How to Stop Procrastinating on Your Goals by Using the “Seinfeld Strategy”

If procrastination means that I have a deadline and instead of focusing on it with my mind and actions, I focus on something else, then I have procrastinated my way to a good living.

I learned when I was a kid that a good way to get myself to read a book is to wait until my Mom told me to clean my room. Then I would get an overwhelming urge to read. I have since given this a name: springboard procrastination.

I procrastinate on nearly everything, except, wierdly, chores my wife gives me. I tend to do those right away. I think because doing those chores helps me procrastinate better on my technical work.

My overriding professional strategy is not to do more than other people, but to make unique contributions. These take time to unfold in my mind, because all the obvious things have already been done.

1. Read the footnote in the article

2. Read this Reddit post by Jerry Seinfeld https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ujvrg/comment/ceitfx...

I mean I definitely have increased my own skills over time by being consistent, but this is definitely a fake claim.

He will generally tend to give you bell-curve advice based on stabilizing a routine.

Seinfeld likes Cheerios and Superman and the old stand-bys and so on. This is a bell-curve person who sees that curve, socially and behaviorally speaking, as finding sanity.

(IMO he is also likely terrified of displaying what he sees as a latent insanity. But that's just my opinion, for fun, etc.)

To me--I can't get sustainable results that way. What's stable for me is irrational for Seinfeld, or for someone who finds this kind of technique sustainable.

For example, one of my favorite ways to not procrastinate a thing you are trying to do is to teach it. Guess what, class starts tomorrow and you don't know jack. Or to start at the end, connect with experts, and learn it backwards, eventually ending up at first principles.

This is not rational or bell curvy unless you redefine rational and bell curve based on a new context.

IMO if you aren't a routine-based person to begin with, these kinds of routine-based hacks, using chain metaphors and such, can be risky to your sense of well-being. First, they sound rational & make sense. And second, when they don't work--for whatever reason--they make you feel _special_ in the wrong way. Maybe more like "different" in that you feel really hopeless or dumb.

God, I broke the damn chain again! Sometimes it's enough to make you want to start googling up "chain-breaking ADHD" or something.

One of the most interesting questions I've found to determine the difference in subjects/suitable people for this kind of work is: "Do you sometimes feel like you are meant to live like a cat, passing days, weeks, maybe even months without making meaningful progress, then BOOM one day the big plan starts as if by itself, and you do something amazing?" If yes, then probably focusing on a don't-break-the-chain model is looking in the wrong place. But not to worry, there are gobs of ways to get where you need to go!

(Another crazy opinion of mine is that if you are an autodidact, depending on how autodidactic you are, you should probably not be learning by rote or routine-focused means.)

Still, I love that this particular model comes with a well-known personality attached to it, and for a variety of reasons I wish more productivity models were like that.

The article itself though... It's a dubious link to Jerry Seinfeld at best, and the rest of it is pretty superficial. If you're not familiar with habits and streaks as a motivational tool, give it a read. Otherwise there's nothing novel or deep here. I'm being cruel now but it reads like the author wrote it because they wanted to keep a writing streak going.

  Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.

  All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.

  But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.

  Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.

  And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you're going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you're going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions.

  I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes awhile. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2262437

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45815

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1033433

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6544267

The first couple of days it was novel, so it was easy to get motivated. By the 3rd or 4th day I began to feel like "I've explored everything that can be done with these changes; this is pointless." yet I pressed on.

Turned out that almost always I came up with something that surprises me.

I now focus on just doing it, regardless of how 'inspired' or motivated I feel.

However, this tactic (really, it's a tactic, not a strategy) relies on the assumption, that you can identify the metric you want to "optimize", which I would claim is way more important on its own than any tactics for optimizing it.

