Jerry Seinfeld’s Secret To Productivity

Jerry Seinfeld is a master at being funny. That’s pretty much what he’s done for a living most of his life. That being said, it’s not like he became funny overnight. Despite what you might think, being funny (or being anything, for that matter) takes a lot of practice. His secret to productivity / being funny? Write jokes every day.

That’s not the cool part, though.

Doing something every day is hard. The thought of, say, learning a new kanji every day can feel daunting. It becomes a chore, just like “washing the dishes every day” or “vacuuming every day.” If you think about repetitive, small tasks like this, they get repetitive and you won’t want to do them as much, which is unfortunate, since learning a little bit every day really adds up. Think about it:

If you learn one kanji per day, that’s 365 kanji per year (doesn’t seem like much, but it’s probably more than most people learn in most classes).

If you learn a mere two kanji per day, that’s 730 kanji per year.

If you learn three (just three!) kanji per day, that’s 1095 kanji per year and half of all the kanji you really need to know (around 2000). Plus, this is way faster than the speed at which Japanese kids learn kanji.

If you learn five kanji per day, you’ll know a cool 1825 kanji by the end of the year. Depending on how you filter things, this is pretty much all you need to know (I know joyo kanji have a bit over 2000 kanji to learn now, but this is pretty close).

Five kanji per day is definitely doable… but most people never do this. Why? Because it’s hard… it’s hard to do something every single day. Really, it’s as simple as that, I think.

So, the question isn’t “how do I force myself to do something every day?” The question should be “how do I change my way of looking at kanji learning to motivate myself to want to learn?”

Luckily, Seinfeld has that part down too (otherwise, how would he write all those jokes?). Here’s his real secret:

Seinfeld has a big year calendar, showing all the days of the year. Every day that he writes jokes, be puts an X through that day. After a few days, you’ll have yourself a little streak. Then, you’ll find that you’ll start to enjoy the chain. You’ll want to see the chain continue. Then, your only job is to do what it takes to keep that chain going. As he emphasizes in the article: “Don’t break the chain.”

This is great, because it moves the pressure and motivation around. Your focus isn’t “what kanji do I need to learn today?” Instead, it’s “what action do I need to do to take to keep my streak going?”

The longer the streak, the more important it becomes. The more important it becomes, the more likely you are to do it. Instead of doing less and less over time, you’re doing more and more. All these little, daily sessions add up to something big – and that’s not even taking into account how you’ll get better at learning kanji, which means you’ll learn more in less time the more your practice.

The Tools You Need To Get Started

Now, you could buy a big year wall calendar (they are pretty nice if you have the wall for one), but I whipped up an alternative you can download and print out right now if you’d like to get started asap.

[ilink style="download" url="http://www.tofugu.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/365days.pdf"]365 Days “Keep The Streak”[/ilink]

The above download is a PDF that can be used in a couple of different ways, depending on your preference. The sheet itself is pretty simple. It consists of 365 boxes (plus one extra for leap year), each with a number (between 1-365). You could either…

1. Try to keep your streak going for 365 days (and then if you miss a day, print out a new sheet and start over). Or…
2. Just keep going with the same sheet even if you miss a day, or two, or three. The goal in this version is to make the longest streak possible within these 365 days, which means if you miss a day or two, those boxes would be blank, and you’d re-start your streak after the blank tiles.

I don’t know which one is better, but the second one is a little closer to Seinfeld’s version if you want to stay true to that. Then again, you can also get yourself a big year wall calendar, but hopefully this is a good enough alternative for some of you.

Oh, And This Doesn’t Have To Be Used With Kanji…

I was just thinking something like this fit really well with kanji when I was writing this article. Of course, you can use this strategy (and PDF) to to motivate yourself to do all kinds of things. Here are some additional ideas:

• Getting through all your Anki reviews / other flashcard reviews
• Learning X number of new vocab words
• Reading/translating a Japanese newspaper article, blog post, tweet, etc., every day
• Writing a Japanese journal entry every day on Lang-8
• …not to mention all the non-Japanese language related self-improvement things you could be doing!

