[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 marks two years of daily burpees!

Challenging healthy daily habits

If you want a stable foundation on which to build a life of health, resilience, discipline, focus, and drive, you will find no better tool than daily exercise. You don’t have to do burpees, but you won’t easily match their combination of challenging yet injury-free cardiovascular workout without needing equipment, weather, money, or time. If you don’t have such a daily healthy challenge and you read personal development literature, you’re retarded. I mean that literally. You are retarding the growth you’re reading this stuff for. No amount of reading will match the physical activity of a daily challenge. Or you don’t care about your development and you’re retarding your growth in other areas if you’re reading this stuff.

Challenging healthy daily habits set a lower limit to your emotional and physical health.

I have not missed a single burpee since I started. I feel as healthy as ever in my life. I don’t have a six-pack, but I have flat abs and little fat around my middle, where fat appears after a few meals of more energy than usual.

While sometimes I refer to burpees as exercise, I think of them more as a part of regular life, like brushing my teeth, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, preferring fresh fruits and vegetables to processed “food,” and saying “please” and “thank you.” If the only way I raise my heart rate is with burpees, I haven’t been exercising enough.

Funny the anniversary comes in the middle of my thirty days of cold showers, another challenging healthy daily habit that helps in similar ways, and now I recommend, though I don’t plan to do them daily forever. I’m thinking about doing them at least once weekly, occasionally doing them for longer when I feel like it.

Two days ago I also ran into a guy who does fifty burpees, though I don’t think as regularly. I’m thinking about increasing my reps. I moved up to two sets of twenty over a year ago, so maybe I’ll increase to twenty-one soon.

Since I’m away from home and my regular schedule and routine are off, the other day when I got home I couldn’t remember for sure that I had done burpees that morning. Without thinking twice about it, I did an extra set that evening. I probably did sixty that day, but I’m not sure. Same with any time I lose count — I restart counting at whatever last number I remember. That’s the point of a daily challenging exercise — you learn to do what you want, even when you feel discouraged.

Daily burpees make you emotionally, physically, and mentally strong and healthy. I started to wonder if they build more emotional or physical strength, then realized I was separating things I do better not separating. They all go together.

Find something better or Do your burpees!

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• The complete simplicity of T. S. Eliot →