Blog

I don't like doof. I don't like how its manufacturers try to make it resemble food, especially for kids, like in the first example. Look at the ingredients for what they call "banana" yogurt. Banana is the third ingredient. Sugar is the second. Shouldn't it be called "sugar" yogurt then? Most would-be fruit yogurts contain more sugar than fruit. I suggest we call them all sugar yogurt. Here are other examples: and another Another: I could find many other examples. Chocolate stores Likewise, this store near me calls itself a chocolate store. While its products contain chocolate, they contain more fat and sugar. Shouldn't they call themselves a sugar and fat store?

We became biologically human about 300,000 years ago. For all that time until about 10,000 years ago, our ancestors drank milk as infants, then only water for the rest of their lives. Historians and anthropologists speculate that honey wine became the first non-water beverage our ancestors drank, possibly predating cultivating plants. By my childhood, the market provided plenty of beverages---including milk varieties, wines, beers, other alcohols, fruit juices, and sodas. We still considered bottled water a weird, expensive European affectation. Normally my talking about bottled water leads to my talking about the unnecessary pollution. Today I want to treat two things subtly different---people's reactions to suggesting not drinking bottled water and the varieties of bottled water. Besides the fraction of a percent who live in…

The physical and mental experience Physically, I loved the experience of yesterday's ride, grueling as I found it, because I wanted to give up so many times. I lifted weights two days before and did some Turkish Get-ups (an all-over lifting exercise that includes lunges) the day before, which resulted in being unable to get out of the bike's lowest gear for many hills toward the end. I probably spent over an hour in that gear. Around mile 80, if I could have hitchhiked a ride home, I would have. No opportunities arose so I kept pushing, using the old strategy of saying "one more mile," "if I just make it to the George Washington Bridge I'll take the subway from there," and other goals…

I've meant for years to post to solicit questions from readers. You know you have questions about something I cover---burpees, leadership, entrepreneurship, education, stewardship, swimming across the Hudson River, posting daily, etc. Contact me here. When I meet people in person or email one-on-one, people say they've wanted to know something about me or what I write. I'll keep names discrete if requested.

Chelsea Behrens created a community on Corporate Career Courage: how to be a catalyst for change, a champion for diversity, and thrive as a leader. She interviewed me and posted the video. We covered a range of leadership topics and stories. She went from having done no burpees to 66 days in a row and counting! Watch the video Show notes Interview with Joshua Spodek Josh Spodek is a leader in action! His action motivated me into doing a challenging exercise---10 burpees every day for 66 days.  In this interview, learn how doing burpees has helped Josh as a leader, how taking action changes behavior and helps you learn, and why the most impactful leaders honor the people they’re leading through understanding their emotions. Josh…

The Let's Reach Success blog posted today an interview its host, Lidiya K, did with me, entitled How to Write an Amazon Bestseller, Become a TEDx Speaker and Host an Award-Winning Podcast. As you can tell from the title, she covered the books, podcast, and TEDx talks---a comprehensive interview. About Lidiya: Lidiya K I'm a full-time blogger, lifestyle designer and the founder of Let's Reach Success. Join me to learn how to start a blog on the side and earn passive income online so you can become your own boss and live your best life.I've written for TIME magazine and have been quoted on publications like Entrepreneur, Fit Small Business, Fundera and more. I've been blogging since 2013 and have turned my blog from a…

People fear social media. They see what it does to relationships and communities. Next time you see people say something on social media self-righteous, mean, condemning, etc about someone you know or at least know of, ask if the people are gossiping -- except instead of over the backyard fence in private, to the world in public, which responds in kind. All cultures gossip, I hear. Evolutionary psychology tells us that it plays a role in regulating society. Using guilt, shame, and other emotions to keep people maintaining community standards. Gossip People study gossip. Apparently it plays a functional role in regulating moral behavior among other things. We probably evolved to enjoy gossiping for its effectiveness. Gossip used to affect only people the gossipers knew.…

One of my main goals for this podcast is to bring people who love acting on one's environmental values, seeing stewardship not as an obligation but as being a part of something greater than yourself, than any of us, benefiting everyone, and yourself. As you'll hear, Tia's roots precede the first Earth Day. Her father started it. Despite so many problems remaining -- basically all of them -- she's the opposite of jaded. She's enthusiastic. Her joy, even in the face of setbacks, and as a democratic politician in Wisconsin, she's faced big ones lately, tells me the joy anyone feels from nature -- walks on the beach, picking apples, whatever you love about experiencing nature -- is available to anyone. In other words, if…

