There is a one-hundred percent chance I will work out this morning. It’s raining. I’m cold. I’m hungry. I have a lot of work to do. I have emails to catch up on. So many distractions. How do I know I’m going to exercise? Because I put on the lycra shorts I wear when I row on the rowing machine and every time I wear them I row. They aren’t[…] Keep reading →

A friend and former teammate introduced me to running long distances about twenty years ago. A few years ago I commented about running a lap of Central Park in about forty-five minutes. He remarked how running that speed at that age was impressive. In the years since, I’ve meant to run a lap in forty-five minutes. Between China and just running long distances for past marathons, I haven’t gotten around[…] Keep reading →

I love my breakfast. Yes, breakfast, in the singular. I eat the same simple combination almost every day and I prepare it through the same steps almost the same every day. Yet it has more flavor, texture, and nutrition than any other breakfast I know. Compared to the flashy, colorful boxes taking up most of the cereal supermarket aisle I haven’t entered in years—at least not since I wrote about[…] Keep reading →

I get it. Exercise is hard. At least useful exercise is. I wrote about it in yesterday’s post, “Defining moments.” I know the feeling before starting exercising. You don’t want to. But rarely do people tell me they don’t exercise because it’s hard. Far more often people tell me they don’t have time to exercise. If you want to exercise and you think you’re not doing it because you don’t[…] Keep reading →

I decided to answer the question of this New York Times article “Why Are Americans So Fascinated With Extreme Fitness?“. That article describes some fitness, but doesn’t answer the question, which deals with motivation and overcoming big challenges, which connect it to leadership. To answer why people would push to get so fit, you have to explain the emotion and motivation behind it. Simply saying it’s healthy or makes you[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday I ran my last half-marathon to train for this year’s marathon. The temperature was in the mid-fifties with a light breeze. Yet another in a long string of perfect days for running. I’ve run a twenty-one mile run this year, an eighteen-and-a-half, and an eighteen-mile run, and a bunch of half-marathons. I’m ready to run the big race. It happens in under three weeks, Sunday, November 2. The New[…] Keep reading →

The other day I felt lazy and bought a can of food for a quick dinner. It ended up creating the most trash of any meal for a while. Since my apartment renovations opened up the kitchen, I’m cooking a lot more. Specifically, I’m cooking a lot more from scratch, buying a lot more vegetables, which I cook in the rice cooker / vegetable steamer / miracle appliance. Also a[…] Keep reading →

One of the greatest improvements in my life was switching from what I call the Dandelion Model of solving problems to the Burning Building Model. This week’s New Yorker describes a major successful application of the Burning Building Model in James Surowiecki’s article, “Home Free?“. Briefly, the Dandelion Model of problem solving starts with the belief that if you don’t solve a problem from its roots, then like a dandelion,[…] Keep reading →

If I did my math right, today is my one-thousandth day of burpees, starting at one set of ten per day, now up to two sets of twenty-five per day. That’s somewhere over 40,000 burpees. I’ve done them in North Korea, China, and across the U.S. Following the principle that if you miss one day you can miss two, if you miss two it’s all over, I haven’t missed one[…] Keep reading →