Choosing/Decision-Making

Should I raise funds and market more?
Should I drive growth instead of letting it happen? What do you think?
Blog / Choosing/Decision-Making

Should I raise funds and market more?

I chose to write a post every day, then to write a book, then to start a podcast because 1) enough people told me they found my voice unique and valuable, 2) I felt I had things worth saying, and 3) I would grow from the experience. Outside of launching Leadership Step by Step, I haven't tried to market that much. That launch wasn't that big, though it took me to #1 in one category and #2 in another, which was satisfying. I put some effort into launching Leadership and the Environment, which got it to #38 on iTunes and podcast of the day. The blog has held steady with the same number of hits per day. The podcast has been growing steadily, with a…

0 Comments
September 21, 2018
Three simple proposals to reduce pollution
Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Nature / Visualization

Three simple proposals to reduce pollution

I understand that many people reduce their pollution just from knowing how much they pollute. Planes How about having every airplane ticket show how much pollution and greenhouse gas emissions each flight causes---designed, prominent, and easy to read, like an Energy Star label or cigarette warning? I'd add a relevant comparison number, like IPCC recommendations. Like this, from MyClimate.org, Cars How about gas pumps show that information as you fill up your car. Now the pump shows volume of gas and price. To add pounds of CO2 shouldn't be hard. Credit Cards How about showing that information on your credit card bill too?

0 Comments
September 18, 2018
Would you rather?, part 4
Choosing/Decision-Making

Would you rather?, part 4

Following up my first post on this topic, and while the options below don't have to be exclusive, people usually choose as if they are. Do you prefer . . . Eating a lot Or feeling satisfied? Spending time in planes Or going on an adventure? Briefly visiting many Or spending time with some? Fitness Or explaining why you aren't? Sampling food made for tourists Or learning to prepare what nearby farmers grew? Obesity and explaining how you're healthy to people who don't believe you Or fitness so they ask how to be like you? Success every time Or resilience? No constraints Or creativity? Picking up other people's litte Or leaving it for someone else? Leaving garbage for future generations Or avoiding disposable stuff? Built…

0 Comments
September 1, 2018
American men and their breasts
Choosing/Decision-Making / Fitness / Nonjudgment / Visualization

American men and their breasts

The United States today probably has the largest population in history of men with breasts caused by voluntary choices. There are other causes than voluntary choices as this Newsweek article says, It can sometimes be hereditary but is more commonly spurred by conditions like obesity, chronic kidney disease or an overactive thyroid, as well as by certain medications like steroids that cause hormone levels to shift. but many men choose behavior that causes their bodies to grow breasts. I wrote the other day about people choosing behaviors that lead to consequences they don't like but continue doing them. I'm only talking about them today. For men who like being obese and having breasts, more power to them. It's not my taste, but I support a…

0 Comments
August 24, 2018
People confuse *feeling* as if they care with *acting* as if they care
Choosing/Decision-Making / Education

People confuse *feeling* as if they care with *acting* as if they care

One of my biggest lessons in transitioning from traditional education to active, experiential learning is the difference between reading, writing, talking, analyzing, and debating about something you care about and acting on something you care about. Can you imagine a parent saying he or she cared about a child but not helping the child when the child was hurt, sick, or needed help? Without acting, talking about values---or reading, writing, analyzing, debating, etc---have come to show me that someone doesn't care about something. Acting means you prioritize what you work on. It gives you a chance to love what you do. No one can care about everything, so we don't have to act on everything. We can't. But you help no one by fooling yourself…

0 Comments
June 27, 2018
I wish I had the dedication and discipline of most Americans
Average men from different countries, the American in front
Choosing/Decision-Making / Fitness / Habits / SIDCHAs

I wish I had the dedication and discipline of most Americans

My post yesterday about my heart rate of 49 beats per minute and how people choose to spend their leisure time got me thinking about living by your values--what leaders do. When they hear I exercise daily, people suggest I have some special discipline, dedication, or other skill. I wish! On the contrary, the average American's dedication and discipline for their values dwarf mine. I have to craft my life to make exercising easy--otherwise I wouldn't do it. Let's look at the numbers. My commitment I exercise on a four-day cycle: Day 1: 12 minutes of calisthenics in the morning and evening Day 1: Total time: 24 minutes, total cost: $0 Day 2: 12 minutes of calisthenics in the morning and evening, 45 minutes weight lifting Day 2: Total…

0 Comments
June 6, 2018
Op-ed Fridays: which is easier, freeing slaves or not using disposable cups and bottles?
Choosing/Decision-Making / Leadership

Op-ed Fridays: which is easier, freeing slaves or not using disposable cups and bottles?