Learning that humans only recently developed the concept of extinction. Much of the West, for example, believed in a Great Chain of Being, spontaneous generation, and a biblical flood. That perspective suggests that many past behaviors we consider unconscionable may have seemed even humane then, like walking up to a rhinoceros and shooting it in the head. If you can't imagine it going extinct because new ones will form, how is shooting it point blank any different than slaughtering any other animal? Since we are in future generations' pasts, how might they see our polluting behavior? If they live in messes we created, won't they likely see us as we see people shooting rhinoceroses point blank---that is, with horror? Does understanding others with compassion lead…

I'm commenting on threads on the environment in various social media outlets, partly to participate, partly to practice. First-time posts new ideas and views often provoke argument and criticism, so I find it useful to refine my thoughts. My goals with new ideas is to help lead based on one of my definitions of leadership: to help people do what they wanted but couldn't figure out how to. I think I offer value. For this sad video https://youtu.be/FnkYLixbWvM I wrote: The number one priority has to be stopping virgin production.Recycling hasn't been shown to stop virgin production so we should do it, but secondarily to reducing production. Of course we all already know reduce, reuse, recycle in that order, with many adding refuse in front.That…

Some researchers have responded to flaws in terms like obesity and measures like body mass index. BMI, for example, doesn't differentiate between weight from fat versus muscle. They created the term overfat, meaning "excess body fat sufficient to impair health." Unlike BMI, it doesn't count very muscular people, who may show high BMIs without being obese. It does count people with excess fat but little enough muscle for their BMI to register as normal. Their paper, Overfat and Underfat: New Terms and Definitions Long Overdue, defines the terms, first describing problems with the terms it would replace. Their next paper, The Prevalence of Overfat Adults and Children in the US, describes how many people are overfat. Do you think it's higher or lower than BMI…

I don't remember the last time I wrote a poem. A group I spoke to recently gave me a book of poems on the environment, pictured below, and I didn't have the presence of mind to decline it, as I try to with most material gifts. Reading it led me to think in poetry, or to try to express myself with it. I'd feel vulnerable sharing with the public something personal, raw, and unrehearsed, but I live by my practice that I have low standards the first time, meaning I don't judge early tries. I prefer motivating trying. So below is my first attempt at poetry in decades. I don't pretend it's quality work, only that I did it. If I keep at it, I'll…

People say they value diversity. Business school leadership classes taught me that diversity of opinions in decision-making processes led to better outcomes, though the diversity introduced into that process produced divisive conflict. I didn't ask the professors for the research they based their teaching on, but it's consistent with my experience. But there is a greater issue than that conflict. I suggest to people things like, "If you want diversity, you'll also have to include Trump voters." They react nearly with horror: "I don't want someone on my team like that. Or in my life." "Why not? You wanted diversity." "Yeah, but they're just wrong." The irony of calling someone wrong to reject them as diverse never seems to strike anyone. I'm not sure how…

Christina Canters of the Stand Out Get Noticed podcast hosted me for the first time in a couple years in "Initiative: How To Bring Your Passions and Ideas To Life with Joshua Spodek." Listen to the conversation. From the podcast page: Do you want to start a project but don’t have any ideas? Or maybe you have so many ideas you don’t know which one to pick? In this episode, Joshua Spodek, author of INITIATIVE: A Proven Method to Bring Your Passions to Life, joins me to discuss why people often struggle to find their passion, what holds people back from starting projects, and the steps required for bringing a successful passion project or business idea to life. Christina Canters These are incredibly valuable skills…

Sorry for the sad post, but my computer problems endure. I hope the water evaporates so my keyboard works again as I unexpectedly search for a new computer. I'd like to say I'm enjoying my day or two of escape from screens, but I'm ending up doing little things here and there, like meeting people for scheduled video chats. Logging in using only a mouse means taking longer than I'd like.

