8DollarFarming blog

I’ve written before about the importance of dedicating yourself to One Goal at a Time. Just about every goal is attainable if you dedicate yourself to it, and elevate it to being one of the, if not THE, most important thing in your life. Obviously this is easier to do if you are passionate about your goal.

One thing I mentioned in my previous post is the importance of tracking your goal; you should know, at the end of every day, whether or not you were successful that day. You will know you’re making real progress when you string together a bunch of successful days. My favorite method of tracking progress is the Seinfeld Calendar - named for comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s method of successfully writing new material.

Jerry Seinfeld realized, early on in his career, how difficult it would be to write lots of high-quality comedic material in one sitting. Instead, he challenged himself to writing one new joke each day. This would enable him to build a wealth of material over time, and it would also guaranty he would always have fresh material available. (sounds a lot like my Moving Mountains approach, doesn’t it?)

Seinfeld bought himself a big wall-calendar, and marked each successful day with a large red X. No partial credit here - he was either successful in achieving his goal (and earning his X) or he wasn’t. As the days and weeks passed by, he began to get motivation from seeing an extended chain of red Xs, and he developed a new attitude: "Don’t break the chain."

He manages to boil everything down to a very simple process:  Define your success; be successful today; don’t break the chain.  Seems pretty easy.

I’ve found this approach to be an extremely effective method for helping me achieve my own goals. There have been many evenings that I’m tired and winding down for the night, when I look at my calendar and think about how bummed out I’m going to be tomorrow if I break my chain. I can usually find enough motivation to get done whatever it is I challenged myself to do. ** This last-minute save only works for goals where you actively "do" something (reading, writing, exercising, etc). Goals such as eating healthy or not smoking need to be addressed all day long, since any failure during the day will create an unsuccessful day.

Give this a try - and let me know if it helps you further your own success. Don’t Break the Chain!

idea credit to Brad Isaac and LifeHacker, where I first read about this topic over a year ago.