Seinfeld and Getting Things Done

One of my favorite personal productivity sites, Lifehacker, has a great guest article from Brad Issac regarding the lesson in productivity, goal setting and keeping on track that he personally learned from Jerry Seinfeld.

Now if you know me, you know that I loves me some Seinfeld.
I fully maintain that anything and everything you are going through in life, anything you are discussing over drinks or at the dinner table can be tied back, in some way, shape or form, to Seinfeld.

If you doubt this, then please do invite me out for drinks or over for dinner and I shall prove it.

Here’s the article. Go read it, then come back here for a little gift from me to you.

Okay.
So now you know that Seinfeld’s main hack was getting a One Year Per Page Calendar and then putting Red X Marks on the day that he accomplished a certain new habit or step toward a new goal that he had set.
The psychological need to keep that chain of Red X Marks going gave him the leverage to do that habit/goal step every single day.

I think this is a wonderful idea.
But I am also into not going out and buying a $20 laminated wall calendar for 2007 that I can never use again.
I decided to find something that would allow me to get One Year Per Page on a nice 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper.
I though this would be cool because a) it’s free, b) it’s compact and c) it would allow me to have a calendar for each new habit or goal step that I am trying to cultivate or accomplish on a daily basis.

For example - of course I want a calendar for my writing. But I also want one for going to the gym. And drinking 64 ounces of water a day. And so on. Print out 3 to 5 of these little Year Calendars, put them in a binder or up on your wall, and now you’re cooking with gas, baby!

And I want you to have the same tool that I’m going to use, so if you click here, you can have a nice neat calendar that has July 2007 to June 2008 on one little page, with a nice square for each day to place your Red X Marks on.

Just think about if you did one little thing, or a few little things, each and every day, from now until the end of June 2008 how different your life would be.

You could lose weight, guided by a bunch of Red X Marks.
You could learn a foreign language, guided by a bunch of Red X Marks.
You could pay off your credit cards, guided by a bunch of Red X Marks.

The possibilities are endless, tethered only by your imagination.
Set your imagination free, dare to imagine the new life that could be yours.
Get out your red magic marker and get to work.