The Seinfeld Method Didn’t Work For Me
Until it did, now I’m a believer.
In writing circles, there is a story that Jerry Seinfeld writes a joke every day and afterward makes a big X through the date on a calendar. He makes forward progress in his craft by not wanting to break the chain of X’s.
The Seinfeld Method is all about a streak of behavior, a mind-trick of motivation.
I’ve tried this several times. I would get a few days in a row, something would happen, and then I’d skip a day. Then another. And another.
Hurray to all those who start a chain and get months and days and years going without a break. I had a friend in college who had years of a daily journal habit. Stacks and stacks of paper, sometimes a stack of post-it notes, other times a notebook, but without fail she journaled before bed every single day.
I envied her dedication, but I couldn’t stick with it.
Any time I missed a day, I could hear Billy in The Polar Express saying, “It just doesn’t work out for me.”
I empathized with Billy. It didn’t work out for me either.
Then I noticed something about myself.
Every evening I was journaling in my Day One app, noting the basics of what happened that day. Nothing dramatic or deep, just a few lines about the day.
It happened organically at first. No specific intention to journal daily, but just a quick note about the day.
Suddenly, I had over 100 days in a row.
Me. The one who can’t stick to a daily practice.
Later, I had a notice from my Kindle app that I had a reading streak going. I’ve been an avid reader since I was 10 years old, when my Dad was looking for something to entertain me over the summer months. He pulled a book from his shelf, told me that after I read that one, I could choose another, and a lifetime habit of reading was born.
The Kindle app shows both how many days in a row I’ve read and how many weeks in a row.
Now I have two streaks going that I didn’t expect. Maybe the key was apps tracking without my notice. I’m up to 1,131 days in a row on Day One and 346 days/143 weeks in Kindle.
With those numbers going for me, how can I stop? I am committed to making an entry, even one line, in my Day One app and reading at least a few lines on Kindle each and every day.
So I got the idea that maybe, just maybe, I could do this for daily writing as well.
Since I’m working on a novel and writing on blogs, there would not be a single app automatically tracking my progress, so I am using the analog calendar method. Each day I write, I put a big “X” through the date.
It is working. At the 25-day mark, I just wasn’t feeling it. The muse was on vacation or went out for the day or something.
But the streak called to me. 25 days was long enough that it would feel like an actual setback if I missed a day.
I did it! I sat at the computer and started a blog post draft.
The moral of this story is that even if you think something doesn’t work for you, give it another look. Keep trying. Don’t give up. If one thing doesn’t work, try something else, but don’t give up on what you want to do.