Don't break the chain.

I wrote yesterday about how a guy drew one thing every day and posted it to his website. After a few years, he was an amazing artist.

There's a motivational technique called "Don't Break the Chain" whose central idea is that you should do something every single day, mark it in your calender, and try and keep the chain as long as possible. That's it.

Apparently Jerry Seinfeld is a big believer in this technique.

It works because 1) you're practicing every day and therefore improving your skill 2) every once and awhile, through quantity alone, you'll hit upon an amazing day. If you wrote 100 jokes a day, it wouldn't take many days to come up with a few amazing jokes.

(This blog is a bit like that. I haven't missed a day yet, but in reality I do a few posts at once so that I can have days off. So this blog is not a true chain. )

We first encounter the "Don't Break the Chain" technique when we're toddlers being toilet trained. Our parents put a gold star on the calendar and that gold star is so satisfying we want to fill the entire calendar with stars.

So what creative thing could you do every day or every week?

• write a short story
• write a poem
• write a song
• paint a picture
• draw a picture
• build something
• make something
• start a conversation with a stranger
• exercise

And that's all. You can't do anything else in a day or a week. Just those things.