
Jerry Seinfeld's Productivity Secret - mcantor
http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret
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r11t
Seinfeld's Calendar + Github = <http://calendaraboutnothing.com/>

"The Calendar About Nothing generates a "Seinfeld Calendar" from your public
"Github" feed."

~~~
antileet
I've been doing something similar to this for quite some time.

I made a Google-docs form containing boolean-answer questions regarding
whether I did any of the things I aimed to do regularly (running, writing
code, good interaction with people, etc), and wrote a script to remind myself
to do it every night via email.

Answering "No" to a question put a nasty red mark on the generated
spreadsheet, which led to a huge motivator as to avoid the nasty red marks on
the otherwise clean spreadsheet. Now, after doing this for almost exactly a
year, I can claim that this system works quite well for me.

I'm going to make this into a full-fledged app inspired by the "Calendar about
nothing".

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gr366
This has been floating around the internet for a while, but it's good to come
across again. I'm impressed by the level of simplicity to which the technique
has been distilled. Notice that it wasn't necessary to write a book about the
productivity system — it can be explained in a paragraph.

On a side note, I believe there are a number of iPhone apps that implement
this system.

~~~
benatkin
> On a side note, I believe there are a number of iPhone apps that implement
> this system.

I can verify this. I use Streaks, which may have been the first one. It has
support for multiple calendars (for different goals), which kind of breaks the
simplicity of Jerry's approach. I might cut it down to one calendar/goal.

<http://fanzter.com/products/streaks>

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jrockway
Once you fail, isn't it easy to continue to fail? "Oh well, I broke that chain
of 100 days. I'll probably never get that many again, so I'll just give up
now."

Playing mind games with yourself is rarely effective. If you want to write
every day, just write every day.

~~~
Jach
And if you want to be a start-up billionaire, just be a start-up billionaire.
True, but not very useful advice. (Though I'm not sure what useful advice for
that one would look like. Perhaps better: if you want to get good grades, just
get good grades.)

~~~
gcheong
The difference with your examples is that writing jokes every day is a fairly
well defined, specific, verifiable, action. Getting good grades, "being" a
start-up billionaire are not. I can't see you in the state of getting good
grades, but I could see you study a little each day with the result that you
get good grades.

~~~
sketerpot
I'm in grad school, so right now my goal is to read and understand at least
one research paper every day. Once I get started, that usually balloons to
several papers. The calendar method has proven very effective.

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tezza

      Jerry: The trick is, you don't break the chain.
    
      George: Don't break the chain?
    
      Jerry: Don't break the chain!
    
      Kramer: I broke the chain...
    
      Jerry: You broke the chain?!
    
      Kramer: I broke the chain, Jerry, I did.

~~~
gclaramunt
Jerry: You broke the chain! The chain isn't supposed to be broken!!! Now what
are you going to do? You broke it...

~~~
prat
you just overdid it man .. :) if you were tezza, I would have advised you to
"leave on a high note"

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jdrock
Yep, a fairly well-known technique, albeit with a different implementation.

I would be more intrigued, though, to learn how to discipline your mind to do
a task when it needs to be done (right now or at some later specific time). It
seems that would take a lot more mental fortitude.

Example: I should get gas in my car on the way home from work. I don't need
to, but it would help. A few hours later.. eh, I'm hungry, I'll get gas in the
morning. Next day, late for work because I had to get gas. How do I discipline
my mind to get gas when I should have? Silly example, but it's what came to
mind first.

~~~
purui
Setup a chain to 'do a thing you dont like' everyday. Soon you'll be able to
control yourself.

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teej
There's a web app version of this system available
(<http://dontbreakthechain.com/>) as well as an iPhone version made by a HNer
(<http://appshopper.com/productivity/dont-break-the-chain>)

~~~
shib71
I prefer <http://www.joesgoals.com/> \- it allows you to set up multiple
chains and manage them from a single page.

~~~
matthew-wegner
Joe's Goals is great because you can do negative goals too ("checked email
off-schedule", "browsed HN during work hours", etc). It's compelling to see if
you can beat your numeric value from the previous day.

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romland
It made me chuckle that when reading the article I could actually hear
Seinfeld say "Don't break the chain!".

Unique voice, unique character.

~~~
j3fft
what's the deal with chains? I mean, everyone always wants to break them.

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babyboy808
Trying out a slightly different method here: my calendar here:
<http://www.keithdonegan.com/2010-calendar/>

Basically the cal has to have ALOT more green boxes than red.

Green = no junk day with food. Red = Yes, you guessed it, I gave in to
temptation.

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Keyframe
When I was in the navy (conscripted) for almost a year, we had pocket sized
calendars like that (with nude women on the other side, of course). Each day I
could cross the day I was there, it was a major topic for discussion/bragging
and a huge motivation to go through the boring conscription.

~~~
KC8ZKF
We wore "short timers chains" on our belt loops when we only had a few months
left. Small brass chains with one link for every day we had left. We would
dike one link off the end every day. Breaking the chain was something we
looked forward to.

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chipsy
I have a small twist on this system, which is that I have a huge pool of tasks
in a text file with headers for each day, and as I go through the day I pull
out parts of tasklists and mark them "# DONE" as they are finished. Thus by
the end of each day, each week, each month, I have an increasingly impressive
list of accomplishment, even if the actual tasks are small 5-minute things. I
don't try to hit a target number of tasks or a quality of task, I just do
what's available that day.

One month in, I haven't missed a single day.

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Harj
i thought this would be a good idea for a twitter app - something like you
tweet your goal then each day you tweet what you did towards it and if you
didn't it'd auto tweet that you broke the chain. idea being you don't want
your friends to know you broke it. there's obvious flaws but if someone is
interested in it, i have the domain twitchain.com and won't get around to
making this anytime soon so if you can have it if you want to build something
like this.

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vlad
This is a tip I picked up maybe ten years ago from bodybuilding (with the
exception of having a rest day every five days or so, which is considered good
practice.) If you miss more than one day in a row, it can be very hard to get
back into the routine. Good to see this reposted every six months on Hacker
News.

I'm still planning on writing an app to help the user track goals this way. :)

~~~
tigerthink
There's already a perfectly good app at <http://dontbreakthechain.com/>

~~~
nileshtrivedi
There is also <http://dailystamp.r09.railsrumble.com/> from Rails Rumble.

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mattm
Watch the documentary "Comedian" for more on Jerry's work habits. It partially
follows him and another comedian during the time after the Seinfeld show had
ended and he was getting back into stand up.

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jonknee
I have a dry erase calendar on the wall next to my desk that I do this with.
It's great to see a bunch of Xs up there at the end of the week.

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jbellis
I can't actually find a "year on one page" calendar on Amazon. Do they still
make such things in these days of digital organization?

~~~
dgquintas
While probably not as fancy, I just printed one of the templates available at
<http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/yearly-calendar.html> on an A3 sheet,
only because I didn't have access to a plotter for some bigger sizes. Looks
good enough, though.

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marcamillion
I nearly never read this...but am so glad I did.

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sganesh
www.dontbreakthechain.com

~~~
sketerpot
I like the tangibility of a calendar. Even if it's just a PDF calendar that I
printed out for that month.

