It’s pretty simple to figure out Jerry Seinfeld came up with the Red X system for productivity: he didn’t. He doesn’t even want credit for it since it wasn’t his idea. When it comes to utilizing it in the way he’s done, then yes, he deserves credit due to himself since it means that he showed the perseverance and determination to practice what he enjoys and what has made him popular for so long, but to think that he came up with it and that he’s getting credit for it is kind of laughable since he doesn’t even want people attributing him with the creation of the method. If you’ve ever seen this happen before then you know that the idea has been around a lot longer than a lot of people can remember. One could even say that it has its origins long before paper calendars even came into being. People have had a way of marking the days for quite some time, whether it’s just marking the rise and fall of the sun or it’s actually showing that they’ve done something with their lives at some point in the day. But giving Seinfeld credit for this is kind of hard to do really since thinking that any one person is going to take credit for this outside of their own experience is a bit ludicrous.
The Red X idea is a good one though and it does take a lot of dedication and willpower to make it happen. But the trick of doing anything day in and day out is to have something that you’re passionate about that doesn’t feel like work. Some might scoff at this since whatever you love doing can turn into work if you do it long enough and experience the ups and downs that it offers. This is true, no job is 100% perfect, as everything that you’ll ever do in your life is bound to have an upside and a downside to it. But if the upsides outweigh the downsides, then you might have found something that you actually enjoy doing, and if that’s the case then it’s less like work and more like pleasure, so long as you don’t grow tired of doing it that often. Being a comedian is bound to be a tough gig now and then since a person is trying to get people to laugh, to enjoy what they’re talking about, and to laugh at the jokes that they’re bound to tell. That’s a monumental task for some people since a crowd can turn on someone at the drop of a hat, or at the utterance of a less than pleasing joke. Seinfeld could tell pretty much anyone that it takes a split second to misread a room and tell the wrong joke, as could Michael Richardson, who’s been seen to explode on stage in the past, and is still bound to be judged by some folks for it. But that’s not what this article is all about.
Loving what you do is a dream for a lot of people, but many of us settle for something and end up doing whatever gets us by and pays the bills, while what we want appears to be just out of reach or so far away that we can’t even think of what it might take to get to where we want to be. When it comes to the type of success that we want, the Red X method is a good way of passing the days, but it’s also a way to keep yourselves motivated by crossing off a red X on days that you’ve managed to practice whatever it is you’re attempting to do so that you can see the evidence that you are trying and that you are making some kind of headway. There are plenty of people that don’t want to think about the long-term and wouldn’t be likely to see anything other than desperation and depression in such a method, but for those that know that their goal is going to take a while to reach, it’s helpful to see that they’ve been doing what they can to build themselves up through hard work and the kind of effort that does pay off after a while. When thinking of this process it’s actually more difficult for some to remember to mark the red X every day than it is to practice whatever it is that they’re trying to get better at. That’s kind of amusing really.
But as far as Jerry Seinfeld goes, the idea of using this method to keep himself on track is a wise and very common move that a lot of people have practiced throughout history and one that is still fairly popular today. But trying to attribute it to one person is kind of funny.
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