Monthly Wrap! (May)

Monthly Wraps are blogs that are up on the last Sunday of the month which include:

1. Blogs of the month
2. Book recommendations 
3. What did I curate? Resources I’m binging on – of course, I’ll be choosing the major ones. Just a brim of how much I curate!
4. Reminders & Reflections to ponder – Of various of my reflections of the month, I’ll choose one or a few. And some re-realized reminders!
5. My writing journey/ my book updates 

Here’s May’s “Monthly Wrap!”

Blogs I wrote this month:

1. Blog 53: Birthday Gift to yourself!
2. Blog 54: Burn your Certificates!
3. Blog 55: A Life Compass!
4. Blog 56: Do you understand ‘The Joker’?
5. Blog 57: Monthly Wrap (May)

Book Recommendations:

This month I could read 5 books:

1. Essentialism by Greg Mckeown is a book that provokes you to reflect on how you’re designing your life, on all aspects from how much time you spend on activities to what you buy, the author provokes and promotes you to apply essentialism to all aspects of your life. This book does not teach you anything new (Do the essential, drop the non-essential), but it is a great reminder!
2. The Courage to be disliked by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi is again a provoking book. It forces you to drop your insecurities around people and assumptions that inhibit you. Again, it’s nothing new, we’ve already heard ‘do not care too much about people’ but have we implemented that in our life so that our assumption of people’s opinions are not inhibiting us anymore? That’s where this book helps, this book is a great reminder!
3. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is a good book. ‘It’s good to have read’ kind of book. However, my expectations were very high since I had read the author’s previous book ‘Outliers’ and had loved it. This one has the same kind of brilliant way of narration but this is by nature an open-ended topic, and hence you don’t feel that sense of closure or get the opportunity to adopt its principles immediately into your daily habits.
4. Range by David Epstein is a great book! It’s a must-read for all youngsters. However, again, I didn’t find anything new in this book except the statistical or research results that support the fact that “Generalists triumph in a specialized world”. Many other books I’ve read have already mentioned that fact and also, it should be a pretty obvious conclusion considering the advancement of robots trained to do very specific tasks. But I still recommend this book for someone who has an opposing view to this fact, or to someone who hasn’t thought of it this way, this book is the best way to start thinking that way.
5. Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull is a very inspiring book! There are no other words to describe the experience of reading this book. Who doesn’t want to know the behind-the-scenes of great animation movies like Toy Story, Up, Inside Out, Incredibles, etc? It’s not just the way he narrates throughout his book, but the journey of Ed Catmull and Pixar is itself so amazing, so inspiring! Every creative person must read this book! And not just to artists, this is a great book for artists’ managers.

What I curated:

Movies:

1. The Adventurers
2. King Richard
3. The Secret: Dare to Dream
4. Orphan
5. The Spacewalker
6. Sharmaji Namkeen
7. Masterminds
8. King Of Thieves
9. The Bank Job
10. Troop Zero
11. Gifted
12. Better Nate Than Never
13. Turning Red

Series I’m following:

1. The Flash ( Amazon Prime Video)
2. Young Sheldon ( Amazon Prime Video)
3. Welcome To Earth (Disney+Hotstar)

Trailers:

1. BayMax! | Trailer 2
2. Lightyear | Special Look

Few (must watch) YouTube videos:

1. Where is the Original Vishweshwara Temple?
2. How ZHC Gained 13 Million Subscribers In A Year (inspiring)
3. Dan Mace’s How I sold every Idea
4. Struthless – 10 things under $100 that changed my life
5. Mark Rober’s Pranks destroy scam callers
6. Solutions to all problems in the world

Studio Tours:

EPIC HOME STUDIO Setup 2022 | Steve Bellamy (studio tour)

Science:

1. After 15,000 years, it’s waking up
2. How Electricity Actually Works
3. A Picture of the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Reminders & reflections to ponder:

1. There are planes of reality. 
2. Don’t get caught up in these dreams, intents, and goals of the materialistic world. Always remember, that the ultimate intent is liberation.
3. It’s only when you’re lacking clarity ( awareness) that there’s inaction. When and Where there’s clarity, there’s action.
4. The more the power of knowledge you have, the more the power of reflection you require! 
5. A tool is never something that inhibits or harms, either in the short or long term.
6. Creativity and originality are definitely not rocket science. It’s about who has the courage to choose to be creative and original. It’s about who has the courage to execute and bring his ideas to life! That’s it, that’s what separates the creator from the herd!
7. The ultimate intent is liberation. But we don’t know when that’ll happen, so meanwhile, your intent should be to serve people, as much as possible, in your own way. Find that way, and start serving!
8. Being called an artist is easy, being an artist is hard. But please choose the ‘hard’. Please be an artist in the world of hacks! Artist is not a status quo. Being an artist is a responsibility! Summon enough courage to take that responsibility!

My Book Update:

• I’ve been working on my book more consistently than the previous month.
• I jot down pages of various key points/paragraphs in a rough book.
• I completed transferring that to digital format.

Thank You,

Yours Loving,

Sanath Kumar Naibhi