Exercises

Medium awarded me “Top Writer” in three categories
Art / Education / Exercises / Leadership / Tips

Medium awarded me “Top Writer” in three categories

I'm honored that Medium awarded my column "Top Writer" in three categories. "Great Work, Joshua Spodek. Congratulations! You are now a top writer in Leadership." "Great Work, Joshua Spodek. Congratulations! You are now a top writer in Inspiration." "Great Work, Joshua Spodek. Congratulations! You are now a top writer in Self Improvement." You can do what I did to earn it I wrote my book, Leadership Step by Step, to walk you through the steps of being able to inspire others and lead them through their self-improvement. I didn't write it "just" to engage you with inspirational writing, but to give you direction to do everything I've done for myself but for you. I judge my writing by how much it leads others to find…

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January 28, 2017
Stellar reviews of other courses I’ve taught like Leadership Step by Step
Awareness / Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises / Leadership

Stellar reviews of other courses I’ve taught like Leadership Step by Step

Pre-order Leadership Step by Step on Amazon! or Register for a free webinar on the course! Reviews of Other Courses of Joshua Spodek Below are anonymous reviews by people who did the progression of exercises of other courses that I teach in the same style as Leadership Step by Step. They range from first year undergraduates to graduate students to adult learners to adult clients. (Not all are native English speakers.) -- "This is one of the greatest classes I have ever taken. It was engaging, thought provoking, challenging, and fun. Josh is an incredible teacher, mentor, and friend to everyone in the class who is passionate about the subject matter. If I could take this class all over again, I would" -- "10/10 would…

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January 27, 2017
Reviews of Leadership Step by Step: the Course
Awareness / Education / Exercises / Leadership / My Favorite Posts

Reviews of Leadership Step by Step: the Course

Leadership Step by Step Below are anonymous reviews by people who did the book's exercises. They range from first year undergraduates to graduate students to adult learners to clients in their 60s who have sold businesses. (Not all are native English speakers.) "This course really changed by definition of "Leadership." Joshua is an amazing professor. He taught this class in a way that we learned about ourselves and then to understand others. He taught us how to find the real emotions and beliefs behind someone's behavior and use that emotion to lead them and make them feel understood." -- "I truly hope other NYU students have the privilege of taking this course. It is the exact material that students of my generation need in order…

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January 26, 2017
Blurbs and Endorsements for Leadership Step by Step
Creativity / Education / Exercises / Leadership / Models / My Favorite Posts

Blurbs and Endorsements for Leadership Step by Step

Reviews of Leadership Step by Step By Joshua Spodek Buy Leadership Step by Step on Amazon! https://youtu.be/3n2gecJha6o Great leaders aren’t born with a 'leadership gene’; great leaders develop the necessary skills and gain confidence through practice and hard work. In Leadership Step by Step Joshua Spodek presents a thoughtful approach to becoming a highly effective leader that emphasizes the importance of experiential learning. It will serve as a valuable resource for leaders at all levels in any profession. Indeed, Joshua’s practical exercises will help prospective, as well as experienced leaders, to master their craft and ultimately to succeed in leading and inspiring others in their various pursuits. General Lloyd J. Austin III, United States Secretary of Defense Joshua is changing the game for leadership development…

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January 24, 2017
Art / Creativity / Exercises / Habits / Leadership / SIDCHAs

Reflections on writing

One of my online communities had a thread on writing a book this year. It led me to reflect on writing in a way that might help someone where I was before starting to write. I consider what I wrote relevant to practicing any craft or developing one's passion. Here's what I wrote: Last year was my big year for writing and finishing my book, Leadership Step by Step. It launches on Amazon a month from tomorrow. I got my first hardcovers from the printer a couple weeks ago. Last week I learned that Booklist is giving it a starred review. It has blurbs from bestsellers, top TED talkers, and luminaries like Dan Pink Marshall Goldsmith Seth Godin Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree Frances Hesselbein…

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January 21, 2017
Listen to a wonderful interview of me by Sami Honkonen of Boss Level podcast
Exercises / Freedom / Leadership / Models / Perception

