Mastery through Consistency: Don’t break the chain!

Kaizen is the improvement through making small changes. To form habits, we have to repeat things over and over until it becomes automatic. This is why so many apps have streaks and notifications, to form habits. Fed habits have long lasting consequences, good or bad. Since the actions we are taking become automatic, they are hard to break because we do things without thinking about it. 

 

A few years ago Jerry Seinfeld gave some advice to take a calendar, and have one goal to do something of your choice, and daily mark off the day when the task was done. After a few days, there would be a satisfying chain forming. He said, “whatever you do, don’t break the chain, never break the chain!” 

 

Ultimately what he was getting at was this: doing things habitually leads to a certain arrival, and mastery of something comes through consistency… If you want to do this, don’t break the chain, if you want to do that, don’t break the chain!