…and let me know what you’d use it for in the comments below!

Remember, it’s about the streak, not about the kanji. Give it a shot, see if you can get something going for a good week or two, and let me know how it’s going for you!

P.S. “What’s the deal with Twitter? What’s that bird doing there? Is he…” (Follow Tofugu on Twitter)

P.P.S. “No Facebook for you!!!” (Like Tofugu on Facebook)

Now, I’m not saying that creating a habit to study Japanese on a daily basis is easy (it’s not!), and that’s why I’ve compiled a few sneaky things that will “trick” you into studying Japanese and getting yourself into a good habit. It all comes down to analyzing what makes habits into habits, and taking advantage of those things so that you can create a habit without actually having a… habit.

Why Look At Habits?

I think you may think the answer to this is self explanatory, but give me an opportunity to try and create a revelation for you anyways.

Now, I’m not trying to get you to form (actual) good study habits. Perhaps that will be the outcome if you try the following techniques out, but that’s not the end goal. I’m only going to try to help you trick yourself into studying by using certain aspects of “real” habits that you can implement on your own. It’s not easy to form a good habit. It is, however, easy to trick yourself into thinking you have a good habit, and if you do it enough it may just become a reality.

Sure, it’d be easy to say “you should study every day” (and I suppose I do say that), but here’s how you’ll be able to get there, one little victory at a time.

Creating Action Associations

Riddle me this, Batman. Is it easier for a smoker to stop smoking on vacation or at home?

Answer: On vacation. Why? Because there are fewer action associations with smoking.

At home, there are so many reminders that the smoker should start smoking. Ash trays, porches, rooms that are particularly good for smoking, etc. Over time, associations are built up. If I see this, I think “oh, I often smoke there… I should smoke a cigarette.” On vacation, however, none of that exists. There are no associations with Smoking & the hotel pool, for example. That’s not to say there won’t be reminders (ash trays, other people smoking, etc), but there certainly are fewer associations like this.

You can trick your mind into doing something like this with your Japanese studies, as well. I do this with my work time. If I’m at the local cafe, it means I work on TextFugu (and nothing else). If I’m not working on something, I try to do it away from my desk. I’ve created boundaries in my life where I force myself to only do certain things in certain areas. Although this won’t work immediately, you can also choose to separate certain things and associate them with certain places (or things). Some examples of what you could do with Japanese studies:

1. A particular bean bag that you only sit on when you are studying Japanese.
2. A colored light bulb you turn on only when you study Japanese.
3. Certain music you play during Japanese study time, and nowhere else (I’d vote Mozart).
4. A certain part of the house that’s a Japanese study area.

And so on…

The idea is to create associations with things and associate those things with Japanese study (and only Japanese study). Now, this won’t necessarily get you to study (at least, not before you’ve created these associations), so let’s take a look at some other habit-forming trickery that will get you to study. Then, all you have to do is apply this section when you do study and create some action associations. Before you know it, you’ll walk by your beanbag and say, “oh yeah, I study Japanese there. I should study Japanese,” and you’ll become a Japanese studying rock star.

Writing Down Exactly What You Plan To Do

Did you know that if you write down exactly what you’re planning to do you’ll have a 75% higher chance that you’ll actually do it? I’ve used this with all sorts of things, and it works great.

Here’s how you do it.

1. Figure out what it is you want / need to do (it’s really important that you want to do something. If you don’t want to do it, well, you’ll find a way not to do it, so I can’t help you much there). I’m guessing the thing you want to do is study Japanese, because that’s what this article’s all about.
2. Get a piece of paper (I’d recommend writing this by hand… there’s just something about writing by hand that makes things feel more solid) and a pen/pencil.
3. Write down exactly what it is you plan to do. This includes, when you’ll do something (down to the minute), where you’ll do it (one the beanbag?), how you’ll do it (I’ll use TextFugu to learn Japanese, of course! DOI), and what you’ll do (I’m going to study kanji XYZ in this study session).

