Some Ways the Internet Can Actually Help Productivity, No Kidding

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One of the biggest barriers to being lazy or unproductive is someone or something telling you that you’re lazy or unproductive. Not someone telling you to do a thing, but someone that’s telling you that you’re not doing a thing. Which is different, for sure.

This is the idea-core of the by-now well-known Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret, in which the producer (the person being productive) keeps a large yearly calendar somewhere unavoidable and simply marks a day where he or she or they has produced a thing. Some years back, Brad Isaac, who allegedly got the method from Seinfeld himself, laid it all out:

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. 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.”

“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.

Over the years I’ve used his technique in many different areas. I’ve used it for exercise, to learn programming, to learn network administration, to build successful websites and build successful businesses.

Got it? It’s simple and stupid, and not built totally on guilt or habit, but a nice combination that exploits both. As for the wall calendar, I’m undecided if it’s perfect for someone that lives in the internet (by being outside the internet and, thus, weird) or possibly being even more ignorable. Because it’s not, like, on your smart-phone or within all of your various computers and computer-like devices. A wall calendar isn’t portable.

Myself, I’ve begun having trouble with things that are not portable. I suspect this will be an increasing problem.

You should be aware, however, of things based on the Jerry Seinfeld method that live within the internet and e-mail and are quite portable. Like, idonethis.com and EpicWin!. The latter is neat enough. It’s a productivity app crossed with a game. You give your character a to-do list (your IRL to-do list) and as you IRL do shit, you get points in the game. And you complete quests and level-up.

OK, but I’m not much of a game person to tell the truth and this would, I think, make me feel kind of ridiculous and not much like the adult I pretend to be. In that last sense, it’s almost counter-productive— because I want to be an adult, or at least a pretend adult. Meanwhile, I realize that there are adults in the world needing to pretend otherwise, and this would be great for them.

But, idonethis.com seems pretty neat and not ridiculous or ridiculous-feeling. It’s simple: the service sends you an e-mail every night asking what you’ve done. You reply and the site posts your reply on your own personal online calendar. This clever guy here at Hacker News has the pretty good idea of making idonethis your home page. So kinda like that big calendar of Jerry Seinfeld’s, the idonethis calendar is always there staring at you with stuff you did.

And, you know, don’t break the chain. DON’T break the chain. Ultimately, I think the best ticket to productivity is fear. That’s what does it for me. I suggest working as many jobs as possible with deadlines. You will be so fucking productive that you’ll forget how to sleep and develop a drinking problem, which is its own kind of reward.

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv