Now that I’ve picked up the habit of high intensity interval training, I’ve developed a belief about it that explains why it increases your cardio-respiratory system so well—that minutes of HIIT exercise can give you the benefit of hours of moderate exercise. Muscles develop when you stress them. You build skeletal muscles by stressing them, such as by lifting as much as you can. If you can left, say, 25[…] Keep reading →

Leading cultural change, one of the big tasks is to change collective beliefs. One of my big discoveries of my experiments with avoiding flying and food packaging is that what I expected to feel like deprivation and sacrifice ended up becoming two of the greatest changes in my life. Living by your most important values, especially when they override less important values that you were doing without thinking, improves your[…] Keep reading →

My recent post at Inc., “Economics Is Wrong About Growth And It’s Ruining Everything,” begins Economics Is Wrong About Growth And It’s Ruining Everything Even Adam Smith foresaw an end to growth. How did we lose sight of it and think we could grow forever? Nearly every economist I’ve heard say anything about economic growth says it’s necessary for a population’s well-being, as has nearly every comment I’ve seen on the subject from non-economists.[…] Keep reading →

Do people understand what they’re saying when they talking about “seeing things as they really are?” Do they realize it makes no sense? Let’s say you’re seeing things for not what they are. Do they imagine you have some special faculty that you were not using but when you decide to, you can just use your reality-seeing eyes instead of your what? false-seeing eyes? If you misperceived or were deceived[…] Keep reading →

Does a background in science help someone lead? … does it help someone coach? If so, how? I spoke with longtime leadership and executive coach Ron Potter, who came from an engineering and technical background to coach executives at top levels of major global companies, about how our backgrounds help. We covered: How a science and technical background helps us understand and work with emotions better than others … and[…] Keep reading →

My Inc.com article today, Why I Don’t Think of Vegetables, Fruit, and Exercise as Preventing Disease, begins Why I Don’t Think of Vegetables, Fruit, and Exercise as Preventing Disease Why consider unhealthy normal? Why not consider healthy the default? I’ve written before that I don’t think of diet, exercise, and behavior as preventing cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. I’m not a medical doctor, so this article isn’t about medical advice.[…] Keep reading →

I don’t know if the interviewers are getting better, if I’m developing in conversation, or if I’m just enjoying podcast conversations more, but it feels like the interviews are getting better all the time. Yesterday, Jim Harshaw (scroll down to learn more about him) of the Success Through Failure podcast posted our second conversation. Second conversations lead to greater comfort, depth, trust, and intimacy, so I recommend listening. We cover[…] Keep reading →

I just watched what I consider one of the most important videos I’ve seen. It’s not exciting, but it covers what I consider the most important issue of our time—how to understand global warming and what we can do about it. Not just the usual questions about science, numbers, and politics. The video is of Donella Meadows speaking at the University of Michigan. She approaches the topic through systems thinking,[…] Keep reading →

People keep congratulating me on publishing my book, for selling copies, for celebrities mentioning me. I like those things, but the book is a medium of communication. I consider it a means to an end. The point of the book is to give people tools to improve their lives, to develop the skills of empathy, compassion, responsibility, self-awareness, discipline, creating meaning, value, importance, purpose, passion, and related social and emotional[…] Keep reading →