I read a story back in 2007 about Jerry Seinfeld’s key to becoming a better comic. He recommended a red marker and a big wall calendar. Write every day, mark the calendar with an “x” when you do, and try not to break the chain. That’s the game. [1]
To be a better comic, he just needed to write better jokes. And to write better jokes, he just needed to write more often.
Years later, in early 2021, I heard Seinfeld on a Tim Ferriss podcast discussing what it takes to achieve success in a craft. He talked about the need for a system which should be simple, but not necessarily easy. For example, if you want to write, define what exactly you’ll write about and for how long, and then do it consistently every day.
“The mind is infinite in wisdom. The brain is a stupid, little dog that is easily trained. Do not confuse the mind with the brain. The brain is so easy to master. You just have to confine it. And it’s done through repetition and systematization.” – Jerry Seinfeld [2]
There’s no substitute for just putting in the work. But you have to trick yourself into doing the work. And having some fun.
It hit me that Seinfeld has been gaming his behavior for a long time, and that’s gotta be a big part of his continued success.
System of a [nervous break]Down
In 2018, I tracked every alcoholic beverage I consumed.
This exercise was partially driven by curiosity, and largely driven by necessity.
2017 was a high stress year in my life. I was bootstrapping my first startup (a digital health company that built software for housecalls & remote patient monitoring). My cofounder was a good friend, and so work was fun by default. But it was still chaotic and stressful, as startups can be. And we would regularly hold our meetings at Philly bars.
Outside of work, my closest friends and I centered all of our social interactions around alcohol. We couldn’t even plan a hike without making sure someone brought the beer backpack. It was to the point where it was creating a vicious cycle of anxiety and affecting our health and performance in a way that was counterproductive to many aspects of our lives.
At least that’s how I felt. And it came to a head on Christmas day 2017. I woke up feeling an unbearable amount of anxiety. I was in a house full of my immediate family and cousins (we get together every year as a tradition, sans pandemic), and the night before we had caught up and cooked and played games (Taboo gets particularly competitive). And some of us had a few drinks. No one gets anywhere near proper-sloshed, but we get a decent buzz going.
The next morning, I woke up with that non-specific dread and worry about nothing and everything at the same time. Anxiety. This was particularly heavy because I was surrounded by family on a holiday.
This time, I knew that brunch mimosas shouldn’t and couldn’t be the answer. It’s not like I had some sort of vision that morning, but I did feel an element of the “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come” showing me what would be if I continued down this path.
So for the next few days, I thought of strategies to curb my drinking. I briefly considered going full sober, but quickly realized that wasn’t what I actually wanted. I remembered the concept of “hara hachi bu” and realized that what I wanted was to drink with more intention and moderation. But that realization alone obviously wasn’t going to work. Remember what Seinfeld said: our brains are stupid dogs.
So where do I start? A simple system. Just track it.
The Measure of a Man[child]
A few days later on New Year’s Eve, well before getting drunk with my friends that evening (yes, I know), I created a spreadsheet with a simple tracker by date and alcohol type and volume. And I threw in some basic stats that would auto-calculate: Total Drinks Consumed, Average # Drinks per Day, Days I Drank Anything, % of Days I Drank, Avg Drinks per Drinking Day, Max Drinks per Day, Median Drinks, Number of 10+ drink days, Longest No Drinking Streak. [3]
The Tracker Template
Immediate progress. The mere act of tracking impacted my behavior so that I was more intentional about my drinking. And once I had some data, I started to notice patterns and areas of improvement.
And the next thing I knew, an entire year of unrelenting tracking had passed and knew a ridiculous amount about my drinking behavior.
For example, I learned that ~50% of my volume consumption in the first year was just in drinking beer. I learned that just a dozen weekends drove the lion’s share of my volume — this was mostly from weddings and bachelor parties. I also learned how even a few drinks in the evenings would noticeably impact the quality of my sleep. [4]
I kept going and improving. By the end of 2020, three entire years of unrelenting tracking had passed.
I reduced my alcohol consumption by ~20% YoY for two years straight, to a level that I’m more comfortable with. I drink better quality alcohol. I have entirely cut out binge-drinking on weekends. I drink more intentionally. I sleep better. And I have less anxiety.
Like I said when Batman used Skyhook to extract Lau from Hong Kong: “Damn, I can’t believe that worked.”
My 2020 Cumulative Drinks vs Target
My 2020 drink composition
A Few YoY Progress Metrics
| Metric | Percent Change YoY, 2019-2020 |
| Total Drinks Consumed | -22% |
| Average # Drinks per Day | -22% |
| Avg Drinks per Drinking Day | -42% |
| Number of 10+ Drink Days | -95% |
Multiplayer Games are More Fun
One thing I realized while going through this journey was that it’s more impactful and fun when you add some sort of social element to tracking.
Starting in 2019, after my first full year of tracking, several of my closest friends joined me in tracking their own alcohol consumption. [5] And for the last two years, we had an opt-in shared sheet which compared our stats to each other.
It’s important to note that everyone had their own use cases. Not everyone was interested in specifically reducing their consumption. And that’s okay. What was important for participants was getting more visibility into an activity they engaged in regularly.
Tracking in a social way created more accountability, engagement, and conversation on the topic.
I feel similarly about running apps. The thing I like about them is that in addition to all of this data you get about yourself, there is this social factor that encourages you to come back to do more of this thing that is good for you in the first place.
Goodreads is another example. And I think we’ll soon have more tracking tools that focus on behavior with some sort of curated social or community component.
To Productize or Not to Productize
I’m not quite sure where to take the drink tracker from here. But as a side project, I’m working on a simple web app (funny enough, with my old cofounder) so that more people can use it to improve their own behavior and health. I think it’s the type of product that Paul Graham would recommend pursuing: “You can either dig a hole that’s broad but shallow, or one that’s narrow and deep, like a well. Nearly all good startup ideas are of the second type.” [6] I’ve probably mentioned this drink tracker to 100 people over the last few years [7], and probably only 15 have felt the need to use it. And of those, perhaps 10 have used it religiously, with at least weekly engagement. This feels like a narrow and deep well.
So, we’ll see. For now, I’m thankful to be far from that Christmas morning anxiety. And I’m happy to have helped myself and a few friends improve our drinking habits in a measurable way.
“My writing sessions used to be very arduous, very painful, like pushing against the wind in soft, muddy ground with a wheelbarrow full of bricks. And I did it. I had to do it because you either learn to do that or you will die in the ecosystem. I learned that really fast and really young, and that saved my life and made my career, that I grasped the essential principle of survival in comedy really young. That principle is: you learn to be a writer. You can do it any way you want, but if you don’t learn to do it in some form, you will not survive…My guiding rule is systematize” -Jerry Seinfeld
Notes
[1] It must have been this Lifehacker article https://lifehacker.com/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret-281626
[2] Ferriss x Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/
[3] Latest version of the tracker https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fVpXc5a0UrNjoPg9Rqx_rE4e9ur4GxQ0CrtFCdd9YEg/edit?usp=sharing
[4] I also wear an Apple Watch most nights to track my sleep. Admittedly, I’ve been a bit extra with this quantified self approach these last few years.
[5] Every single one of my friends drank more than they predicted. I think this is the case for most casual drinkers, where they underestimate their consumption.
[6] Paul Graham on how to get startup ideas http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
[7] It’s a fascinating topic of conversation, with reactions all over the spectrum of deeply concerned to wholly amazed.
Thanks to my life partner Divya Desai and to my business partner Kunal Lodaya for reading drafts of this.
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