the famous celebrities who have made something of their own in their lives live by one rule, Discipline.

Very recently, Tim has come up with another book, which is kind of sequel to this book called as Tribe of Mentors. For now, if you are interested in knowing about the tactics, routines and habits of billionaires, icons and world-class performers, check out the below link.

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines and Habits of Billionaires, Icons and World-Class Performers

Header Featured Picture via https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/286674

So I recently watched: Marvel's Defenders

When I watched Daredevil last year, it felt more like a realistic crime drama than a Comic Book TV Adaptation. When its Season 2 came, that belief got reinforced. Same thing happened with Jessica Jones Season 1. Even Luke Cage was going pretty fine till the last few episodes where it went sideways and changed the main villain just like that. When I watched Iron Fist, I couldn’t be sure whether the show was intentionally trying to be comedy or it was an accidental comedy. No problem with the acting, but the main thing the show could have given, superb fighting sequences, got disappeared after 1st episode and it became a more of business drama. Anyways, I wasn’t that disappointed because I was waiting wholeheartedly for all 4 of the Marvel’s TV Street Level Superheroes to culminate into The Defenders.

The trailer with a brilliant Niravana song had only increased the expectations. So on August 18th, all 8 (just 8) episodes got released on Netflix. I watched them all in 4-5 days.

The build up was good, they showed all the superheroes in their own lives trying to deal with their own issues. Then some events bring them together. And then they become Defenders, but nobody says that they are defenders per se.

So first, the good parts:

Jessica Jones.

I mean she kills all the scenes when she makes some remark about, as Stick puts it ‘A Thundering Dumbass’ or ‘The most stupid Iron Fist ever’, the Immortal Iron Fist. Luke Cage also adds his bit when he realizes that their problems are half-criminal, half-mystical and remaining indigestible. The chemistry between the 4 is really funny. Nobody wants to believe that they can work as a team, except Danny Rand. Daredevil, who knows the threat of Hand is real, is unsure whether he should jump in or not. He has kind of given up after Season 2. His non-masked character, Matt Murdock, also stays true to his original show to an extent before falling prey to ‘Love’. The other best part is when Jessica keeps making fun of his costume as he is the only one donning it. The overall storyline is satisfactory and they will probably going to go for Season 2 as well. But that won’t happen till 2019.

Now the bad parts:

Some weird things happened in the end and they tried to make it like a cliff hanger. Fair enough, but constant fighting bad guys in half-darkness with no -idea who is beating whom was a bit annoying. They hugely improved Iron Fist’s part by making them butt of other heroes’ jokes but I still wasn’t able to find one instance of fight sequence which would be as memorable as DD’s hallway and staircase scene. The villains here, are not as threatening as they should have been. And again, like Iron Fist, they sort of ruin the climax before doing away with one main person.

Overall, the Defenders were mostly okayish because if you cram 4 superheroes in just 8 episodes, many things are left unattended. You can watch the show though, just to enjoy, the camaraderie between the team and Jessica Jones’ one-liners.

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