Forget Perfection: Try “Dailyish” Habits

I’ve recently found myself enjoying the writings of Oliver Burkeman. 

Burkeman first popped onto my radar with his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. He positions himself as a sort of alternative to the traditional productivity guru.

Instead of finding ways to maximize your week to do as much as possible, Burkeman offers another way. He’s an advocate for finding a lifestyle where mindfulness meets productivity. This concept is right up my alley.

One example of Burkeman’s ideology from Four Thousand Weeks is that you should limit your to do list to only 10 items. Instead of letting it build up and up over time, you should force yourself to take something off before adding something new. 

“But what if you forget new tasks that you really have to do?” I know, I know. I asked myself the same thing. He isn’t saying not to jot them down, just that your actual to-do list should be limited to a certain number of items. Finish something you intended to do before starting something new.

I’ve been intrigued by Burkeman’s philosophies for a while now. Lately, I’ve been listening to his book Meditations for Mortals. It draws from some ideas in his other writings, but it’s essentially a daily read: you read (or listen) to a chapter each day with the idea that each topic gets to simmer in your brain for the entirety of that day.

A recent chapter that has stuck with me has to do with the idea of “dailyish.”

No, that’s not a misspelling, but before I dive into this intentional typo, let me give some background on a conversation with a famous comedian that led Burkeman to this idea.

Jerry Seinfeld and the X-Effect

There’s this legend about Jerry Seinfeld that floats around the internet.

The story goes that early in Seinfeld’s career, he needed to motivate himself to write jokes. He took his calendar, and every day he wrote a joke, he’d mark a big red X on that day. The goal Seinfeld aimed for was to never break the chain, encouraging him to write jokes every day.

Burkeman once had a chance to talk with Seinfeld and asked him about this very story. Burkeman writes about it on his website, but I’ll summarize it for you here.

It turns out that Seinfeld totally forgot about this technique. It was an idea that he dropped offhandedly to a peer at a comedy club, but he didn’t actually stick with it. He didn’t feel the need to.

"If you're a runner and you want to be a better runner, you say, well, I'll run every day, and mark an X on the calendar every day I run. I can't believe this was useful information to anybody! … Really? Are there people who think 'I'll just sit around and do absolutely nothing, and somehow the work will get done'?"  - Jerry Seinfeld

Seinfeld’s thought process was that if you want to do something, you just do it. You don’t necessarily need some fancy system in place. As he mentions in the quote above, a runner must run. There’s no way around it.

The flaw in Seinfeld’s original idea is that breaking the chain is bad. One miss throws off the whole system. You might as well give up.

I’d be willing to bet that even Seinfeld didn’t write jokes every day. Surely, he got busy running errands one day and forgot.

Maybe that’s why the concept didn’t stick with him. Maybe there’s a more productive way to think about maintaining progress.

A More Sustainable Way

So, if you’re not marking off your habit on a calendar every day, how often should you do it?

“Dailyish” is an idea that I was introduced to in Meditations for Mortals. Burkeman borrows the idea from another author, Dan Harris. Harris discusses the idea of “dailyish” in an interview with Penguin Random House.

Essentially, the idea of “dailyish” is to do something on most days (hence the “ish”). It’s a saner and more maintainable version of Seinfeld’s Xs.

Harris thinks of the idea in relation to meditation, something he writes quite a bit on nowadays (see the book 10% Happier, and the podcast/app/etc. with the same name). Applying “dailyish” to meditation is to meditate most days. When you miss a day, don’t beat yourself up. Instead, just get back on the horse. You’re trying to meditate most days, not every day.

That’s the essence of “dailyish.”

How I Apply “Dailyish” in My Own Life

One way I’ve historically thought about maintaining progress is to not miss two-days in a row (tip 3 in my blog post here). “Dailyish” to me is a less structured, gentler way to think about the two-day rule. 

You don’t need to do something every day to make progress. We’re human beings. We need rest days, and God forbid we take a vacation. “Dailyish” can help us stay in the saddle during times when we might fall out of routine.

For example, I enjoy being in a routine when it comes to the gym. I find it easy to beat myself up and feel demotivated when I miss a workout. Thinking on the concept of “dailyish,” I can remind myself that a miss is ok. After all, a good routine isn’t really good if one miss throws the whole thing out of whack. 

A nice feature of “dailyish” is that we intuitively know what counts within reason. 5 or more days a week counts as “dailyish.” 2 days a week is certainly not “dailyish.” I consider 4 days a week “dailyish,” but I’d need to be convinced that 3 days a week counts.

The main idea is that you’re doing the thing more often than not (hmm, that sounds eerily similar to what I’ve previously written about regarding identity).

We’re trying to score points toward the person we want to be more often than not.

And that’s why I like the idea of “dailyish.” I like routine most days, but it’s fun to mix things up from time to time. After all, pobody’s nerfect!

A Gentler Way to Adopt Habits

“Dailyish “is a nice way to frame the habits we might want to adopt. 

If you need something more formal, maybe the two-day rule is for you. On the other hand, if you’re just looking for a framework, a general direction in which to point yourself, “dailyish” might be a helpful way to consider your routine.

A good meditator doesn’t necessarily meditate every day. The best athlete isn’t in the gym constantly. There’s an offseason for a reason.

To become the person you want to be, you do have to try new things, but don’t be so hard on yourself as to think you have to do them 24/7.

Progress is progress. Don’t freeze yourself into inaction because you feel like you need to do something every day.

What’s one habit that if you did “dailyish” would set you on a course to becoming a better version of yourself?

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