
Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret - parallel
http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret?tag=softwaremotivation
======
smalter
Awhile back, HN users rguzman, peng, and I (met on HN and) built
<http://idonethis.com> based on the Seinfeld productivity secret and launched
it on HN. We got some great feedback and kept moving forward with it.

We recently crossed 200,000 things done
([http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/09/22/idonethis-announces-
it...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/09/22/idonethis-announces-its-first-
milestone-200000-completed-tasks/)) and a bunch of people have told us that
it's helped them tremendously.

~~~
ofca
Great stuff! but, why have you not used big oversized X's? These blue check
marks dont give enough satisfation as big red X's. Test it :)

------
chuinard
This might be the 10th post I've seen on Hacker News about Seinfeld's
calendar.

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=seinfeld+ca...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=seinfeld+calendar&start=0)

~~~
parallel
Fair comment. I'll search first in future.

~~~
evanw
I'm glad you posted, I had never seen it before and found it to be very
valuable. Thank you.

------
dmlorenzetti
_[I]t is the consistent daily action that builds extraordinary outcomes...
Skipping one day makes it easier to skip the next._

A recent New Yorker article quotes singer Tony Bennett on his practice regimen
as saying "The first day you don't do the scales, you know. The second day,
the musicians know. The third day, the audience knows."

~~~
wushupork
I've heard this saying but in the context of martial arts. "The first day you
don't practice, you know. The second day, your coach knows. Third day, your
competitors know" I wonder what about origin of this saying.

------
mason55
This concept has actually been turned into a pretty decent website.

<http://dontbreakthechain.com/>

~~~
bennesvig
Nice. I knew about the technique, but didn't know there was a website
dedicated to it. Has anyone made an app dedicated to this?

~~~
genieyclo
If you mean a mobile app, there's a Don't Break The Chain[1] iPhone app that I
use on/off. It's free with a premium version with no ads at $5.

There's apparently an Android app out there[2] as well.

[1] [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dont-break-the-
chain!/id31356...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dont-break-the-
chain!/id313567772?mt=8)

[2]
[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.geolinx.android.do...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.geolinx.android.dontbreakthechain.pro&hl=en)

~~~
dreeves
> "Don't Break The Chain[1] iPhone app that I use on/off"

You may be unclear on the concept! :)

~~~
genieyclo
Definitely, it's an area I need to work on significantly ;)

------
mhartl
This technique works best if, for your particular goals, there exists an _x_
such that "Doing _x_ every day will help me meet my goals" is true. If you're
a stand-up comedian, _x_ is fairly clear. For many people (including me), it's
not obvious that such an _x_ exists. (It's still probably worth looking for
it, though.)

------
consultutah
There is one really important thing that needs to be brought-up: Being
consistent is important. But it is more important to choose the right things
to be consistent at.

Some of us are really consistent at watching our favorite sitcom. But how,
exactly, does that help our businesses? Couldn't those precious minutes be
spent doing something to help advance our businesses?

~~~
dreeves
Here's us committing to an average of one User-Visible Improvement to our
startup per day:

<http://beeminder.com/meta/uvi>

It's not quite the same as the Seinfeld calendar strategy in that we can in
fact break the chain, we're just forced to maintain 1/day as an average.

(Anyone reading this thread who wants to try something like that, use the
invite code SEINFELD and I'll get you hooked up.)

~~~
consultutah
That's an awesome idea. My main goals are: 1\. One Thing - do one thing to
advance my startup 2\. Exercise

~~~
jamesbritt
Suggestion: Swap the two. Exercise first.

------
nrbafna
Well. There is yet another minimalist implementation of this - <http://sein-
cal.co.cc/> that works very well for "I (don't) want to do X" and check for
each successful day.

In principle, it would be exactly like a full-year calendar on the wall.

Edit - This was our weekend hack some time ago. Feedback on the application is
welcome.

------
declancostello
Is there a way to abstract this into a service that has an api ?

You could setup your daily goals and the Tenacity API ( a name just invented
<http://declancostello.com/tenacity-api/> ) could be updated by different
clients.

Tenacity could check an RSS feed to see if you've blogged every day ( like
yahoo pipes )

It could parse an email sent to a custom address ( like idonethis )

Flashcard Software like anki could have a plugin that would access the API

twitter hastags, github checkins etc.

It would provide you with a dashboard of all the things you care enough about
to be doing every day.

I'm not sure I'd like it to email me like facebook when I've missed some
goals, but it might be a productive option.

I don't have the mojo to develop anything like this but would it interest
other developers?

------
programminggeek
I wrote a free weight tracking web app based on this idea. You track your
weight daily. It gives you some simple analytics on your weight over time.
It's a small thing, but tracking your weight every day helps it drop over time
and keep you accountable to your diet.

I'm 285 days in a row and I've lost right at 40 lbs. It works.

<http://thediet.org/>

------
buckwild
I've always found this productivity idea weak. I might set out 1 hour a day to
accomplish a task, but if my heart isn't in it, it's just an hour of low-
quality work--I may as well have not done it at all or waited for an optimal
time.

However, I do see how this could be useful for tasks which aren't creative or
need much thinking. Say for example, brushing teeth after lunch.

~~~
blahedo
But at least you've done something. When you see it's not going well, you
might stop early but it's still better than skipping it, because the _next_
day, when you _are_ ready, the stuff you were doing is one-day-fresh, not two-
days-fresh. If you put it off until "an optimal time" you'll both make it
easier to keep putting off and spend more time catching up to where you had
previously been.

The grad student version of this advice, which I heard from several people and
more or less followed, was "once you start your thesis, write every day, at
least a sentence." It's good advice.

------
lujz
A diary app implements this:
[https://github.com/dev1/kotivox/raw/master/kotivox-
screen-1....](https://github.com/dev1/kotivox/raw/master/kotivox-screen-1.png)

------
rickdale
This is why HN needs improvements. Jerry Seinfelds productivity secret has
been leaked on HN plenty of times. How come no one flags this?

------
ludicast
This can't be reposted too much. This secret changed my life.

------
joejohnson
Hmmm, can't be that great of a system. The guy never made it as a comedian and
works in computers or something.

~~~
nhebb
Seinfeld was a successful comic. The end goal for a lot of comedians is to
parlay it into an acting career, which Seinfeld did. Forbes estimates his net
worth at $800 million. If that isn't a successful comedic career, than I'm not
sure what is.

~~~
georgemcbay
"woosh"

As much as I like most aspects of Hacker News, this place is easily in the
running for most humorless site on the entire Internet.

~~~
cwp
Actually that's one of the things I like about HN. So easy for a community
site to degenerate into a handful of long-running in-jokes, applied to the
topic of the day.

