Blog / Fitness / Tips

Burpee six-month review

[This post is part of a series on my daily exercise and starting and keeping challenging habits. 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.] I refer to burpees so much I'm making a page to consolidate my burpee references (EDIT: now tomorrow's post). As I'm writing this, I only have three posts specifically on burpees (four when I post this, more evidence on how sharing what you love fills your life with sharing, love, and stuff you love), but I link to it a lot. Also, enough people I meet in person hear about burpees that it makes sense to link to this page from…

8 Comments

June 24, 2012

Blog / Freedom / Tips

Not envying others, without complacency

Do you ever wish you made more money or had more power, fame, free time, or something else others have and you don't? Maybe you look at Brad Pitt or Oprah Winfrey and think, I wish I had what they do. Then you get stuck realizing you don't and feeling sorry. I've found the problem isn't their having something and you not having it. The problem is you wishing you had it and not realizing their situation fully. More precisely: your thoughts are making you feel bad, not the external world. Getting tangled in thoughts of comparing yourself to them by standards that don't work for you bring you down. What to do instead? Here's a thought process I found myself in yesterday that I…

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June 14, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership

Living by your values

A client asked about something in his personal life. He does things one way that most parts of society do differently. To be clear, his way harmed no one and was in no way illegal, but he was concerned that people who learned about it might freak out. Sorry I have to keep the details to a minimum, but we all recognize his situation is universal. We all have things we do a certain way that society/family/school/church/government/etc does differently. A great thing about the internet is that we can easily learn that millions of others also do it that way, even if we can't meet them in person. You can't anticipate or change other people's expectations before you meet them. Like everyone, you also have…

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June 12, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Nature

What is progress?

Almost daily I face what I see as the key misunderstanding between how to lead your life to everything you want from it and how to follow what society tells you to. If you're lucky the latter will bring you what you want. You're guaranteed to produce for others, but you may never create what you want for yourself. By contrast, the former -- leading your life based on your values, meaning, and purpose, which are based on your emotional reactions (what motivates you, how you motivate others, etc) -- will always lead to a rewarding life, always great by your standards, no matter how things turn out. People call growth progress and by growth they mean the material outputs of society, which may be…

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June 8, 2012

NorthKorea

A Korean-American friend’s article about visiting North Korea

A friend who contacted me about my visiting North Korea wrote an article about visiting North Korea. He traveled extensively, spoke Korean, and ate meat, so he had a chance to experience something different and communicate more. It's hard for me not to notice how experiencing North Korea differed from his expectations, which led him to understand more about his culture -- mainly the press (perhaps the government). Also that the North Korean people made the difference. Besides his article, the comments showed what I would call short-sightedness and ignorance in people's knee-jerk responses. They criticized his visiting without considering the pros and cons of people visiting. I've written on the ethics of visiting North Korea so you can find out I find value in…

4 Comments

June 7, 2012

Blog / Freedom / Leadership / Nature

Facebook versus Walden

Walden is one of the great American books on nature and American society. Friends and longtime readers know I like it and much of its message. It criticizes the pick-a-little-talk-a-little-cheep-cheep-cheep-talk-a-lot-pick-a-little-more gossip-about-your-neighbor culture in favor of simplicity and appreciating nature. Facebook is in the news a lot. The opening sentences to Walden made me think about Facebook and the values spending time on it promotes. When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present…

2 Comments

June 2, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership

Creating your emotions — my friend’s incredibly successful story

A recent conversation with a friend who also coaches highlighted some important observations of mastering your emotions and improving your life. We were talking about my Model and Method and how you can predictably and consistently create the emotions and motivations you want. He described how he started putting this stuff into practice. He had learned techniques to change emotions -- basically to choose new environments, beliefs, and behaviors. He hadn't put them to use much when he noticed he had felt depressed for a while. As many of us know, when you feel depressed, you often don't want to change how you feel. You just want to wallow in your misery. Feeling other ways feels fake, like happiness means you're ignoring how things really…

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May 31, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy, Consider Time

I just read this article, "If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Consider Time." Before commenting on it, I'll note that I saw it linked to from a tech site, Hacker News. That community tends not to value MBA values and view people with MBAs as not adding the value engineers do. Having been a tech-founder (before my MBA) and a non-tech-founder (after my MBA) of different ventures I understand that perspective on MBAs, but this article -- from Stanford's business school -- represents some of the more valuable perspectives business school and leadership type thinking can bring -- thinking about your values, understanding them, and acting on that understanding. My business school experience taught me a lot in those areas and played a major role…

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May 26, 2012

Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

A leadership perspective on differences between economic systems

Watching people on the streets of North Korea, you see a different culture than in New York City. In three cumulative weeks in North Korea I saw almost no one hurrying or seeming like they wanted to get somewhere important. I was curious if I could find a root cause. From a leadership perspective -- that is, for someone who wants to motivate and lead others -- how do capitalism and communism differ? When you create your teams and organizations, you create systems that affect everyone in the team, whether you realize it or not. How do you motivate people? Will you have people hurrying to do something or free riding? Your choices may differ less than communism and capitalism, but a greater difference makes this…