This morning's New York Times posted a story, Holocaust Is Fading From Memory, Survey Finds, reporting a survey with results such as Thirty-one percent of Americans, and 41 percent of millennials, believe that two million or fewer Jews were killed in the Holocaust; the actual number is around six million. Forty-one percent of Americans, and 66 percent of millennials, cannot say what Auschwitz was. My last name, Spodek, is Jewish-Polish, though my father clarified that though our ancestors came from within Polish boundaries, they weren't considered Polish because they were Jewish. His parents and grandparents came to the United States about a century ago. We don't know how many relatives still in Europe died in the Holocaust. Some of the closest family friends were a…

0 Comments
April 13, 2018
Would you rather eat ice cream or exercise, part 3
Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making

Would you rather eat ice cream or exercise, part 3

Following up my first and second posts on this topic, and while the options below don’t have to be exclusive, people usually choose as if they are. Do you prefer to . . . Eat ice cream or exercise? Be a slave owner Or a slave? Eat comfort food Or healthy food? Go to the beach Or help clean litter from your neighborhood? Buy a work of art or craft someone else made Or practice an art or craft that takes years to perfect? Participate knowing you'll receive a participation trophy Or compete knowing you'll lose sometimes? Assume others will clean the waste from your activities Or take responsibility for how your behavior affects others? Do what everyone else does (even when it conflicts with…

0 Comments
April 12, 2018
023: Dov Baron, Conversation 2: Freedom and the Jaguar
Dov's odometer, before and after
Audio / Choosing/Decision-Making / Freedom / Podcast

023: Dov Baron, Conversation 2: Freedom and the Jaguar

Who doesn't have a dream car? If you can afford it, especially if you've aspired to it your whole life, isn't owning and driving your dream car one of the great joys and well-earned accomplishments in life? What if you found something better? What if what you liked better was not having the car? Does the idea of getting rid of one of your highest value sound crazy? That's the value of knowing your values. You learn what's better for you. Dov loves his Jaguar. He worked his whole life to get it. His personal challenge led him to consider that letting go of it could improve his life more than keeping it? Sound crazy? Listen to this episode to learn how his greater experience…

0 Comments
February 15, 2018
Making Challenging Life Choices (Audio)
Saturday Morning Hudson River podcast with Joshua Spodek
Audio / Choosing/Decision-Making / Entrepreneurship / Stories

Making Challenging Life Choices (Audio)

You often have to choose between options without enough information. How do you choose? You can never know everything you want for all life choices, yet you can't avoid acting. Today I'm posting my answer by audio. I start with a story of a student with just such a challenge and show what we can learn from situations like them. I consider these lessons among the greatest one can learn.

4 Comments
January 23, 2018
Would you rather eat ice cream or exercise, part 2?
Choosing/Decision-Making

Would you rather eat ice cream or exercise, part 2?

Following up my first post on this topic, and while the options below don't have to be exclusive, people usually choose as if they are. Do you prefer... Ice cream or exercise? Living with a personal shortcoming Or facing and resolving it? Any food available any time you want it Or being unavailable when out of season? Being as fit as you want and can be Or explaining why you aren't? Having anything you want whenever you want Or making due with what you have? Having no problems Or having problems and learning to overcome them? Success every time Or resilience? No constraints Or creativity? ... and so on.

0 Comments
December 9, 2017
How NOT to reduce your pollution
Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Nature / Tips

How NOT to reduce your pollution

Do you want to pollute less but can't stop yourself? If so, I bet you're approaching it in a way that's doomed to fail. You're probably lying to yourself about how hard it is too. People ask me a lot: What do you eat if you don't eat packaged food? What do you do to make up for not flying? Where do you get your protein? Did you ever notice how if you ask someone the time just after they looked at their phone or watch, they often don't know? We often feel an impulse to check. Then, once we have, we forget because we didn't care, we just acted on the impulse. I've learned that almost no one cares about the answers to the…

0 Comments
September 21, 2017
The environment: Little things matter but NOT because they add up
Little tips to help the environment
Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Leadership / Nature

The environment: Little things matter but NOT because they add up

The internet is filled with "10 tips to lower your carbon footprint" and "21 easy ways to help the environment." Here's a screen shot: There are too many pages of them to count. They aren't working. Sure, some people might change a light bulb or two, but greenhouse gas levels aren't decreasing, nor is pollution, nor resource depletion. The number one problem with "little tips" People say enough little things add up to big differences. When the people leading others to consume fossil fuels wantonly are the Koch Brothers and Donald Trump, the measure of change is against their results and no amount of changing to LED bulbs will accumulate to compare with their results. Even so I still recommend acting on small things, but…

0 Comments
September 13, 2017
Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Freedom / Perception

How little do you need?

