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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

The pattern is this: You know something will help you and you want to do it You look forward to doing it in the future Just before doing it you feel like you don’t want to do it Starting takes a lot of willpower Once you start you want to keep doing it After you finish you’re glad you did it and find yourself feeling like in step 1 Examples[…] Keep reading →

Outlier Magazine’s Ever Gonzalez interviewed me recently and posted the podcast today, “Ep 331: Joshua Spodek Interview – Finding Your Hudson River” We talk about Learning entrepreneurship Learning leadership Swimming across the Hudson River Failure and learning from it My last book, ReModel (and hinting at the next one) Increasing your self-awareness through mental models Sidchas Check out the podcast here. If you prefer using Stitcher, here’s that link. If[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

The founder and CEO of Facebook set a goal to run a mile every day of 2016. Sounds like a sidcha to me! Detractors claim he’s not running every day or the whole mile or that it’s too polluted to be safe. At least he stated the intent. I hope he keeps it up. Since he says he’s only doing it for the year, learning the concept of a sidcha[…] Keep reading →

I’ve meant to post a video of my burpee sidchas. Someone writing a book on high intensity interval training asked me for a video, so I finally recorded my morning and evening burpee sidchas. Maybe my burpee sidcha will show up in a book. I don’t claim they’re glamorous but I haven’t missed a burpee in over four years. I do them every day. I started with ten burpees a[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of series on the Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA), burpees, and cold showers. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click to view the SIDCHA series, the burpee series, and the cold shower series where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Yesterday’s webinar, on sidchas, my most comprehensive treatment to date: