The Seinfeld Strategy - This motivational technique is so simple!

What if I told you that one simple principle could help you exercise more, meditate more regularly, write that book, lose weight, or finally stick to any habit you’ve been trying to build?

It’s known as the Seinfeld Strategy, and its power lies in its simplicity. Seinfeld is a prolific comedic writer and writes every day whether it’s for 5 minutes or 5 hours.

If you’ve ever struggled with motivation and consistency, this could be just the hack for you!

The story goes that a young comedian once asked Jerry Seinfeld for advice on becoming a better comic. Seinfeld explained that the secret wasn’t talent, inspiration or motivation. It was consistency.

His method was straightforward.

Get a large wall calendar and every day you complete your task, put a big red X through that date.

After a few days, you’ll have a chain.

After a few weeks, you’ll have a longer chain.

Your only job is simple:

Don’t break the chain. Maintain the chain.

Why does it work?

Because our brains love completion. We like patterns. We enjoy seeing progress. Once that chain starts growing, something interesting happens. The focus shifts away from achieving a huge goal and towards maintaining momentum.

Instead of asking:

“Do I feel like exercising today?”

You ask:

“Do I want to break my chain?”

It’s a much easier question to answer.

Think about the power of your Wordle streak or your Duolingo streak. Duolingo are really wise to this technique - they have a Streak Society so you get a special badge after 7 days, you can pair up with friends to have a shared goal and you can even purchase Streak Freezes to protect your streak if you miss a day! We love a continuous streak.

The beauty of this approach is that it rewards showing up rather than perfection.

If your goal is to walk every day, a ten-minute walk still counts.

If your goal is to meditate, two minutes still counts.

If your goal is to write, a single paragraph still counts.

Success isn’t measured by how impressive today’s effort was. It’s measured by whether you maintained the chain.

If you don’t want a calendar on your wall, how about using an app on your phone instead? I can highly recommend one called Calendar Check for just such a purpose. We’re all glued to our phones anyway, might as well make it easy to succeed.

It’s so easy, simple and effect you can start today with one single tick and see how long your chain could get!