Jerry Seinfeld
Comedian and co-creator of Seinfeld, whose writing habits David Perell breaks down
Where to hear and read about Jerry Seinfeld1 episode or test
Jerry Seinfeld is a comedian and co-creator of Seinfeld who treats comedy as hard daily writing, refined until it is perfect. The lesson most worth taking is his unbroken routine: a legal pad, full focus, a fixed end time, and no chance of breaking the chain.
I'm never not working on material
Seinfeld’s Timeless Lessons on Creativity and Consistency
Jerry Seinfeld: the story and the lessons
1How Jerry Seinfeld built his career on writing
Seinfeld sees himself as a writer first, not an improviser. He says comedy is made during the day and only collected on stage at night. He writes ideas on paper, shaves letters off words, counts syllables and saves every page in an accordion folder.
His mother called him Mr. Perfection, and he says he hates doing anything to a mediocre level. He refines jokes until they are perfect.
He micromanaged every word, line, take, edit and casting of his show. He accepted 14 to 16 hour days and burnout as the price of controlling the work. In his view, the goal is that the work is good, not that the process is efficient.
When Harvard Business Review asked whether a consultant like McKinsey could find a less burnout-prone model, he asked only whether they were funny. Told no, he said he didn't need them.
He and Larry David spent about 99% of their time writing. The two co-wrote the show without a traditional writers' room, with the door closed. Most TV writers, he says, spend about half their time on people, personalities and politics.
Success brings parties, speaking gigs, admin and schmoozing, and many people stop doing the work that made them successful. Staying free meant saying no to those pulls.
The payoff was 10 Emmys, 3 Golden Globes and billions in revenue. The show earned over $3 billion in revenue and $500 million from Netflix for streaming rights.
2Seinfeld's daily writing routine
Seinfeld sits down daily with full focus and nothing else. His process uses a yellow legal pad and has barely changed in five decades. You don't have to write while sitting there, but you can't do anything else.
That rules out Twitter, texts, news and sports sites. He is blunt that you can be lazy, scared or a crummy writer, all three, and there is still no writer's block.
He commits to a fixed end time for every session. A time box of 60, 30 or even 15 minutes makes it easier to start, because you know the session ends. He compares it to a trainer's 60-minute hour at the gym.
The alarm is the reward: you get your cookies and milk. Open-ended days on one problem breed resistance.
He told young comics to put a red X on every writing day. Brad Isaac met Seinfeld at a theater and asked for tips. The answer was to hang a one-page year calendar on a prominent wall and mark each writing day with a big red X.
After a few days you have a chain, and your only job is not to break it. The advice says nothing about quality or results, only showing up.
Seinfeld writes every day instead of waiting for a good idea. His view is that volume produces good ideas. The creator's job is to produce, and the audience's job is to respond.
Better jokes come from writing better jokes, and that comes from writing every day.
He says writing is hard and expecting ease is the real problem. His answer to Tim Ferriss's billboard question was a flag with two words: just work. Nobody can do it with ease, he says, and the greatest people can't either.
When his daughter, a writer, complained it was hard, he told her of course it is, get over it. If the difficulty turns you off, he says, you don't want it badly enough.
3How Seinfeld makes the writing good
Seinfeld tests material on people and keeps what lands. His book Is This Anything? is named for what comedians ask each other after trying a new bit. No laughter means the joke isn't good yet, so they adjust tempo and word choice.
Small changes matter: waiting one second longer, or changing "take a sip" to "take a swig", can make a joke land. Chris Rock keeps the big-laugh bits from each small club set and puts new material up front in the next, until the big stage is all keepers.
He is never off the clock and accepts the cost. Seinfeld says he is always working on material, even at dinner or with his wife and kids. His chopsticks line, that they've "seen the fork", came from simply sitting at a restaurant.
Howard Stern called it a tortured life. Seinfeld agreed and added that your blessing in life is finding the torture you're comfortable with.
He keeps creating and editing in separate phases. Be a nurturing baby while making material, then a harsh officer who red-pens every word and throws out what isn't good enough. Flipping between the two modes is the key, mixing them is the mistake.
For Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee he starts with a very long raw edit and cuts each episode to about 20 minutes.
He follows his own vision, because failing his own way is livable. Dave Letterman gave him this advice as he faced a big scary project, his NBC pilot: make sure you fail doing exactly what you want to do. A failure on someone else's idea is the one that hurts.
Seinfeld also reads bad reviews and finds them funny, since he doesn't expect to make something everyone likes.
4Why Seinfeld ended the show at its peak
Seinfeld turned down $110 million for a tenth season. He ended the show after nine seasons so its whole record stayed strong. He wanted the ending to be a burst of fireworks that proved it never was bad.
Its last season landed in the top 20% of IMDB ratings, and he is the only show on TV to do that after nine or more seasons. The Simpsons, Family Guy and Two and a Half Men slid in later seasons.