I mean, do you really know what do you want to get better at? After all, Heinlein's "Specialization Is for Insects" quote sounds like the words to live by for many people (myself included). It is rare enough for a person to be completely sure about what he wants to do. In its strongest form (as in this blog post) it basically assumes you are already doing your dream job, which on its own is more like the end-goal for most of the "self-improvement advice" consumers. And even in its weaker form (like employed by Franklin) it is still only as useful as the metrics you were clever enough to chose, and perhaps the most prominent thing about Franklin's story was how pointless pursuing some of his chosen virtues (like orderliness) turned out to be.

So, you add all your one-off todo items as normal, but you can also set up habits, which are things that you want to do regularly ("take a walk", "get some sun", etc.) They reappear in the todo list daily (or when you want) and keeps track of streaks. I even have a habit called, "get at least one todo done" which helps with my procrastination!

It's working out well. I tend to get distracted, so I really like checking off habits as I go through my day. And it keeps track of bad habits too, which I check off at the end of the day if I haven't eaten junk food or whatever.

The only real problem is it doesn't give a good overview of all the todos you've added, so it's sort of of sight, out of mind. Though I'm sure I just need to use it some more to get used to it.

podcast: https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/ transcript: https://tim.blog/2020/12/09/jerry-seinfeld-transcript/

The basic gist is to set a small manageable goal every day, and that you're just looking for progress. You don't second guess it, or agonize, you just do it. After you've done it, that's when you review your work with a critical eye for improvement.

I don't really think what Seinfeld talks about there is so much about procrastination, it's about improving at your craft. You can improve at your craft every day while still procrastinating on your important to do list.

Same thing for analysis paralysis while coding: just write something. Anything. I can refactor it or even throw it out later.

- Make and ship something in two hours.

- Make and ship something in a day.

- Make and ship something in a week.

If you’re still not ready to start your big project by this point, then make and ship something in a month.

Similar to the GitHub yearly contributions heatmap [1].

[1] https://imgur.com/a/NngZO3R

https://www.scottadamssays.com/goals-vs-systems/

It's not bad for exercise and physio or other things. I haven't tried it for writing...

There is even a "half-done" marker which doesn't give you points but doesn't break the streak (e.g. when you were prevented to do something due to force majeure).

That's a strange way of saying "had one incredible show 20+ years ago and never did anything worth watching again". Comedians in Cars was so boring (and doesn't require the strategy above). The standup ive seen him do since the show ended was pretty mediocre too.

If the Fool were to start mocking the King himself, well, that Fool would not be long for this world. In today's system, that's been altered - the Fool just doesn't get their contract renewed. There was a brief period where Fools were able to break free and mock all those about them (see George Carlin) but that was quickly shut down, and now the Fools we still see know what subjects not to tackle... with a few exceptions, I suppose. Independent media and alternative venues, etc.

I personally believe that a large amount of 21st century issues are caused by “ghosts” that our grandparents brought to life during the world wars that have haunted them ever since and they’ve passed that onto their children who passed it onto us.

There is real research into “genetic trauma” from Jewish Holocaust survivors, but I think everyone who went through the war likely passed on a significant amount of pain, which is only now being addressed with the advent of less stigmatism around mental health. Hopefully our children will be better off.

1. Consistently exercise

2. Consistently do X for your day job

3. Consistently do Y for your side hustle (typical HN crowd)

So you put 3 calendars side by side?

To have a big success early on and then coast off and build off that success. And huge syndication royalties. No one even cares about his standup anymore. Plenty of people do what he did and try to be consistent and get nowhere in life. major survivorship bias. The entertainment industry has more failures than anything.

If you want to be successful you have to be really good. being consistent and not procrastinating is not enough.

Now, the whole thing I was so interested in 20 years ago is really taking off. I feel rather vindicated, so I guess that's success? I never really felt that 'success' had much to do with revenue generation.

{edit: the fundamental nature of comedy can be seen in the old 'the emperor wears no clothes' routine. Seinfeld would never dream of doing that routine - that's why he made so much money. The Emperor likes that kind of comedy...}