Listen to a wonderful interview of me by Sami Honkonen of Boss Level podcast

Sami Honkonen records Boss Level Podcast Interviews with interesting people doing awesome things Boss Level is a podcast on people and organizations aiming for the boss level. Boss level is the status a person or an organization achieves by making a better quality of life for themselves and others by doing what they need to do regardless of all the haters and obstacles out there. I love his interview of me, "Joshua Spodek and seven years of burpees," which he posted today. If you like my material and, especially, if you're curious about my long-term direction and goals for it---my passion, or one of them, for those who've done my book and leadership course's Unit 4: Leading Others exercises---he brings them up at the end.…

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January 17, 2017
Exercises / Inc.com / Leadership / Tips

Broaden and Deepen Your Network Using This Simple Hack

Today on Inc., my fellow columnist, Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likable Media, followed up on my recent article about sending gratitude emails. He pointed out how the practice works beyond what we expected, since he promotes gratitude exercises too. Read the article to see how the practice led us to meet and immediately and easily connect because of it. In particular, we found ourselves in the middle of a tighter circle of mutual connections of valuable people than either expected. The article, "Broaden and Deepen Your Network Using This Simple Hack," begins Broaden and Deepen Your Network Using This Simple Hack What you can learn from leadership professor Joshua Spodek How often do you see a practice you love and teach taken to a whole…

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January 10, 2017
Exercises / Fitness / Habits / Inc.com / SIDCHAs / Tips

A burpee app?

My 2,192 Days of Burpees post and Inc. article got a lot of responses, including questions how to start from people who felt inspired by this free, zero-equipment, zero-cost, low-risk, healthy, and so on practice. One reader asked if I could recommend an app. I wrote back Glad to hear from you and that you're inspired. I prefer not to use an app. Like brushing my teeth, I just know if I'm going to bed without doing my burpees. This way I don't depend on anything external. If I want to know how many I've done cumulatively, I get out a spreadsheet and plug in my starting date in one cell and the current date in another. Taking the difference tells me the number of…

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January 7, 2017
Education / Exercises

Universal motivations and empathy

People generally have more motivations than you can sense from their behavior. The more you can sense their underlying motivations, which tend to be their stronger ones, the more you can connect with them as well as to lead them. The skill of sensing others' emotions is called empathy, loosely speaking. I view empathy as a skill you can learn, like riding a bike. I came to view it that way from practicing the exercises in my courses, which teach people the skill so they have more empathy. Growing up I hardly knew what empathy meant, let alone that one could develop it. Some of my courses' exercises have you communicate and behave with people so they feel comfortable sharing their underlying emotions. Since we…

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December 14, 2016
Art / Creativity / Exercises

Mastery in writing, from Robert Caro

I started to browse The Power Broker, Robert Caro's colossal work on city political power and Robert Moses, and couldn't put it down. The book is huge. It used to be a fixture in New York City apartments. You couldn't miss its big bold lettering on the big white spine on people's book shelves. I don't know how many people started or finished it, but I loved reading it. Caro has won every award he can for his craft. Wikipedia establishes his mastery: Caro wrote The Power Broker (1974), a biography of New York urban planner Robert Moses, which was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century. He has since written four of a planned…

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December 5, 2016
The Unmistakable Creative podcast interviews me
Audio / Creativity / Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises / Habits / Leadership

The Unmistakable Creative podcast interviews me

Listen to the podcast The Power of Experiential Learning with Joshua Spodek The Unmistakable Creative podcast just released its interviews of me. The interview covered leadership, entrepreneurship, education, and a bunch of my life and growth. Their lead quote from the interview: "No one who is learning to play a musical instrument, no one who wants to learn a musical instrument would ever take a class where they would lecture you for a year on theory for putting it into practice. And in fact if you did want to learn piano theory or music theory, you still learn to play first. There's lots of fields like that. Constantin Stanislavsky revolutionized how acting is taught. I learned about him because just for fun I would watch…

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June 9, 2016
At Princeton’s ELab: Contact valuable people!
Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises / Stories

At Princeton’s ELab: Contact valuable people!