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May 23, 2012

Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

Robert McNamara on Vietnam and leadership (or lack thereof) that led to the war

Following up on Vietnam, leadership, and the War Remembrance Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, I wanted to include some quotes by Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam war. As the BBC's obituary noted, To anti-war protesters at the time, McNamara became something of a hate figure, an arrogant ultra-hawk responsible for escalating the war. He fully supported, Johnson's decision to put ground troops into Vietnam in a bid to prop up the unstable South Vietnamese government and prevent political disintegration which would have aided the Communist cause... By 1966, McNamara had begun to question the wisdom of US involvement in Vietnam and, a year later, was privately advising Johnson to end the war by negotiation. He initiated a full investigation of…

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May 22, 2012

Blog / Freedom / NorthKorea

Ho Chi Minh City’s War Remembrance Museum

Within its borders, especially during an election year, the U.S. has an overwhelming voice of "we're number one." Outside its borders, I feel like within my lifetime the world's perception of the country has declined significantly. You feel that loss poignantly in a country like Vietnam, which can claim having defeated the U.S. against overwhelming force. Effective leadership, I believe, has to understand other voices, even those it disagrees with. The War Remembrance Museum in Ho Chi Minh City lets you see the U.S. from a perspective you won't see in the U.S. The museum portrays the U.S. as a militaristic, bullying, violent, imperialistic aggressor that supported an unpopular, repressive, oppressive violent puppet regime and lost. How much of that characterization you agree with or…

2 Comments

May 19, 2012

Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

Leadership and the environment

The number one defining property of leaders Defining property number one about leaders from leadership guru Michael Feiner (and my professor) is leaders ship. They get the job done. Nobody I know of whose paycheck doesn't originate with fossil fuels or fundamentalist religion believes we are heading in a healthy direction for our environment. But we all respond to incentives and the incentives of our system -- huge roads, low density suburbs, huge subsidies for fossil fuels, no costs to pollute, etc -- promote pollution, producing CO2, and so on. Governments write and enforce the laws forming most of these systems. As long as governments aren't changing the systems to reflect what people want, they aren't leading. As long as the media is reporting controversy…

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May 18, 2012

Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

I don’t know when the United States and North Korean governments will be at peace, but we made it sooner

We visited North Korea for ten days in April, in part for the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth. North Korea is amazing. This trip surpassed our first in many ways, as before in ways we could never have predicted and, having experienced it, can't explain, much as we'd like to. Everyone on the trip agreed, as happened with the first trip. You had to be there to feel it, but we'll do our best to convey what we experienced, because at the root we communicated, shared experiences, increased understanding, and all the things that create peaceful interaction in all directions. (My travel-mates already started writing and posting pictures, mainly Joseph and Jordan.) Most people in my group explained that seeing and experiencing the…

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May 14, 2012

Blog / Freedom / NorthKorea

North Korea, China, Vietnam, Cuba — a case for humility and understanding

The major "Communist" countries my country invaded or fought during the Cold War without doing so well -- I just visited (or smoked a cigar from). It gives you the opportunity to learn. The dominant voices in the United States, especially during an election year, cheer that we're number one. You hardly hear anything else. I can't imaging a politician disagreeing in the slightest having a hope of election. Seeing how others perceive us is enlightening and humbling. Each has a major claim to victory over the United States despite overwhelming odds. China: An elderly Texan oil man in Beijing -- a man in any other context I would expect to praise God, country, and the great state of Texas -- bluntly told me he's…

4 Comments

May 4, 2012

Blog / Leadership / NorthKorea

See my North Korea strategy talk

Sebastian posted the video of my North Korea strategy talk to his strategy group of entrepreneurs in Beijing. Check it out. The video didn't capture the questions and answers afterward. One of the first questions people asked was if I worried I was overly sympathetic to North Korean decision-makers. My goal is to understand them and their perspective, which people sometimes interpret as support. It bears repeating that understanding doesn't mean support. If you want to influence someone -- what else do we strategize about? -- I consider ignorance of their perspective the least productive starting point. Once you understand that understanding doesn't mean support, you begin to learn about them. Then you can influence them. Come to think of it, a less productive starting…

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April 28, 2012

Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

Back from North Korea!

Greetings from Beijing and another amazing North Korea trip! This time we visited places few (no?) Americans or non-North Koreans have visited in decades. We also saw the incredible beauty of the country outside Pyongyang and the DMZ. Pictures and stories to come! By the way, I tag this post with leadership because, as you'll see, we did a lot more than just tour around. We interacted directly with many North Koreans, especially kids. You'll be amazed at what we did. We heard other groups complaining to their guides that they couldn't do things we did. I don't know when the U.S. and North Korea will have peaceful relations, but I can tell you we brought it closer.

