How Jerry Seinfeld Can Help You to Be More Productive

Productivity sucks.

For one, it’s hard. I mean, let’s face it — when I sit down to “get something done,” it almost never happens. At first, I thought it was just me. I thought that maybe there was some malfunction in my brain that made it physically impossible for me to focus on important tasks when the sweet, sweet Facebook newsfeed is only a click away.

And, unfortunately, you can’t “will” yourself to be more productive with your time.

You’re not a lemon. You can’t just squeeze more juice out. It doesn’t work like that, young padawan.

I’d always thought that the reason elite performers in the top 1 percent of their disciplines are able to do so much more than I is because they had some sort of x-factor that allowed them to work harder, longer and better than I do.

Or, I made up all these limiting self-beliefs that they had unfair advantages that I’d never have (“of course he’s more productive than I am… he has a personal chef to cook for him while he’s working”). All that is BS, naturally.

Then it occurred to me — maybe it’s not willpower at work here. Maybe these people aren’t “forcing” themselves to get stronger, faster, smarter or more successful.

Maybe it goes much deeper.

Maybe the reason that the world’s most productive people are so productive is because they have their entire life designed to get better at their work.

The Seinfeld solution

In 1998, Jerry Seinfeld made $267 million from the ninth and final season of his hit show Seinfeld.

Yes, thats a quarter-billion dollars. No, that’s not a typo. NBC begged him to do a 10th season to the tune of $5 million per episode for 22 episodes. He declined.

Needless to say, it was a great decade for him. But the 2000s have been quite good to him as well — deals from syndication of his now classic show bring in a steady paycheck of about $32 million per year. Not bad, Jerry. Not bad at all.

But let’s take it back. Back, before he was a borderline billionaire comedian. Back before he was even a household name.

How does one amass the talent, skill and productivity to write joke after joke, show after show, year after year at such a high level?

Comedian Brad Isaac shares the story of a chance encounter he had with Seinfeld backstage. He asked Jerry if he had any “tips for a young comic.”

Here’s how Brad describes the conversation:

Take note here.

You’ll notice Jerry didn’t mention anything about having good jokes. He didn’t even mention how long the activity had to last. The task is very simple: write something every day, put an X on the calendar and don’t break the chain.

It’s almost simple enough to be counterintuitive — but let’s think about what’s happening here. There are a few very sophisticated processes going on. Think about how you could use this model with the skill or process you’re trying to become more productive with:

1. Doing something every day makes it a default behavior

Most of us don’t have to force ourselves to brush our teeth in the morning. There’s no mental strain or cognitive dissonance with brushing your teeth. You just do it… because that’s who you are. Seinfeld managed to integrate writing jokes into his routine day after day. Over time, he associated his identity with the writing and from there, it’s much easier to follow through.

2. Default behaviors repeated daily become habits

Habitual pursuits almost always improve because of sheer frequency. In Jerry’s case, writing every day ensures that he’s bound to stumble on some funny material. After 365 days of straight writing you’re guaranteed some nuggets of wisdom just by the sheer volume of material created over time.

In effect, you’re using your own human tendency for habit creation to work against your natural tendency to procrastinate, stall and be otherwise unproductive. Rather than setting nebulous goals and hoping that you have the power to push through, you are actively installing new software (a.k.a. habit) in your brain’s computer to ensure that the program (a.k.a. goal) gets run.

With consistency over time, the new software will get installed. You literally will not have a choice but to complete the habit every day. From there, success is on cruise control.

The only thing you have to do is not break the chain.

How it’s worked for me

I’ve had great success with hardwiring new habits into my daily rituals. The best part about creating a new habit is that after a while, you forget that it’s a “new” habit. It becomes so natural that you no longer even need to keep track. It’s just what you do. I’ve done this with a few different things that used to be a struggle for me to do consistently. Now I manage to do them every day without even a second thought:

But here’s the catch…

But none of that matters because above all, I did it every single day. Consistently. And I haven’t stopped.

These may not seem like huge challenges, but imagine what it’s like to string together weeks and weeks of things you previously struggled with. How else do you think I made over 100 posts in a few years? Like compound interest, effort over time adds up to create something much bigger than the sum of its parts.

This is the secret sauce. This is how the top 1 percent of all performers are productive at a level that seems impossible to us earthlings.

Before Michael Phelps won the most gold medals in history, he was on a 10+ year hot streak of not missing a single planned day of training. Don’t be fooled, some of the days his training wasn’t good. But he still showed up. It’s that simple.

Don’t break the chain.

Let’s say you want to learn programming for your startup, but are overwhelmed by what you need to know. That’s fine perfectly normal. Start with small bites. If you study programming, rain or shine, hell or high water, for 365 days in a row without breaking the chain, you will make progress. Period. Even if you consider yourself way below average at the beginning. At just an hour per day, that’s almost 400 hours of consistent programming after a year. How good could you get at something with 400 hours?

It doesn’t matter what the field, pursuit or project is. Consistency over time is mastery.

This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com

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