rerere

we've talked about how to use feedback
loops to build habits in a an instant
right in the immediate moment looking at
a checklist on the wall looking at the
number of paperclips that you've moved
across these are habits that you know in
feedback loops that inform your action
right now but what about getting
feedback on our long-term behaviors
right on whether or not were consistent
over the long run for that we can also
use a feedback loop and I love using
what I call the Seinfeld strategy to do
this so the story starts with Jerry
Seinfeld one of the most famous and
popular comedians of his generation and
early on in his career his show had been
out maybe a season or two and he's still
doing stand-up comedy and going around
and he was performing at a comedy club
as the story goes and there's this young
comic named Brad Isaac who was opening
for him that night and Brad Issac sees
Seinfeld backstage and he says you know
mr. Seinfeld a big fan I'm wondering if
you have any tips for a young comic
Seinfeld thinks for a second and looks
at him says well the secret to being
better at comedy is to write their jokes
and the secret to writing better jokes
is to write every day so here's what I
thing you should do get this big wall
calendar right where you can see every
day mapped out on the wall there on the
calendar throughout the year and each
day that you do your task of writing
jokes for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes I want
you to take a sharpie and put an X on
that day right and he was like you know
in the beginning you'll have one or two
days you might start and stop here and
there but eventually you're gonna get a
little chain going 5 6 7 8 days in a row
and at this point your only goal becomes
to don't break the chain right it's not
about how good or how bad the jokes are
how you feel about the jokes whether it
makes it into your show or not whether
you're you know excited about what you
came up with it's just about not
breaking the chain and this concept of
don't break the chain it can be applied
to all sorts of things right I've seen
friends use these calendars for video
production so if they do their 30
minutes of video editing work each day
they get to put an X on the calendar
that other friends use it for exercise
habit so if they go to the gym and you
know stick with their workout on every
Monday Wednesday and Friday they put an
X on the calendar and they just try to
have those chains running all the way
down right every Monday every Wednesday
every Friday and whatever the habit is
that you're trying to build this type of
feedback it gives you a visual cue a
long-term
Vater to see that on the wall and be
able to look at the progress that you've
made and whether that's been sustained
over the long run so I have a simple
action for you on this one click on the
link below this video and print out that
don't break the chain calendar and then
you can use that and set it up for
whatever habit you're working on at the
time so go ahead and do that now and
I'll see you in the next video