I got a few short clips from my presentation on entrepreneurship when I spoke at Princeton's Elab recently. I described a student's success contacting a valuable person in her field. The call got hairy, but she Benefited from the interaction Learned about how to talk to valuable people Learned about herself Would do it again Inspired her classmates If you want similar experiences, take my entrepreneurship course. It develops you in small steps to work up to handling interactions like this. Even if you don't, call valuable people. Err on the side of making things happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7-gv7Oq7Vg

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June 8, 2016
Exercises / Fitness / Freedom / Habits / SIDCHAs

The subtle value of sidchas

I write about self-imposed daily challenging healthy activities (sidchas) a lot. Why is the sidcha different from the countless recommendations to do other things daily? The difference is subtle but important. It will give you more time, structure, and discipline. Some examples: People who meditate regularly tell me that I should meditate daily for the full benefit. Yoga people say the same thing about yoga, at least that I should do it regularly. A video of a girl who practiced dancing daily for a year, became amazing at it, and got onto TV for it inspired me to want to practice dancing daily. Marshall Goldsmith tells me I should answer six questions daily. Writers tell me I should write daily. Fitness people tell me to…

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June 5, 2016
Exercises / Habits / Humor / SIDCHAs

The Sidcha App

You know how valuable I consider sidchas. If you don't have one, I recommend you create one or two for yourself. I'm working on sidcha.com so stay tuned. In the meantime, I thought about an app for sidchas. Here is my main thought. When you do something daily, you don't have to keep track of it. You don't have to compare your performance with your friends'. You don't have to do all the things people do to try to start and keep habits. In fact, I'd say those practices run counter to the point of sidchas. The point of sidchas is you do them. The result is a foundation for your life. Whatever challenge you want to take on, sidchas help you. No matter what…

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June 3, 2016
Awareness / Exercises / Fitness / SIDCHAs

4,994 meters in 20 minutes

I used to like sport for winning. I still do, but no sport compares with ultimate, which I'm too old to compete in. Or rather, I know I'll get worse every year so investing effort for the future has less payoff. Now sport is about discipline, dedication, discovery, self-awareness, and things like that---switching to the second meaning of competition from the first. I've had a rowing machine for years. They give a great workout, in my opinion. Lately I've rowed for 20 or 30 minutes. My split has been dropping to the low two minutes for 500m. A couple months ago 2:00min/500m for a 20-minute row, or 5,000 meters, started looking feasible. I finish the last 4 minutes or so unsustainably fast, like 1:59min/500m, which…

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May 24, 2016
Education / Exercises / Inc.com / Leadership

One Way Science and Business Don’t Match

My Inc.com post today, "One Way Science and Business Don't Match" begins One Way Science and Business Don't Match Learning facts about leading doesn't teach you to lead. Practice does. I stopped reading Daniel Pink's bestseller Drive before chapter 1. I bet it's entertaining, but if you read it to improve yourself and your career, it helps less than you think. Not to single-out Drive. I'm only using it to illustrate what a big category of books, TED talks, and others do, that people think help more than they probably do. Read the rest at One Way Science and Business Don't Match

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May 18, 2016
How not to be afraid to be yourself, Italian style
Awareness / Choosing/Decision-Making / Exercises / Fitness / Leadership / Nature / SIDCHAs / Tips

How not to be afraid to be yourself, Italian style

The other day I was interviewed for a podcast (I'll link to it when they edit and post it). The interviewer asked me how I accomplished so much. I told him and his listeners to look up sidchas on my blog. Everyone who aspires to greatness knows the importance of building discipline, integrity, dedication, and other skills. I accomplish things by acting by my values. I practice with small challenges like daily exercise, daily writing, cold showers, and so on. Almost nobody does these things or their equivalent for them, yet they want the benefits. You have to do things to get the benefits of doing them. Well, today's post is the smallest yet activity you can do to develop such skills. I don't care…

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May 7, 2016
Video: What a leadership course can deliver, part 4
Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises / Leadership / Models

Video: What a leadership course can deliver, part 4

Here is an interview with a student who took my online leadership course, Chris, a born salesman and entrepreneur. Hear how the leadership course increased his business while calming his life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzm7iL6reFY Reach your potential in business and life. My courses don't take time from the rest of life. You work with people in your life that you care about on projects that you care about without distracting from the rest of your work and life. Learn more about the course and register here Read testimonials about my courses here I look forward to having you aboard.