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April 23, 2012

Blog / Events / Leadership / NorthKorea

See Joshua Spodek on understanding North Korea from a business strategy perspective in Beijing

My friend Sebastian organizes Lectures on Strategy, strategy talks to entrepreneurs and other strategists in Beijing, and invited me to speak to his group. If you're in Beijing, see me speak April 22 at 4pm, near the Shuangjing subway stop. RSVP to me or Sebastian (sebastian at sebastianmarshall.com) for details. I'm basing it on my talk at Columbia Business School last month, using mostly the same slides. He plans to record it, so I expect to post video eventually. Edit: Sebastian posted the video of the talk on his site and I wrote a bit about the discussion that followed.

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April 22, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Freedom

How to feel good anytime

Once I was waiting for a bus in Queens. I had work to do, but no way to do it while waiting, and I didn't know how long I'd have to wait. People typically feel frustrated or bored in situations like that. I did. But I noticed people on vacation sit around doing nothing too. So I thought to myself "what's the difference between doing nothing while waiting for a bus and doing nothing on vacation, say lying on the beach or looking at the Grand Canyon?" Either way, I'm not doing any work. The main difference I came up with was how I felt. On vacation I might feel "I've got it made" or the like instead of boredom or frustration. But I can…

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April 6, 2012

Blog / Fitness / Freedom

Two representations of problems with America

EDIT: the site I linked to changed their post so I removed the link on "America's Fat Future." Sorry for any inconvenience. Americans eat too much and keep getting fatter. Here's a graphic a reader sent on "America's Fat Future." Our government can't stop itself from spying on us. Here's a graphic on the unchecked growth of one part of the government spying on us. I post these images not to put anyone down but to motivate changing the trends.

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April 5, 2012

Freedom / NorthKorea

A story of a North Korean prison camp

Today I'm just linking to a radio interview on a man born and raised in the North Korea prison camp system. Prepare yourself before listening since it gets serious. It speaks for itself. I understand the North Korean government generally states it has no prison camps. Visiting North Korea through the government tour, you would see no evidence of this story. Reading Nothing to Envy, you find out more about it too.

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April 3, 2012

Blog / Freedom

Your online tools spy on you. There is a way out.

I saw a snippet of a talk pointing out that Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and others design software from the ground up to spy on you. Sometimes a blatant statement of a problem reminds you of it. People are learning about the problems with large corporations and governments having so much information on you, though they don't know what to do about it because they have no alternatives. Gmail benefits them more in the moment than the cost of possible problems in the future. Geeks recognized these problems decades ago and started creating tools to protect privacy. Tools are emerging to give people more alternatives. Just like Linux on servers kept Microsoft from monopolizing all servers -- can you imagine what would happen with one…

2 Comments

April 2, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Tips

One way to accept without judging

Here's an old story that comes in many versions (here are seven), but I learned from Srikumar Rao's book Are You Ready to Succeed (text from this blog). An old man lived in a valley with his son, a handsome and dutiful youth. They lived a peaceful life despite a lack of material possessions. They were very happy. So much so, that neighbors began to get envious. One day, the old man used all his savings to buy a young wild stallion. It was a beautiful horse that he planned to use for breeding. The very same day he bought it, the horse jumped the fence and ran off. The neighbors came over to sympathize. "How terrible!" they said. "Good thing? Bad thing? Who knows?"…

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March 29, 2012

Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

Obama’s missed North Korea opportunity

When I first saw this picture, reading in the New York Times how "In South Korea Visit, Obama Visits Border and Warns North," I thought little of it, until I thought back to my earlier post on leadership opportunities for U.S. Presidents. I consider visiting a militarized border admirable and addressing North Korea important. But standing behind bulletproof glass is nothing like the speeches of Kennedy and Reagan. Maybe North Korea doesn't earn the same priority of the Soviet Union during the cold war, but it's a nuclear power that no one wants to keep as is. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH6nQhss4Yc[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtYdjbpBk6A[/youtube] Times are different, of course, but the leadership opportunity remains. I'm no fan of Reagan, but even a "Mr. Kim, tear down this border" would go…

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March 28, 2012

Blog / Tips

Leaving Facebook is easy and fun

I expect to log into Facebook once more -- to message my connections there that they won't be able to find me there, why, and where to find me instead -- then I'll leave for good. Why leave? I knew I wanted to leave after Facebook made its privacy policy too intrusive for my tastes. I felt they had too much control over my personal data. Facebook is creepy, getting creepier, and shows no sign of slowing down. Free cost does not mean I'm getting something for nothing. I came to see I was the product being sold to advertisers. What benefit I got -- networking online -- I realize I'm better off without, because I find myself more social without Facebook. I still appreciate…

5 Comments

March 26, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Leadership

Make your faults and weaknesses strengths

Everybody agrees nobody is perfect. We all have our faults. Yet some emerge as leaders and outstanding successes. I've come to believe leaders lead and successes succeed not in spite of their faults or weaknesses, but because of them. The things themselves don't matter as much as the emotions we attach to them. Attach shame to something inherent about you and people will see a part of you as shameful. Attach honor to the same thing and people will see something honorable, all the more so if you overcame shame to reach the honor. Great leaders incorporate their faults and weaknesses so much into their identities we don't see them as faults and weaknesses anymore. Pick any great leader or success. You probably first think…

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March 24, 2012