The more specific you get, the better all this works. When you do this, for some reason you get something special stuck in your mind. When the time comes, you’re way more likely to get out the study tools and get studying. I definitely challenge all of you to give this a try, even if it’s with something else in your life. This trick is incredibly useful.

For me, I use it check e-mail (though, sometimes I’m bad and break this rule). Although I don’t include the “place” in my plan, every morning I decide what time I’ll check my e-mail. For example, this morning I said I’d check my e-mail at 9am, and that’s exactly what I did. Most days I choose a time that’s around 1pm or 2pm, and limit the amount of time I have. So, in the morning I’ll write down: “Checking e-mail between 2pm-3pm today.” Then, when 2pm rolls around, I’m checking my e-mail and I stop at 3pm. For some reason, when I do this, it totally stops me from worrying about e-mail the rest of the day. When I don’t do this, I check e-mail every 30 minutes (definitely a bad addiction).

For you, you could come up with something like this for your Japanese studies:

From 2pm-3pm today, I will sit down at my desk and open up my kanji book. I am going to study the kanji 食, 飲, 県, 急. I will learn the on’yomi and kun’yomi of them, as well as three common  vocab that use each one of those. At 3pm I will stop studying and go do XZY.

See how incredibly specific that was? The more specific you can make these, the more likely you’re going to actually do them and follow through. Doing this essentially creates a fake habit in your brain. Really, all habits do is tell you what you should do and when you should do it. By writing down exactly what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it, you’re tricking your brain into thinking this is something you always do in this place and at this time. It’s really great brain hackery, if you ask me.

Give this a try and let me know how it goes for you!

Writing Down What You Won’t Do

Just like the previous section, this one also involves writing things down. The difference is that you’ll be writing down the things you don’t want to do. There’s only so much time in a day, and there’s always a lot of things competing for your time. You can use the techniques in the above section to come up with things you won’t be doing during the day as well. This leaves more time for other things (like studying your Japanese) and will allow you to focus more effectively when you do start studying Japanese.

Things I sometimes add to my not-to-do list:

• No checking e-mail except during e-mail checking time
• No Google Reader (this week, this day, this month, etc).
• Check Twitter only during lunch time
• Don’t listen to music while I’m working

And so on. Think of the bad habits you have. Now, write out your not-to-do list. This will trick your brain into thinking you don’t really do those things (or, at the very least, you’ll get an alert in your head the moment you try to do one of these things, and it will say “hey, you said you weren’t going to do that,” so you have time to stop yourself).

Make The Road Easier

Really, when you think about it, habits are habits because they’re really easy to do. Well, they’re not necessarily easy, but at the very least you think they are. They’ve become so ordinary and regular that you go on autopilot when you’re completing these habits. Do you really think about brushing your teeth every night, or do you just kind of… do it? I’m guessing it’s more of the latter. Habits are pretty darn easy to do as long as you actually have those habits. That’s the difficult part.

One thing you can do, however, is make the things you want to be habits easier. For example, if you want to create a good habit to exercise every morning, you should put your exercise clothes out and ready to go the night before. This little thing make sit just a little bit easier to exercise when you really don’t want to early that next morning. Perhaps you could pack your lunch the night before so you have more time. There are any number of things you could do to make the “dreaded” act of exercising easier on yourself, which means you’re likely to do it more often, which means you’re more likely to turn it into an actual habit.

With Japanese, you can do the same thing. A little prep goes a long way. Here are some ways to make Japanese study easier, which in turn will help you make Japanese study into a more regular habit.

• Decide exactly what you’re going to study next at the end of your previous session.
• Stop studying when you feel most motivated to keep studying
• Start reading about what you’re going to study next the day before. Just a little bit, like five minutes will do. This will make it so you’ve already started, and starting is always the hardest part. The next day all you need to do is continue where you left off from your mini study session.
• Put out the flashcards you’re going to learn tomorrow today. Put them out on their own, though. This is a lot less daunting than putting them on top of a huge stack.
• Put some paper and pencils/pens out, all ready for studying so you don’t have to do it tomorrow.

