To Become a More Consistent Person, Try Seinfeld’s “Don't Break The Chain” Strategy
Whether you’re a fan of him or not, there’s no denying that Jerry Seinfeld is one of the most successful comedians of our generation.
As the co-creator and co-writer of Seinfeld, the award-winning sitcom, Jerry Seinfeld is regarded as one of the “Top 100 Comedians of All-Time” by Comedy Central. And according to Forbes, his earnings in 2020 totaled $51 million.
It’s fair to say then that by a measure of craftsmanship mastery, wealth accumulation, popularity, and critical acclaim, Jerry Seinfeld is indeed a very successful comedian, actor, and writer.
But what was the secret to his success?
It boils down to one word: Consistency.
Consistency is your ability to show up day after day to put in the work, regardless of how uninspired or demotivated you feel at that moment. Consistency is the magic that binds you with discipline.
How do you achieve consistency? Repeat the action enough times until it becomes easy to be consistent in it. Not a very helpful answer, I know. But the notion behind it is quite simple: If you repeat an action enough times, it ripens into a habit. And as John Dryden, the 17th-century English poet once wrote:
“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”
And yet, the mere act of consistency is what we all struggle with.
We want to exercise regularly, but we struggle with the motivation to do so. We want to meditate and journal more, but we give up after a few tries. We want to create more, write more, or paint more, but we fail to stick to a weekly routine that would gift us the opportunity to evolve with our craft.
Luckily, there’s a very simple way around it.
Seinfeld’s “Don't Break The Chain” Rule
Years ago, when Seinfeld was a new television show in town and Jerry Seinfeld was still a touring comedian performing stand-up shows, there was another young and ambitious comedian who was just starting out on the comedy circuit.
His name was Brad Isaac.
One night, Isaac found himself in a club where Jerry Seinfeld was performing. So as the pair stood backstage, Isaac stole his chance to ask Seinfeld for any tips he would give to a young comic.
In an interview on Lifehacker, Isaac shared Seinfeld’s advice:
He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day.
He 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.
Where Are You Headed in Life?
What I love most about this strategy is that there is no mention of the quality, outcome, or result of the work you do. There’s no mention of how good or bad the jokes are. Of how long or short the writing sessions are.
All it focuses on instead is the simple act and habit of writing.
All it focuses on is maintaining consistency.
It takes the emphasis off your performance and places it onto the process instead. And in doing so, it relieves you of the pressure to judge yourself. You no longer have a biased subjective opinion based on your own assessment of the outcome. Rather, you appraise yourself objectively: Did I do the work today?
That becomes the single measurement unit you evaluate.
And isn’t that a more mindful way of working on yourself?
This strategy is quite similar to the GAP Goals framework. It moves us away from an outcome-based approach to an input-output one, where we can create a distinction between the input of our actions and the outcome of our results.
We shift our attention to the present and start to focus on the effort we are putting in, with the conviction that if we keep showing up and consistently putting in the work, we will certainly achieve our goals over the long-run.
As you continue to consistently write and publish pieces of prose, so are you compiling your book of poetry.
As you continue to consistently record more podcasts, so are you advancing your interviewing and storytelling skills.
As you continue to consistently look inward and introspect, so are you learning more about yourself and thus raising your self-awareness.
It’s as simple as that.
Similar to how the sum meaning of your life is not defined by the moment you die, but rather by the collection of all your moments brought together, goals are not defined by the moment you achieve them, but by the collection of all your habits conjoined together.
That’s because we don’t grow and expand the moment we reach the result; we grow and expand in the process of working toward the result we want. Hence, it’s absolutely imperative that we honor this creative process.
And whether it be the process of sculpting the body we want, building up the business of our dreams, or morphing ourselves into the content creator we wish to become, any form of creation is built upon a fabric of a process, one that is stitched together by a thin and delicate needle called habits.
James Clear sums it up well in the first few pages of his book, Atomic Habits:
"It doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful you are right now. What matters is whether your habits are putting you on the path toward success. You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results."
Tracking Your Core Habits Helps Visualize Your Progress
Seinfeld’s Don’t Break The Chain strategy works well because it does two things:
It forces you to build the daily habit that will gradually transform you into the person you wish to become.
It allows you to visualize your progress.
And visualizing your progress is key.
Published research in the Psychological Bulletin reveals that in a meta-analysis of 138 studies comprising 19,951 participants, professor Benjamin Harkin of the University of Sheffield discovered that prompting participants to monitor their progress toward a goal increased the likelihood that the participants would achieve that goal. And further evidence suggests that the more frequent the monitoring, the greater the chance of success.
In other words, seeing that chain grow longer every day is a way of seeing your progression grow deeper every day.
For over a year now, I’ve been using Seinfeld’s Don’t Break The Chain strategy and it has drastically improved the trajectory of my life. Every month, I set-up a new habit-tracker table on a new page in my journal. You can download a free template here.
I track five daily habits—meditation, stretching, writing, exercising, reading—and every time I take an action toward one of them, I mark an X on my tracker.
The way I see it, by simply showing up every day to perform these five core habits, I’m casting another vote for the type of person I wish to become: A writer who is mastering his craft [by writing] while doing his best to be fully vested in the present [by meditating], taking care of his mental and physical health [by stretching and exercising], and drawing ideas and inspiration from an ever-expanding universe of knowledge and wisdom [by reading].
Yes, I’ve broken the chain countless times. Yes, I’ve skipped many days. And yes, skipping one day makes it easier to skip the next. But when I see an intensifying gap of emptiness in that table, it irritates me and pulls me back into action.
On the other hand, when I notice a growing line of X’s, I recognize all the effort I’ve already invested. And I ask myself, why stop now? It surfaces the progress I’ve already made—and that motivates me to keep going.
Always Remember, Multiple Small Steps Compound into One Big Leap
James Clear is famous for this phrase:
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.”
Whether good or bad, daily actions silently snowball into something big. That’s precisely why a small change in your daily habits can guide your life in a very different direction. And that’s what all successful athletes, chefs, creators, and artists understood early on in their careers.
It’s not about big and sudden monumental shifts, it’s about a series of small habits repeated every day that would gradually compound into one big leap.
I think Vincent Van Gogh captured it eloquently with these words:
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
Great comedians are born out of writing a series of small jokes every day and great athletes build up their bodies and fitness by a series of small daily reps brought together.
There’s no need to meditate for four hours a day to experience transcendence. You can achieve it by meditating for twenty minutes per day. You’re not expected to write a chapter of your book in one sitting, you just need to commit to the practice of one paragraph per day.
Every X you mark on your calendar is another small step in the right direction. But it’s the accumulation of those X’s that compound into one big leap.
Multiple X’s of writing sessions lead to a book.
Multiple X’s of exercising sessions lead to a fit body.
Multiple X’s of reading sessions lead to the gathering of knowledge.
So the idea is quite simply really: Do your best to not break the chain.
This philosophy follows one of Don Miguel Ruiz’s four agreements for achieving personal freedom: Simply do your best. Don’t overwork yourself—you will only grow tired, miss the point, and won’t enjoy the journey along the way. Take it slow and small. But most importantly, be consistent.
With that, I ask you one question:
What’s one habit that would have a profound impact on the trajectory of your life if you did it every single day, starting today?
Write down that action on the top of a sheet of paper and draw out a month’s calendar underneath. Commit to your habit’s daily practice and every time you perform that action, mark one big X on your calendar.
Just do your best and try not to break the chain.
If you slip or fall, simply pick yourself up, dust off your knees, forgive yourself for making a mistake, and carry onward. Keep building that chain.