Freedom comes from needing less more than having more, in my experience. How little do you need? Can you decrease your needs? I wrote a friend, in response to something he said about needs: I'm sensitive to the word need, since I consider neediness one of the least attractive qualities people can have, so as much as I value sidchas, instead of saying you need to do the thing daily, I'd say doing so works. Other ways may or may not, but a sidcha works. It doesn't if you half-ass it, though. He posted on his blog, in a post "Who or what do you ACTUALLY need?": The only things you need are the things that keep your mind ticking over. Food, water, shelter, warmth…

0 Comments
August 31, 2017
Would you rather eat ice cream or exercise?
Choosing/Decision-Making

Would you rather eat ice cream or exercise?

While the options below don't have to be exclusive, in many cases people choose as if they are. Would you rather... Eat ice cream or exercise Watch TV or write Drive to the beach or pick up litter from your local park Only look at a man or woman you're attracted to or approach him or her and introduce yourself Not try or risk failing Eat out or cook Take the elevator or the stairs ... and so on.

0 Comments
August 28, 2017
If I led in the environment and no one knew my name, what change I created would be my legacy?
Dov Baron and Full Monty Leadership
Audio / Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Leadership

If I led in the environment and no one knew my name, what change I created would be my legacy?

Following up Dov Baron's questions from yesterday and the day before, the next and last question he recommend me answering was Question: If I led in the environment and no one knew my name, what change I created would be my legacy? Listen to the conversation (on iTunes) My answer: My legacy would be that people will view changing their behavior to reduce their pollution, greenhouse emissions, resource depletion, and the like as joyful fun opportunities for personal growth that they wish they did earlier. This perspective would change for most people from seeing such changes as deprivation, sacrifice, and pointless. This cultural shift would be on the scale of how, in my lifetime, American culture shifted on Smoking Drinking and driving Wearing seat belts We've…

0 Comments
August 25, 2017
Zuckerberg and DiCaprio Take Heat for Flying Too Much
"Zuckerberg and DiCaprio Take Heat for Flying Too Much," my Inc. post today
Choosing/Decision-Making / Inc.com / Leadership

Zuckerberg and DiCaprio Take Heat for Flying Too Much

My Inc. post today, "Zuckerberg and DiCaprio Take Heat for Flying Too Much," begins Zuckerberg and DiCaprio Take Heat for Flying Too Much There is no half-integrity. Do it all the way or it undermines your leadership. Mark Zuckerberg announced a few months ago his plan to visit every state to learn more about people who use Facebook--people who struggle to make ends meet or fall through the cracks. Leonardo DiCaprio was named United Nations representative on climate change in 2014, which he followed up with the movie Before the Flood and many statements on slowing climate change and reducing pollution. Criticism Next thing you know, Zuckerberg faces criticism for not seeing the people struggling to make ends meet on his payroll, in his back yard. As the Guardian reports, Read the rest at Zuckerberg and…

0 Comments
July 27, 2017
Minimalism is misnamed
Choosing/Decision-Making

Minimalism is misnamed

Minimalism as a lifestyle seems popular. I consider the name backward. I avoid labels, but I think this one is nearly the opposite of what it describes---a lifestyle about maximizing, not minimizing. The term maximalism seems already taken by something irrelevant to what I describe below, so I may be too late, but I suggest considering changing it. The term minimalism means different things to different people, but the following people and communities seem central to it, and the theme uniting them is less---less stuff, clutter, distraction, etc. The minimalists, including this post explaining minimalism, What is minimalism? Mnmlist.com, including this post explaining minimalism, minimalist FAQs Becoming minimalist, including this post explaining minimalism, Benefits of minimalism Be more with less, including this post explaining minimalism, 25…

0 Comments
July 22, 2017
Patagonia founder acting on his values, even at the company’s expense. Still works out.
Choosing/Decision-Making / Entrepreneurship / Leadership / Nature

Patagonia founder acting on his values, even at the company’s expense. Still works out.