People often ask how to help someone who feels burned out in the face of opportunity. Do you push through or move on to potential opportunity? I wrote the following to a mom who said her son seemed burned out pursuing a physics PhD. I was there about 20 years ago. Also about five years later when my company nearly went bankrupt (I'll put her question below): I have a PhD in physics, which I got in 2000. I chose the field because I loved it and the degree because it was the only way I knew to practice. Everyone's talk about jobs in this thread would have been irrelevant to me. My goal was to follow in the line of Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and…

John Williams, host of the Ideas Lab podcast, recently recorded a conversation at my home, where I feel most comfortable so could share most openly. Here's his introduction: https://twitter.com/i/status/1136635316205436932 From the Ideas Lab page: Joshua Spodek – Leadership Step by Step I’m here in Greenwich village in New York City today and I’m here to meet Josh Spodek. Josh is a fascinating character. He was a former astrophysicist and then became an entrepreneur, and now he is a lecturer in Entrepreneurship and leadership at New York University. Josh has acheived a lot of other things. He is a bestselling author, he has a second book coming out this month called Initiative, he’s a TedX speaker, daily blogger, and he has an award winning podcast called…

People keep reacting to my diet with, "Wow, you're so disciplined," as if it takes willpower to eat as I do. You know what took willpower? When I always had a container of ice cream in my freezer and potato chips, pretzels, or both in my cupboard. Not eating them took mental work that distracted me from everything else. The longer I eat like this: the more I love vegetables from farmers markets and CSAs. Moreover I can eat until I'm full while staying fit. So every meal is satisfying, usually sweet, and cheap. In the meantime, the more apples and fresh fruit I eat, the sweeter they taste. But beyond sweet, they also have nuanced, subtle, complex flavors. In ice cream, candy, and engineered…

I wrote before about how the longer I go without flying, the more people talking about flying sounds like they're talking about heroin. They sound like they're craving. They don't care how much they'll allow their life to fall apart to make it happen. They don't care whom their habits hurt. They sound entitled, often whiny. My friend who works with addicts described the squalor they allow themselves to live in. Hotel rooms scattered with syringes, bodily fluids, garbage, and so on. It sounded like how many tourist places have become with plastic, trash, poverty, and so on. I found a site with pictures of tourist destinations as people envision them, which is like the beautiful water the addict in Trainspotting envisions while reaching for…

I just got back from seeing (and hearing) my niece perform in her junior high school orchestra. On the back of the music program, a section described the value of learning music -- not how great learning music was, but how music developed skills and prepared students for other things in life, like math. What happened to us as a culture that anyone feels compelled to justify learning music in terms of something else, or anything else? How is it not obvious that music stands as its own value? On the one hand I know I don't have to worry about music going away. It's part of being human. But who felt compelled to describe how music had value? How did they not consider its…

When last we heard from Dov, about a year ago, he had limited driving his James Bond Jaguar, enjoyed the experience beyond expectation, and said he was considering getting rid of it. For a year I've wondered what came of his commitment. Many people "forget" or give up on commitments to bring mugs with them to cafés. What could I expect from a guy who aspired since childhood for a specific car to show the world he arrived from the ghetto to success? For people who insist remembering to bring a bag to a grocery store is impossibly difficult, surely anything about a car is too much. But Dov isn't anybody. A wrinkle? Tomorrow my book Initiative launches. Launching a book takes incredible time and…

Burpees began eight-and-a-half years ago. Burpees begat other bodyweight exercises and stretches. Bodyweight exercises begat kettlebell exercises. Kettlebell exercises begat bigger shoulders, biceps, thighs, and calves. As I got more fit, I wondered how I wanted to look. At 47, I probably don't have the testosterone to get jacked, which I think is the technical term for having unusually large muscles. But I never wanted huge muscles. I also don't want to rely on a gym, since accessibility is important to me. That is, I want what I achieve and others might want to replicate -- in my diet, exercise, and other habits -- to comprise only what others can do. I like using minimal equipment and for what I use to cost little and…

I posted a simple book page for Initiative: A Proven Method to Bring Your Passions to Life (and Work) where you can download a sneak preview of the book's preface. Click to go to the page, scroll down to enter your email and download the sneak preview. A screen shot of Initiative's simple book page

Friend and podcaster Jim Harshaw Junior posted our conversation on Initiative to his Success Through Failure podcast. Jim and I have appeared on each other's podcast twice each and met in person, so the conversation is friendly and open. I refer to his conversations on my podcast more than almost any other for his facing and overcoming his environmental challenge by involving his family in the process, bringing them closer. Many people don't act because they see others as potential problems. Jim does and teaches what leaders do: he sees others as part of the solution. We cover my new book from several angles. I also answered Jim's trademark question on a failure I learned from, so you get to hear me share a vulnerability…