3BI: Product Psychology, the Seinfeld Strategy, and "Life isn't Linear"
Hello! After a long hiatus, the newsletter is back.
I’m excited to get back into it and have a lot to share. I’ve been getting back into writing and preparing to share the newsletter on a regular basis again. Much more to come!
For this week, I’ve got a few quick updates and insights.
Product Psychology
I’m teaching a virtual behavioral design workshop with my friend Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and Indistractable, next week!
The Product Psychology Bootcamp is a two-day intensive for professionals to learn the fundamentals of behavioral design and apply them to real challenges from their work with the help of instructors and other students. We ran a small cohort of the class back in May and are excited to run a new and improved version with more students.
Get the details and enroll at Maven. As a newsletter subscriber, you can save 20% off the fee by using the code "NIR20" during sign-up.
For a free introduction to Product Psychology, check out our free email course here, with lessons from top behavioral designers.
Don’t Break the Chain (or, the “Seinfeld Strategy”)
I loved this story about an 87-year old Chicago area man who’s walked more than 25,000 miles with simple goal setting and habit design:
Tom Sullivan’s journey “around the earth” began with a single step back in 2000, when he made a new year-new century goal to walk a thousand miles.
Last month, the 87-year-old financial planner — yes, he’s still working — logged his 25,000th mile, the equivalent of the circumference of the earth.
…
When Sullivan started his daily constitutional in 2000 he was not a walker.
“I was 65 at the time. I made a millennium resolution on January 1st to walk a thousand miles. I did that by Thanksgiving,” he said.
Then he upped the ante to 10,000. Then it was 15,000, then 20,000. Then his late wife Judy suggested, “Why don’t you go for 25,000 so you can tell everybody you walked around the earth?”
He chuckled. “Most of my friends would say, ‘Who cares, Sullivan?’ But I do.”
Goals, he said, are good for a person’s soul.
His secret? Simply setting a goal and tracking his progress.
“People make resolutions all the time but how many actually keep them?” he said. He believes keeping a daily log, marking each day’s accomplishment on a calendar, has made a difference.
This is an example of a habit-forming technique called “Don’t Break the Chain,” also known as “The Seinfeld Strategy,” since it was popularized by none other than Jerry Seinfeld:
He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself—even when you don't feel like it.
He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here's how it works.
He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.
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.
If you’re working on new habits for the new year, start tracking it on a calendar and put it somewhere you can’t miss it. Once you start a chain, you won’t want to break it.
Life isn’t Linear
One of our most consistent cognitive biases is underestimating the complexity and unpredictability of the world (examples are the Planning Fallacy and Illusion of Control). We assume things happen in a linear fashion, but the actual road is winding with unexpected twists and turns.
As we settle into a new year with new goals, it’s good to remember that the process will be bumpier than we think.
Cartoon by lizandmollie (via Katy Milkman)
Much more to come here soon. Have a great weekend!