Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity hack for writers

According to a story on LifeHacker, Jerry Seinfeld once offered a young comic some excellent advice on writing and motivation:

“[Seinfeld] told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain.” He said again for emphasis.

I’ve used the unschedule to do something similar on a weekly basis, but I love the idea of marking up a whole year.  Using a big calendar seems like the perfect complement to contingency management because it provides external, visual validation of your progress with built-in long-term commitment.  Hang up the calendar where others can see it and I bet it’ll be even more effective.

Writing in Brief Daily Sessions

Seinfeld’s advice reminds me of a section from Boice’s (pricey) “How Writer’s Journey from Comfort to Fluency” explaining how writing in brief daily sessions can enhance your motivation.  Here is an excerpt summarizing his five rules for finding motivation:

“The first and second [rules] said that we err when we wait passively and then force motivation for writing; the most reliable and helpful motivation comes in the wake of…regular habits of working at writing.

The third rule specifies impatience as the principle villain in distracting writers away form the kinds of involvement they need most before launching most efficiently into prose.  When they jettison impatience, writers can assume the moderate pace they need for clear thinking and creative expression.

The fourth rule is about habit; a regular, productive habit of writing in brief, daily sessions pushes aside excuses of busyness and instills a powerful kind of motivation that comes from writing out of custom, without struggle.

The fifth rule says that timely stopping is as necessary and important for for stopping as for starting.  When we cannot stop on schedule, we binge, we rush, and we associate fatigue with writing (and so, lessen the motivation for writing again).  By developing the self-discipline to stop for pauses and at the end of regular, brief sessions, we help minimize impatience, exhaustion, hypomania and unreflective writing.  And by learning when to stop, we become better mangers of both our time and our motivation because we stop when we still have some of each left for other, more important activities such as our social lives.”

Any thoughts on Seinfeld or Boice’s advice?  I’m off to hunt down a big calendar.