Don’t Break the Chain!
A couple of years ago I read a blog post on LifeHacker about a motivational trick used by Jerry Seinfeld. I’m not a Seinfeld fan, never watched the show but I’m not an idiot either. I recognize success.
According to Jerry, to become a better writer get a big calendar and a red marker. Each day you write mark a big red X. The point of the game is to grow a long red chain of “X”’s. That’s it.
Ahhhhhh, that’s too simple. Well, OK. How are you doing? I need the external cattle prod.
So the folks over at the blog Persistance Unlimited created a widget that runs in your Google homepage and allows you in an electronic, 21st Century, plugged-into-the-overlord kind of way to do just that. It’s called Don’t Break the Chain and I am a major junkie. Thanks Guys!
So, here is my chain where each box represents writing 2000 words a day. I don’t limit myself to new fiction, they can be edited, blog, nonfiction, my resume, free-writing, long forum posts, whatever but it must be words in a file (gotta save those posts if they count) and they must add bits to a file. And yes, I have a spreadsheet.
A couple of those days were real squeakers where I free wrote right before bed to make my quota, but knowing that if I did not crank out those 2000 words, I could not tick that box was motivating for me.
Call me mickey and hand me a chunk of cheese.
The other colored boxes are for other parts of my life where I am, shall we say, striving to achieve a modicum of the success I have shown with my writing.
Ahem.
“nuff said.
Themocracy
Ooooh… a widget!! I love widgets. I may have to look for this one…