[Seinfeld] had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself... a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here's how it works.
He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.
He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."
"Don't break the chain," he said again for emphasis.
***
I'll credit the author of the Lifehacker piece, Gina Trapani - she cites as her source the developer Brad Isaac - who sources Jerry Seinfeld. This is as well-sourced as a Michael Wolff story, but the truism at the heart is probably just as valid.It works because it isn't the one-shot pushes that get us where we want to go, it is the consistent daily action that builds extraordinary outcomes.
I just bought a 2018 wall calendar myself and am tracking my number one daily goal on it.
Seinfeld has a great quote in a 2012 New York Times article explaining an ex post facto justification for this method:
The things that matter, that will change your life, you need to do every day. EVERY day. And that is how you will become the best. Because...it's the only way.If I don’t do a set in two weeks, I feel it...I read an article a few years ago that said when you practice a sport a lot, you literally become a broadband: the nerve pathway in your brain contains a lot more information. As soon as you stop practicing, the pathway begins shrinking back down. Reading that changed my life. I used to wonder, ‘Why am I doing these sets, getting on a stage? Don’t I know how to do this already?’ The answer is no. You must keep doing it. The broadband starts to narrow the moment you stop.