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May 3, 2016
Education / Entrepreneurship / Events / Exercises

See me in Princeton, May 12: “How To Think and Act Entrepreneurially (even if you never have before)”

I'm speaking at the Princeton Tech Meetup, May 12, 6:45pm. My last talks at Princeton got lots of positive feedback. Register here! From the site: Become an entrepreneur or intrapraneur in straightforward, manageable steps based on Josh's popular and highly experiential course at New York University. This seminar will give you the blueprint to start an operating business with little or no experience, creating a community of supportive people, including valuable members of your target field, vested in your success. Unlike other entrepreneurship courses, this one does not require you to come in with a big idea—or any idea at all. Josh will show how generating ideas is a skill that can be learned and practiced, and that the idea of a lifetime can come…

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May 2, 2016
Video: What a leadership course can deliver, part 3
Awareness / Education / Exercises / Freedom / Habits / Leadership / Nonjudgment

Video: What a leadership course can deliver, part 3

Here is an interview with a student who took my online leadership course, Isabeaux, an undergraduate at NYU who hadn't taken an experiential course before, which initially threw her, before she came to find it led to more growth than she'd ever seen, despite going to an elite university. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxo-msa9dGQ Reach your potential in business and life. My courses don't take time from the rest of life. You work with people in your life that you care about on projects that you care about without distracting from the rest of your work and life. Learn more about the course and register here Read testimonials about my courses here I look forward to having you aboard.

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April 28, 2016
Video: What my entrepreneurship course, leadership course, and sidchas can deliver
Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises

Video: What my entrepreneurship course, leadership course, and sidchas can deliver

Here is an interview with a client who did the exercises in my online entrepreneurship course and my online leadership course. He also created sidchas in his life and did them with diligence and dedication. Among other things, he recently checked off a major life goal of finishing his first marathon. Then a second about a week later! ... less than a year after founding a new company. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBs4TqOl3Us Reach your potential in business and life. What he achieved for himself you can too for yourself. My courses will help. They don't take time from the rest of life. You work with people in your life that you care about on projects that you care about without distracting from the rest of your work and…

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April 23, 2016
Education / Exercises / Leadership / Models / Stories

Video: What a leadership course can deliver, part 2

Here is an interview with a student who is taking my online leadership course, Ellen, who is an entrepreneur who recently sold her latest business. As you'll see, she is also finding that the lessons she's learning apply to other deeply challenging areas in life.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnblmP_VlHg Reach your potential in business and life. My courses don't take time from the rest of life. You work with people in your life that you care about on projects that you care about without distracting from the rest of your work and life. Learn more about the course and register here Read testimonials about my courses here I look forward to having you aboard.

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April 21, 2016
Video: What an entrepreneurship course can deliver, part 1
Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises

Video: What an entrepreneurship course can deliver, part 1

Here is an interview with a student who took my online entrepreneurship course, Sofia, who is an entrepreneur in Greece and got her Masters degree in Technology Management at NYU. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH2jabUGdMk Reach your potential in business and life. My courses don't take time from the rest of life. You work with people in your life that you care about on projects that you care about without distracting from the rest of your work and life. Learn more about the course and register here Read testimonials about my courses here I look forward to having you aboard.

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April 19, 2016
Video: What a leadership course can deliver, part 1
Education / Exercises / Leadership / Models

Video: What a leadership course can deliver, part 1

Here is an interview with a student who took my online leadership course, Bethany, who is an Associate Partner at IBM and has an MBA from Columbia Business School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoL4zWav8Hw Reach your potential in business and life. My courses don't take time from the rest of life. You work with people in your life that you care about on projects that you care about without distracting from the rest of your work and life. Learn more about the course and register here Read testimonials about my courses here I look forward to having you aboard.

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April 18, 2016
Exercises / Fitness / Leadership

You’re lying if you say you don’t have time to exercise

"I don't have time to exercise." Everyone has said it at some point. It's a lie. At best, it's ignorant. If you want to lead others, you better know how to lead yourself. Effective exercise can take a few minutes a day. The hard part about effective exercise is that you don't feel motivation to do strenuous things. I'm not saying it's easy. The point is that if you talk about time when the challenge is motivating yourself to overcome demotivation, you're focusing on the wrong issue and you won't solve the problem.

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April 16, 2016

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