I upgraded the calendar tracking yesterday afternoon, after deciding that maybe stickers would make a difference. And, let me say, it probably did: I didn’t quite earn a two jewel sticker for hitting 1,500 words yesterday, but I definitely did way more than the 750 words I intended to write (and ended up pulling double duty on the Patreon/Socials column as well).

Of course, weekends are good for doing slightly more work. The challenge is meeting that same push to do more during the week. I had a very fuck-around-and-not-really-focused morning because we stayed up late Sunday night, and still jammed out my words for the day (which also involved some redrafting and cutting of yesterday’s work, so it’s more productive than it looks).

I’m pondering the success of the calendar today, and why it seems to work a little better for me than the Don’t Break The Chain/Seinfeld method. In a lot of ways, this shares a lot of the psychological tricks that make Don’t Break The Chain motivating — I hate the idea of seeing blank space on the calender, and start my day with the goal of filling it.  

But Don’t Break The Chain comes with one major flaw: the moment you break it, the psychological reward of building the chain is lost. A bad day can quickly turn into two or three. 

There’s an interesting take on habit building in James Clear’s Atomic Habits where he argues every habit is connected to self-image and identity. You put forth an identity you want — I’m a writer — and  stack up evidence to support that through your ritualised and habitual actions. But that can be a double-edged sword, as those actions and habits also tell you what you’re not. 

For something like Brain The Chain, you live on the edge of the sword. While the chain goes up, you’re a writer. When you break it, you not just failed to write, but you’ve shattered your postiive self-image and welcomed in all your worst fears about yourself (this is, perhaps, not something people without anxiety manage, but I’ve encountered enough writers with anxiety issues that  wonder if anxiety and the desire to write a comorbid conditions).

The thing about not breaking a chain or buidling a writing streak is that they’re bets you make with yourself, and they’re at their most useful when you’re on a winning streak. Your identity is, in essence, pass/fail.

And every writer is going to fail, somewhere along the line. They’ll get sick, or their car will break down, or the story will be frustratingly awful. Something will always break the chain, and if you’re lucky it’ll happen several hundred days in when it doesn’t feel like a big thing.

Most folks won’t get lucky. 

The calendar isn’t one big bet, but a series of small ones. Breaking the chain doesn’t matter because the goal isn’t buidling a chain, it’s celebrating the small victories that slowly add up to a finished project, and down the line a fully-fledged writing career. It has the capacity to celebrate different milestones and markers — right now I’ve got stickers for 750 words, but also finishing a draft and submitting/publishing a book and launching a new Brain Jar Project. 

It is, in effect, a cumulative build rather than a pass-fail line. 

And right now, that works for me. I get to celebrate those victories that confirm, yes, this is who I want to be, without the looming threat of failure. It’s a visual record and celebration of the parts of myself it would be all to easy to let slide amid the chaos of the new job (and, it must be said, the relative security of having a steady paycheque instead of living and dying by the release of new books).

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta go put a gold star on my calendar.

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