Today I had a brilliant revelation: I’m not Jerry Seinfeld.
I am, however, a procrastination junkie. And one of the things I’m really good at is researching ways to end procrastination. In fact, that’s one of the main tools I use to procrastinate. Typing into my search bar: “How do I stop procrastinating?”—that and how to build miniature torture devices.
If you’ve even dipped your toe into the dawdling pool, you’ve probably heard of the Seinfeld Method. But if you’ve only skimmed the leaves and dead bugs off the pool of distraction, it boils down to this:
Jerry Seinfeld had a calendar Ee i ee i oh And on that calendar he wrote an X Ee i ee i oh With an X, X here And an X, X there Here an X There an X Everywhere an X, X Jerry Seinfeld had a calendar Ee i ee i oh
To challenge himself to write a new joke every day, Seinfeld got a calendar. When he wrote a joke that day, he crossed that day off. The next day Jerry wrote another joke. And guess what? That day got an X too.
“After a few days you’ll have a chain,” he told Gina Trapani, founder of Lifehacker (a listicle-loving procrastinator’s paradise, or, as Phil Collins would say, just another day for you and me—because I know you cannonballed it in here).
Seinfeld goes on to say, “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.”
You know what I say to that?
Chain, chain, chain. Chain of fools.
Because I tried it. I saw the chain, the progress I’d made, and that little rebel part of me screamed: “Don’t you dare tell me what to do, Jerry!” So I skipped a day.
And another day.
And another day.
Then I got back to it. New week, fresh start. There’s nothing like a Monday to get me motivated. (Definitely not a Garfield—I love Mondays and lasagna gives me gas.) So I crossed that Monday off with a big ol’ X.
And then another one.
Then I missed a day.
And then I added another X.
But despite my go-getter attitude, my inner perfectionist homed in on those X-less days. The void, proof of my failure. And there’s nothing like failure to bring this procrastinator to a screeching halt.
So I made a new version of this that works for me. Ah, a fresh start. One that I cannot fight myself on. It satisfies my rebel and my perfectionist—at the same time.
Each month I draw 16 boxes, 4 rows x 4 columns on a whiteboard. And I make an X. I cross out one of these boxes any day that I complete my challenge. I get my chain, and I get to rebel against it. I get to skip days, but there’s no void to drive me to madness or to give up.
This month the X’s are for showers. Showers are hard when you’re depressed. Wish me luck!