A student in the online entrepreneurship course I’m creating asked about distractions. When he wants to work, he often gets distracted. I think me answer will help others so I’m sharing it here. Most life-long valuable things have long-term, non-urgent reward. Things that have immediate reward or urgency will distract. For example, if you want to do well at school, the reward for working on a project may come days[…] Keep reading →

If you read my blog you know that SIDCHA stands for self-imposed daily challenging healthy activity. I created the concept and write about it a lot. Considering its opposite helps illustrate their value and probably also reveals some problems in your life. The opposite of self-imposed is something others get you to do. The opposite of daily is irregularly. The opposite of challenging is easy. The opposite of healthy is[…] Keep reading →

An attendee at my Harvard talk wrote me about his starting a couple Sidchas. I asked him if I could share his experience because it illustrates how we grow when we challenge ourselves. Making a challenging daily habit stick not easy, but I find that knowing that others face the same obstacles and that overcoming them is just as hard for everyone else makes it easier. You’ll also see that[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on the Self-Imposed Daily Challenging Healthy Activity (SIDCHA). If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] A year and a half ago I spoke at Harvard on not dwelling on decisions (and at MIT a couple days later) with my friend’s non-profit, GiveGetWin, that[…] Keep reading →

You are reading my two-thousandth blog post. Here’s the list of all of them. I’ve posted daily since January 2011, plus twice daily around my North Korea trips since that content seemed different. Why? I write for two main reasons, one related to content, the other to process. The content reason is that writing helps me develop thoughts and ideas. When I started I thought I’d run out of ideas.[…] Keep reading →

A reader wrote to ask about my August 2012 post, “Three things I learned from yoga” “With yoga you can use your body alone to create many emotions and learn how to handle them.” Have you written more about this? I can only see me creating fear, determination, calmness, anger and patience. These don’t count to many, so I wonder what other emotions could one create? I haven’t done yoga[…] Keep reading →

In college I could put my legs in front of me, keep my knees straight, bend forward and touch my toes with my fingers. It was easy and I thought nothing of it. I don’t remember the last time I could do it after college until last night. Why did I do it? It took me two or three months of twice-daily stretching to get there. I’d been embarrassed for[…] Keep reading →

A reader and friend wrote about his SIDCHAs: Hey Josh, How’s it going? I was reading your blog and found your SIDCHA example and explanation post. Really enjoyed the distillation of it all, especially as my insecurities have many times led me to search for info rather than action. One thing I have been (attempting to) do is a Daily Review. It’s just a checklist of all the SIDCHAs I[…] Keep reading →

Somewhere around today I hit 60,000 cumulative burpees since starting in December 2011. I don’t keep track rigorously, I only know I haven’t missed a burpee. Sometimes I do a few extra, like to show someone how to do them, if I lose count and want to make sure I do enough, or if I want to make up for eating candy. What started as ten burpees per day has[…] Keep reading →