Do you notice a pattern in some of these? A lot of them have to do with planning ahead and knowing what you’re going to do the next day. With habits, you always know what you’re going to do next. it’s autopilot, after all. Japanese studies is one of those things where you have to learn something new every day, which makes it much harder to form a habit around. If you take an extra five minutes at the end of every study session and decide exactly what you’re going to do next, you’re making studying the next day 100x easier on yourself. With habits, they’re easy to do because you know exactly what to do. So, with Japanese studies, you’re making habit-forming a lot easier if you figure out what you’re doing next before you actually do it.

What Are Your Tricks?

There has to be a bunch of habit-forming hacks out there that you’ve used and love. Share your secrets in the comments and help others trying to study Japanese, too! :)

P.S. You should make a habit out of following Tofugu on Twitter

P.P.S. Don’t you think your friends need to form better habits too? You should “like” this article by clicking the like button below to share it with them.

This idea is one of those things. I think it works pretty well… sometimes, and it probably won’t work for everyone. The idea is simple: When studying Japanese (or doing anything else), you should stop when you least want to (i.e. when you want to keep studying). Sounds counter intuitive, right? Here’s why it works.

Where It Came From

I learned this idea from Haruki Murakami’s non-fiction book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” which is the only book of his that I’ve read. I liked it. It was inspiring and fun to peer into his mind a bit (and even got me to consider running… hasn’t really worked that well though, I’m more into sitting). In his book, he said that he stops writing when he most wants to continue writing. What!? That’s crazy. Shouldn’t you take advantage of that motivation to keep going and keep writing? Murakami didn’t think so, and I think he’s on to something.

I’m paraphrasing, but he said that the reason he stops writing when he’s most motivated to continue writing is because that means he knows he’s going to be excited to write some more the next day. Since he stopped when he didn’t want to stop, he’s going to look forward to starting up again the next day and won’t waste any time doing so.

That’s genius.

For the last week, I’ve been trying that with work. When I feel like I want to keep going, I stop. Because I want to keep going, I wake up earlier the next day than I normally would, and am able to jump right back into work, whereas normally it might take some time to get settled in and figure out what I want to do. That right there is wasted time, and this solves it.

Why It Works

The reason this works is because of the way our brains deal with motivation. When it comes down to it, we don’t want to do the things we’re supposed to and we want to do the things we’re not supposed to. By using this “stop when you’re motivated” method, you can flip this on its head. By telling yourself and making yourself not do something, it becomes more desirable, and you’ll want to do it even more.

On top of this, we’re also canceling out the most difficult part of doing any type of work or study (Japanese, of course)… Getting started. How many times have you said “I have to study my Japanese,” and then you just sat there putting it off or doing something else. Once you get started, though, it’s easy to get in the zone and zero in your concentration. The hard part, as you all know, is getting to that point. There’s something about “getting started” that’s daunting, but by stopping right in the middle of something, you know exactly where to start, and you’re even excited to start.

It’s kind of like when your parents used to read you books. They’d stop somewhere exciting, and the next night, you’d know exactly where to start up again (and you looked forward to it all day long).

Applying This To Your Japanese Studies

I’m going to talk about applying this to your Japanese studies, but of course you can apply this almost anywhere else in your life as well. Give it a try for at least a little while, and if it doesn’t work then it doesn’t work.

When you’re studying Japanese, get yourself a timer and have it go off every five minutes. At each five minute interval, write down on a piece of paper how much you want to continue. You can even come up with some kind of ranking scale (three out of six batwings?) to help you gauge things. As you go through, keep track of your excitement / motivation levels. Once your ranking scale gets up to somewhere between 80-100%, immediately stop what you’re doing, whether it’s in the middle of a kanji deck or in the middle of writing a sentence. All that’s important is that you’re honest with yourself in terms of how motivated you are to continue, and that you stop when you’re supposed to stop.

It won’t feel good to stop, sure, but that’s the point. You’re giving yourself something to really look forward to, which ends up leading to much more consistent Japanese studies, which is way way better in the long run.

So, give it a shot! Tell me how it works for you in the comments (or why you think this is totally bogus).

I’m continuing to experiment with this even as