Joshua Spodek wrote the best-selling Leadership Step by Step and his blog’s one of the three sites I check every day¹:
We’ve all got something we want to get better at, but sometimes we’ve got no idea how to start. And that’s what Joshua’s SIDCHAs (Self-imposed, Daily, Challenging and Healthy Activities) are for. I’ve pinched a few of my SIDCHAs straight off of him (cold showers every morning, exercising first thing, writing a blogpost every day) but my favourite thing about SIDCHAs is that they’re not about a huge, Everest-like climb to improvement –whether that’s getting better at a skill, landing a better job, losing 30kg or quitting smoking. They’re about improving today.
‘Tomorrow’, ‘By 2018….’ or ‘5 years from now’ might never come, so whatever you want to get better at, do it today. When (or if) tomorrow comes, okay, then, do it again tomorrow. But the only thing you have total control over is now, so start there.
Here’s more about who Josh, what he does, and why (from his bio page):
Joshua Spodek, bestselling author of Leadership Step by Step, is an Adjunct Professor at NYU, leadership coach and workshop leader for Columbia Business School, columnist for Inc., and founder of SpodekAcademy.com.
He has led seminars in leadership, entrepreneurship, creativity, and sales at Harvard, Princeton, MIT, the New York Academy of Science, and in private corporations. He holds five Ivy League degrees, including a PhD in Astrophysics and an MBA, and studied under a Nobel Prize winner. He helped build an X-ray observational satellite for NASA, co-founded and led as CEO or COO several ventures, and holds six patents.
He earned praise as “Best and Brightest” (Esquire’s Genius Issue), “Astrophysicist turned new media whiz” (NBC), and “Rocket Scientist” (ABC News and Forbes) and has been quoted and profiled by ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has visited North Korea twice, swam across the Hudson River, and has done burpees every day for six years, 90,000+ and counting. He blogs daily at www.JoshuaSpodek.com.
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¹ I am militant about how I spend my time on my phone or computer. (And if you’re interested, the other two sites are: The Onion and Seth Godin’s blog.)