I rarely simply post someone else just talking, but my focus lately on motivating people to act on their values against comfort and convenience has resulted in such a desert that the video below was too refreshing not to share. No one I talk to considers avoiding one flight. No one who visits can stop bringing garbage. Yet this man keeps choosing actions that would appear to hurt his company, yet he's become a billionaire and they haven't. For example (at 38:18 in the second video below), he had his company research the toxicity of materials his company used. When he learned how toxic and dangerous the cotton was---even getting sprayed with toxins from a plane when he visited the fields---he put his company on…

0 Comments
June 26, 2017
Why I turned down nearly $10,000 to teach for an Ivy League school for a week in Shanghai
Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Freedom / Leadership / Nature

Why I turned down nearly $10,000 to teach for an Ivy League school for a week in Shanghai

Columbia University offered me nearly $10,000 to fly to Shanghai to teach an entrepreneurship class, block-week style, meaning a semester in a week, 9-5 each day. I've taught that way before and got great results. I love teaching entrepreneurship. I'm not bragging to say that my reviews say I'm exceptional at it. I love my alma mater, Columbia, and as an adjunct professor, experience teaching at Ivy League schools helps my career. I had developed the relationships with the department that offered me to teach with them for years. I had worked on making this opportunity happen for years and could expect more offers if I did well. I like making $10,000 doing what I love. I loved living in Shanghai for a year in…

0 Comments
June 17, 2017
I Do Burpees Daily Because I’m Lazy and Full of Excuses
I Do Burpees Daily Because I'm Lazy and Full of Excuses, my recent Inc. article
Choosing/Decision-Making / Fitness / Habits / Inc.com / SIDCHAs

I Do Burpees Daily Because I’m Lazy and Full of Excuses

My Inc. post Monday, "I Do Burpees Daily Because I'm Lazy and Full of Excuses," began I Do Burpees Daily Because I'm Lazy and Full of Excuses Not having a skill so useful as discipline is a reason to do them, which transformed my life. When I tell people about my burpee habit, their most common response is to suppose I was born with superhuman discipline. I do them daily, and have since December 21, 2011, starting with 10 per day. Now I do over 50 per day, in two sets, followed by stretching and other exercises to work what burpees don't. So when I write "burpees," I mean "10-minute burpee-based routine." Any self-imposed, daily, challenging, healthy activity would work--push ups, jumping jacks, etc. People…

0 Comments
June 10, 2017
Call for action to you – for a new path to reduce climate change
Balinth Harvath's podcast Call for action to you – for a new path to reduce climate change with Joshua Spodek
Audio / Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Education / Leadership / Nature / Podcast

Call for action to you – for a new path to reduce climate change

Prepare for one of my most important podcasts from someone who knows the science behind the environment. Want to improve the environment? You may remember Balint, a fellow scientist who got a PhD in physics became an entrepreneur got passionate about improving in business, and teaches experiential project-based learning. from his first podcast interview of me, which covered leadership and education. We continued our conversation and spoke the way only physics PhDs can. I shared what I've posted here about my developing plans to start a movement on leadership and the environment. We decided to record another conversation on it for his podcast on how to act on the environment---yes, you, personally. He posted it, "Call for action to you – for a new path…

0 Comments
June 8, 2017
Leadership and the Environment Podcast episode #3: Freedom, empathy, garbage, and compost
Choosing/Decision-Making / Freedom / Habits / Inc.com / Nature / Podcast

Leadership and the Environment Podcast episode #3: Freedom, empathy, garbage, and compost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEKCbrTZ9CM How much waste do you create that others have to deal with? The environment involves more than global warming. As my Inc. piece reported recently, we're producing enough waste that an island in the middle of the Pacific, with no inhabitants and thousands of miles from any city, is covered with plastic and other waste, most of it needless garbage: I don't know what to call that amount and kind of garbage: sickening? Insane? Irresponsible? Typical of our lifestyle? Here's how remote the island is: Maybe a couple pieces of that garbage came from you! ... or me. We both contributed to a system that helped produce it. In any case, I can't take responsibility for your behavior, but I can take responsibility for…

0 Comments
June 5, 2017
My first guest “host” on a podcast: The Hidden Why, by Leigh Martinuzzi
Joshua Spodek on Leigh Martinuzzi's The Hidden Why podcast
Audio / Choosing/Decision-Making / Entrepreneurship / Freedom

My first guest “host” on a podcast: The Hidden Why, by Leigh Martinuzzi

Leigh Martinuzzi hosts the podcast The Hidden Why. He posted my first solo audio recording. Listen to the recording! Listen to the recording! We met online, which led to speaking, learning each other's work and interests, and talking about collaborating. I thought he might interview me. Instead he suggested me recording something for his blog by myself, which I consider harder. More than harder, I find it scarier to record something from scratch by myself. I describe in the recording how I viewed the chance as an opportunity, but not how scary I found it. Even so, I took on the challenge and am grateful to Leigh for giving me the chance and motivation, and then to share the recording with his audience. Listen to…

0 Comments
June 3, 2017

End of content

No more pages to load

Newer Posts
Older Posts