The Seindfeld Calendar

The Seinfeld Calendar

In 2022 I learned about The Seinfeld Strategy. It’s simple. When you’re trying to build a daily habit (for Jerry, that was writing) you mark a big X on a calendar each day you do it. Over time, you end up with a chain of X’s on your calendar and your goal is to “not break the chain”. According to the article above, Jerry Seinfeld explained this strategy to a new comedian like so:

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 is to not break the chain.”

2024: Going Digital

I’ve been using this strategy since 2022 to track my exercise. My goal is just to exercise 5 days/week. Last week, I found myself without a physical calendar so I did what any good (rusty?) web developer would do and built a simple calendar with Next.js.

It just loops through a JSON file that contains dates and descriptions then renders those to the calendar.

See my live exercise calendar or check it out on GitHub.

Make Your Own Calendar

Trying to build/break a habit? Just fork the repo and run

 npm install

Add dates to src/data/specialDates.js

const specialDates = [
    { "date": "2024-01-03", "description": "Run 3K" },
    { "date": "2024-01-04", "description": "Bike 45mins" },
    { "date": "2024-01-05", "description": "Physio" },
    { "date": "2024-01-07", "description": "Strength Training" },
];
          

Then run

npm run dev