Jerry Seinfeld used this exact technique to become a great comic. As told by software developer Brad Isaac when he asked Jerry for career advice[0]:
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.
This is the reason why I use ["I done this today"](https://idonethis.com/). I have it send me an email everynight at 11pm and I respond back with what I did for the day. I cant wait to look at it in a year.
Yah, that's actually where I got the original idea: http://japhr.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-chain.html (should have made that more clear). I'm never going to reach Seinfeld levels, but that's all right.
Staying on track with a goal or two is easy. The hard part is that when you have enough goals, they all compete for time. So choosing which goals you want to follow becomes the ultimate problem.
Thanks for the suggestion, I like this so far. My biggest beef with idonethis is the single check mark to indicate any activity whatsoever, making it less usable for tracking multiple goals.
Exactly. When I used this, I had some work and exercise-related positive goals, a multi-point goal (cooking, which I love but don't always make time for) and one negative line (caving in to the gaming addiction of the moment).
At some point I abandoned it, but I can't remember what caused me to break the habit. I might have more luck with an iPhone app that kept the chains in my face more often?
This was also recently mentioned by YouTuber "CharlieIsSoCoolLike", who's taken to putting videos online every day for a week to overcome his perfectionism, but who's also been following the technique for a much longer time to keep himself learning.
There's only one problem. When you do break the long chain you're out for the count. When was the last time you heard anything from Seinfeld after his long-running eponymous show was cancelled?
How are you supposed to motivate yourself to start a new chain, when it means you'll be working on this shit for the next 3,000 days?
Regarding Seinfeld: Have you seen his tour schedule? [0]
He's still working extremely hard as a standup comedian. In interviews I've heard him say that he likes to keep his routine 90% the same, refining it from show to show, while still adding some new stuff. I watched a one hour show on youtube from 3-5 years ago, and I saw him live less than a year ago here in Sweden. Almost all the material had changed, which tells me he's still working hard. In general, these type of people don't just retire - this is their life.
It wasn't canceled, he chose to stop the show, and at the time it was the most viewed show [0]. They offered him a lot more money but he decided to leave on a high point [1]. After having one of the most successful shows of all time, he went on to create a successful movie (Bee Movie) [2] and continues to do stand-up.
Well, let's look at the numbers. With a budget of $150 million and a global box office release gross of $287 million [0], which doesn't factor in things like DVD sales/rentals and licensing, etc means they made about $137 million more than their budget. That seems like success to me, but maybe it's not that simple in the movie industry with Hollywood accounting [1] and as a lot of it seems to depend on costs after the making and a simple general guide is that the movie needs to make at least twice as much of the budget to be considered profitable [2].
Sorry, I thought everyone knew this, I didn't pay attention to the connotation of "cancelled", since it was still cancelled. (Like, if a band's show is cancelled, it's often because of them). What I was getting at is that Seinfeld had a phenominally long TV-show run, which is extremely demanding of anyone, let alone its eponymous main character. He did not then do another long-running TV show, which would have simply been this unthinkable commitment. (This is how I'm interpreting it).
I'm not saying one causes the other, but Seinfeld was very good with his system, it led to a very, very long-running TV series, and he didn't follow it up with another series.
How or whether this has any effect on any projects you might do you have to decide for yourself.
After "Seinfeld" ended:
He famously threw away all his stand-up material after doing the very successful special "I'm Telling You For the Last Time",
He was featured in a documentary called "Comedian" following his slow grind building up all new material, has continued touring with that new material,
He immediately began touring with that new material (I saw a show and thought it was really good),
He made "Bee Movie",
He made "The Marriage Ref".
And other things too. Some of the stuff in that list was nearly as good as "Seinfeld", and some of it was terrible, but he's been around.
Don't knock it until you try it. I've found this to be the most effective technique for keeping myself on track.
It has far more to do with creating a habit than anything specific about this 'chain'. The book "Switch" covers this really well, you basically have a limited amount of self-control to use each day. Habits do not tap the self-control bank.
So in my case, I really want to make working on my sideproject a priority. For a while I tried to work on it as much as possible, but I failed to really motivate myself often.
Now I have a chain going. Everyday I wake up before work and do something. Whether its 5 minutes or 3 hours, everyday I boot up my computer and make a little bit of progress. The alarm goes off and a couple minutes later I have my dev tools open and a bowl of cereal in front of me and I'm working, no thought required.
I notice my progress has improved dramatically because of this.
I wouldn't call Seinfeld himself an argument against the Seinfeld hack (aka "don't break the chain"). I think things worked out quite well for him!
But I agree that the Seinfeld hack's greatest strength is also its fatal flaw: Once you do break the chain, all the motivation it provided bursts like a bubble. You've got to somehow motivate yourself to build up another long chain to not break. Until then you're on a "one more day won't matter" slippery slope of sloth.
My startup -- http://beeminder.com -- is trying to get the best of both worlds: stay on a "yellow brick road" to your goal every day. You have to maintain a certain overall average every day but you can build up a safety buffer that allows you to, say, take the weekend off without relinquishing that psychological momentum.
thanks. your second paragraph is exactly my point - but I don't know if it's true, just a guess on my part (a hypothesis if you will). The way you stated it in the second paragraph is exactly what I was getting at.
True. But you're focusing on the chain for the chain's sake. Remember the chain is a hack - a method of altering your behavior to produce a result - and that result should be the focus. Of course, I'm not going to lie and deny that the chain has its own intrinsic value, which only intensifies as it gets longer. But consider-
a.) The longer the chain, the less willing you are to break it, the more you learn not to let superficial things (like the futility of starting a new 3000-day chain) get in the way.
b.) The longer the chain, the more you've achieved your result, and the less you need the chain. If that result didn't happen, then you should reconsider the chain in the first place (as per my point above.)
Example of a.) As of today I have not missed a day of running in 485 days. After finishing a 100-mile ultramarathon 3.5 weeks ago, I got out and hacked together a 1-mile run the day after. Super painful, and took me 15 minutes, but it was an honest jog, and it counts. If my streak was much less than 460 days (at the time), I would not have continued the chain.
example of b.) The result of the chain? It helped me to finish a 100-mile ultramarathon, even at 6'6" 285lbs. If I have to break the chain tomorrow, and its length keeps me from ever starting a new chain, well - look at what I accomplished. I'd say it was worth it. And I suspect Seinfeld would agree regarding his chain.
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.
[0] http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...