Jerry Seinfeld stole my strategy.
Kidding. I have no way of proving that. But in January I had this interview on Fox where I talked about one of the best strategies to staying motivated and consistent towards your goals is to grab a big ol’ calendar and mark it with a giant “X” for every day you accomplish a given task or behavior.
Well, in this interview in Entrepreneur, Seinfeld reveals the same exact strategy. In full transparency, I’m one of the few people who have never actually watched a Seinfeld episode, but I’m inclined to listen to a person who has probably been the most financially successful comedian of all-time (he earned $267M in 1998, at his height). He calls it not “breaking the chain.”
The best part about this? It applies to everything in life.
All you need to do is pick a KEY task and keep doing it. Whether you want to get fitter, write a book or grow a business, the longer you can go without breaking the chain, the faster your results will come.
I just got back from a morning 11-miler and one of the guys I was running with said it was his 36th straight day of running. He said some days he’ll only run for 15-20 minutes and he’ll end up picking up his kids in his running clothes but he said, word for word, “it’s been a shift in mindset from IF I’m going to run to WHEN I’m going to run, and I don’t want to break my streak.”
Because of this, he said he’s fitter and feels better than he has in years.
I probably drive my clients nuts by saying that it is a small number of disciplined daily activities that ultimately move the needle, personally and professionally. We are what we repeatedly do. The most successful Outperformers are always the most consistent.
Cheers to not breaking the chain,
– Scott
