What I'm Thinking About This Morning 🤔: An Alternative to the Seinfeld Strategy

In yesterday's WITATM post, I raised the question of whether the so-called "Seinfeld Strategy" is legit. The evidence is pretty clear that Seinfeld didn't actually endorse it. I ended by asking: Does that matter? Is it a good method?

Like many life hacks, this strategy is neither inherently good nor inherently bad—it depends on specifics: intended purpose, circumstances, personality, etc. It's worth trying, as it does work for many, but it might backfire for some. To each their own.

But Oliver Burkeman suggests a superior alternative in "Meditations for Mortals" (pp.66-67):

A much better rule - indeed, one I think more accurately reflects Seinfeld's approach to his work - is to do things dailyish. I'm borrowing the word from Dan Harris, host of the meditation podcast 'Ten Percent Happier,' who suggests it whenever people ask him how often they ought to be meditating ... 'Dailyish' is a much more resilient rule: it's less of a high-wire act, where one mistake could end everything. But emotionally speaking, it's an unsettling rule to follow because doing something dailyish requires sacrificing your fantasies of perfection in favor of the uncomfortable experience of making concrete, imperfect progress, here and now. In any case, 'dailyish' isn't synonymous with 'just do it when- ever you feel like it.' Deep down, you know that doing something twice per week doesn't qualify as dailyish, while five times per week does, and in busy periods, three or four times per week might get to count. So you're still putting some pressure on yourself. But, crucially, what you're not doing is expecting the rule to somehow force the action.

I follow this principle in my own meditation practice: meditating four or five days a week, skipping a day here and there. It's way less oppressive than forcing myself to do it daily (which I’ve tried). Same goes for exercise.

But Burkeman didn’t teach me this. It was my rebbi, Rabbi Moskowitz zt”l, who shared a story about Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky zt”l. That story, however, will have to wait until tomorrow.