This morning I came across an article about Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret. The article is a good read and I recommend everyone who’s interested in getting things done and implementing life changing habits to check it out.
According to the article the secret of productivity is about keeping track of a specific habit using a yearly calendar, and drawing a line every day that you complete your task. The idea is that once you start to see a sequence of lines day after day, you’ll be motivated to keep working on it. It will feel like a chain that you don’t want to break.
The idea sounds good, but I want to save you the money of a new calendar if you want to try it out. There is a free website that lets you download a yearly calendar in pdf format. Just choose 52 weeks in the Number of weeks per page, print it out and write your habit at the top.
I recommend that you use one calendar for every habit that you want to pursue. For example in my case I have one for publishing an article each day, one for working on open source projects, and one for working on my own commercial apps. In the future I may add something health related, but that’s it for now, indeed I recommend that you start small and upgrade only when you feel like you’re ready for it. Once you commit to a habit you have to give it at least one year of practice.
It’s your turn now, choose a habit that you feel like it would make a big difference in your life, and commit to work on it every day for the next year. Use this simple system and it’ll be easier to get there.