Joe DeSena founded the Spartan Race and hosts the Spartan Up podcast. For those who know about me and my burpees, cold showers, rowing a marathon, picking up garbage daily, and so on, you can imagine I love what he does. Joe has made it his mission to bring the emotional rewards of joy, service, happiness, resilience, grit, toughness, and all those things to the world by creating a culture[…] Keep reading →

I don’t remember the last time I was this tired, so I hope you’ll pardon me keeping it short. Wednesday I swam across the Hudson River, about 1 km across, though the current took us from across from about 70th Street to 35th Street. The distance the current took us didn’t tire me, but I walked to 39th Street from home and from 35th Street home. I take cold showers[…] Keep reading →

I’ve meant for years to post to solicit questions from readers. You know you have questions about something I cover—burpees, leadership, entrepreneurship, education, stewardship, swimming across the Hudson River, posting daily, etc. Contact me here. When I meet people in person or email one-on-one, people say they’ve wanted to know something about me or what I write. I’ll keep names discrete if requested.

I knew my daily streaks of writing in my blog and doing burpees of nearly ten years were just starts. I like to find role models. I discovered sidcha streaks that dwarf mine, in fact that started before I was born. Two organizations—Streak Runners International and United States Running Streak Association—track people who have run at least a mile per day. Their slogan: “Through weather, injury, illness, and life events,[…] Keep reading →

The Heroes of New York podcast host Anu Senan posted our conversation. The show features people who show exemplary behavior in the epicenter of the epicenter. She liked the episode enough to invited me for a second episode (EDIT: here’s the second episode: Heroes of New York, episode 2: Doing meaningful things, a conversation on change), so I think you’ll like it too. See the show notes below for details.[…] Keep reading →

A friend recommended to me an exercise I hadn’t heard of. It sounds like the Three Raisins exercise I learned from Jon Kabat-Zinn, included in my leadership book, and assign in my leadership class. She didn’t explain much about it, but my experience with experiential exercises told me that doing it would reveal more than any explanation. The exercise The instructions: Drink a hot beverage and when I think judgmental[…] Keep reading →

I consider leadership a performance art and the environment the most beautiful thing around. Abbey and I talked about beauty, art, performance, teaching, technique, craft, and everything that goes into mastery. She has little experience with burpees. I have little with painting, but we connected on mastery. I think I can safely say we both look forward to our next conversation. Just after stopping recording we both commented on how[…] Keep reading →