Another reason to share your passions

July 17, 2013 by Joshua
in Blog, Fitness

[This post is part of a series on my daily exercise and starting and keeping challenging habits. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.]

Today’s post combines a few key things that result from and help create a great life.

  • Having good friends who challenge you
  • Sharing your passions
  • Exercising regularly
  • Accountability gets things done

My friend Dave — the guy I swam across the Hudson River with — was back briefly from Tanzania, where he’s doing development work. I don’t have to tell you, the guy lives an amazing life.

I told him I had been doing forty burpees a day since November 4 last year and that by my calculations I would do my ten-thousandth burpee since then on July 18 and I planned to write about it here.

The next day he texted me:

Your burpee quest got me thinking… just did 100 burpees w/ jumps in 37 minutes. Wanna beat my record? 🙂

Now that’s a friend! He listens, cares about what you do, takes it on, and challenges you. I should mention that in my first month of burpees about a year and a half ago I told him I was doing ten a day. We were drinking at a bar. He said he didn’t think ten was that much so we went outside and did ten burpees on the sidewalk to see. He did them just fine.

Anyway, I wrote him back

Awesome! … It will be my pleasure to attempt beating it. Just to make sure, you did push ups too, right?

Since readers know I love accountability because it gets things done, I decided to post here that I would take on the challenge today before starting it. You can find out tomorrow if I made it.

Incidentally, I had been meaning to do a one-hundred-burpee day for a while. I never got around to doing it. Just like I had been wondering if I could swim across the Hudson until Dave said “let’s do it.” If you don’t have people like Dave in your life, find some.

Also incidentally, ten thousand burpees since November 4 would mean something above fifteen thousand burpees total since starting. I’ve been developing an idea that anyone who does ten thousand burpees in any time limit has to be physically fit. If they do them quickly, like in a few months, the burpees alone will make them fit. If they do them slowly, like over a few years, the dedication will lead them to do other things that help make them fit.

Read my weekly newsletter

On initiative, leadership, the environment, and burpees

We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit

2 responses on “Another reason to share your passions

  1. Pingback: 120 burpees yesterday! 10,000 burpees at 2×20 per day! » Joshua Spodek

  2. Pingback: Burpees — unbeatable for fitness and my best habit — the series » Joshua Spodek

Leave a Reply

Sign up for my weekly newsletter