He calls the principle dosage: a small amount of too much changes everything. A great comedian can satisfy a crowd with 70 minutes. Stretch it to 90 and the reaction drops from wow to meh.
It is not an argument for being short. The point is to find the right length for each piece and never let people get bored.
Seinfeld’s Timeless Lessons on Creativity and Consistency
Jerry Seinfeld treats comedy as writing, and his lessons cover how to get the work done (time boxes, daily chains, no distractions) and how to make it good (test ideas on people, separate creating from editing, stop at the right dose). The habit worth hearing about is his unbroken daily writing practice, which has barely changed in five decades: a legal pad, full focus, a fixed end time.
Seinfeld sees himself as a writer first, not an improviser. He says comedy is made during the day and only collected on stage at night. He writes ideas on paper, shaves letters off words, counts syllables and saves every page in an accordion folder.
His mother called him Mr. Perfection, and he says he hates doing anything to a mediocre level. He refines jokes until they are perfect.
He micromanaged every word, line, take, edit and casting of his show. He accepted 14 to 16 hour days and burnout as the price of controlling the work. In his view, the goal is that the work is good, not that the process is efficient.
When Harvard Business Review asked whether a consultant like McKinsey could find a less burnout-prone model, he asked only whether they were funny. Told no, he said he didn't need them.
He and Larry David spent about 99% of their time writing. The two co-wrote the show without a traditional writers' room, with the door closed. Most TV writers, he says, spend about half their time on people, personalities and politics.
Success brings parties, speaking gigs, admin and schmoozing, and many people stop doing the work that made them successful. Staying free meant saying no to those pulls.
The payoff was 10 Emmys, 3 Golden Globes and billions in revenue. The show earned over $3 billion in revenue and $500 million from Netflix for streaming rights.
Seinfeld sits down daily with full focus and nothing else. His process uses a yellow legal pad and has barely changed in five decades. You don't have to write while sitting there, but you can't do anything else.
That rules out Twitter, texts, news and sports sites. He is blunt that you can be lazy, scared or a crummy writer, all three, and there is still no writer's block.
He commits to a fixed end time for every session. A time box of 60, 30 or even 15 minutes makes it easier to start, because you know the session ends. He compares it to a trainer's 60-minute hour at the gym.
The alarm is the reward: you get your cookies and milk. Open-ended days on one problem breed resistance.
He told young comics to put a red X on every writing day. Brad Isaac met Seinfeld at a theater and asked for tips. The answer was to hang a one-page year calendar on a prominent wall and mark each writing day with a big red X.
After a few days you have a chain, and your only job is not to break it. The advice says nothing about quality or results, only showing up.
Seinfeld writes every day instead of waiting for a good idea. His view is that volume produces good ideas. The creator's job is to produce, and the audience's job is to respond.
Better jokes come from writing better jokes, and that comes from writing every day.
He says writing is hard and expecting ease is the real problem. His answer to Tim Ferriss's billboard question was a flag with two words: just work. Nobody can do it with ease, he says, and the greatest people can't either.
When his daughter, a writer, complained it was hard, he told her of course it is, get over it. If the difficulty turns you off, he says, you don't want it badly enough.
Seinfeld tests material on people and keeps what lands. His book Is This Anything? is named for what comedians ask each other after trying a new bit. No laughter means the joke isn't good yet, so they adjust tempo and word choice.
Small changes matter: waiting one second longer, or changing "take a sip" to "take a swig", can make a joke land. Chris Rock keeps the big-laugh bits from each small club set and puts new material up front in the next, until the big stage is all keepers.
He is never off the clock and accepts the cost. Seinfeld says he is always working on material, even at dinner or with his wife and kids. His chopsticks line, that they've "seen the fork", came from simply sitting at a restaurant.
Howard Stern called it a tortured life. Seinfeld agreed and added that your blessing in life is finding the torture you're comfortable with.
He keeps creating and editing in separate phases. Be a nurturing baby while making material, then a harsh officer who red-pens every word and throws out what isn't good enough. Flipping between the two modes is the key, mixing them is the mistake.
For Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee he starts with a very long raw edit and cuts each episode to about 20 minutes.
He follows his own vision, because failing his own way is livable. Dave Letterman gave him this advice as he faced a big scary project, his NBC pilot: make sure you fail doing exactly what you want to do. A failure on someone else's idea is the one that hurts.
Seinfeld also reads bad reviews and finds them funny, since he doesn't expect to make something everyone likes.
Seinfeld turned down $110 million for a tenth season. He ended the show after nine seasons so its whole record stayed strong. He wanted the ending to be a burst of fireworks that proved it never was bad.
Its last season landed in the top 20% of IMDB ratings, and he is the only show on TV to do that after nine or more seasons. The Simpsons, Family Guy and Two and a Half Men slid in later seasons.
He calls the principle dosage: a small amount of too much changes everything. A great comedian can satisfy a crowd with 70 minutes. Stretch it to 90 and the reaction drops from wow to meh.
It is not an argument for being short. The point is to find the right length for each piece and never let people get bored.