Seinfeld’s Timeless Lessons on Creativity and Consistency

you might think of Jerry Seinfeld as a comedian you look a little stressed oh I'm stressed he thinks of himself as a writer I wrote all my comedy I wrote it at night he performs to Big crowds but his days are spent in silence alone writing I like to write ideas out on paper you will shave letters off of words you count syllables and they're all here I saved it in this accordion folder every single thing writing is the Lynch pin behind his success you have the number one show on NBC top rated and most imitated comedy on television they offered me a lot of money $110 million really yes $110 million so how can you write like Jerry Seinfeld let's break it down but first why are we talking about a comedian here isn't this podcast about writing well we all know that comedians are writers but we don't think of them that way you make money during the day in comedy what what did you do today and I said yeah we collect it at night but

we make it during the day when I got the opportunity for NBC to write a series to do a series with Larry David and he and I got together we were ready to work we knew what working was we knew what writing was from walking around and thinking no no from writing but what's special about Seinfeld it's that he loves to talk about the craft of writing most people who are as successful as he is they don't like talk about how the sausage gets made but Seinfeld loves it and there's a lot that we can learn from him when people think of a comedian they think of the Class Clown they think of your funny friend who's just cracking jokes at the bar but Seinfeld's different he's not really an improv guy he's deliberate and he refines and refines and refines his jokes until they're perfect I think his mom called him Mr Perfection actually and the vast majority of his work of the process of making jokes really good that happens in writing but

what stands out about Seinfeld is how obsessive he is about the craft about this Relentless March of improvement that you need to get good at whatever it is that you do he did this interview with GQ magazine and his very last answer right at the bottom of the interview gets at the core of what makes Seinfeld so good here's what he says he goes there's nothing I revile quite as much as a diletant I don't like doing something to a mediocre level it's great to be 70 years old because you really get to preach with some Authority and here's what he says I want you to hear this he goes get good at something that's it everything else is out of any comedian I've studied I feel this deep connection with the way Way That Seinfeld talks about the craft and obviously he's been insanely successful but how successful well 10 Emmy Awards and three gold Eng Globes his show has generated more than $3 billion in Revenue Netflix paid him $500

million for streaming rights to his show and then they paid him another $100 million for rights to his Comedians and Cars Getting Coffee show and along with that two new stand-up specials and then According to some of the sources that I found on my internet sleo thing sfi's one a few billionaire comedians out there the guy did his very first comedy show almost 50 years ago and in this episode I want to answer the question of what has he learned during that time and I'm going to share lessons with you about two things one what has he learned about getting your writing done and two what has he learned about making your writing good so let's start with getting it done and the very first lesson which is to embrace the

difficulty of writing that's what Seinfeld wants you to do to embrace the difficulty of writing the problem with writing isn't that it's hard the problem is that people want it to be easy so they run away when it gets difficult and this is the first thing that you got to internalize that writing is hard it's hard you just have to accept that if you're serious about pursuing this craft it reminds me about of how at the end of a lot of Tim Ferris podcast episodes what he'll do is he'll ask guest to write on a billboard and here's the prompt he says if you could spread a message to an entire city for them to see what would you write on that billboard so Seinfeld's being interviewed and you know what he says I should have a giant flag behind me that I would pull a string and it would roll down and on it the flag would just say two words just work just work two words just work he says the right way is the hard way

here's another line I pulled from him he goes people tell you to write like you can do it like you're supposed to be able to do it nobody can do it it's impossible the greatest people in the world can't do it and the point is that writing is incredibly hard it just is it's like running it's like running running is always going to be difficult same with weight training right they're just difficult professions where you're just going to have to grind you're going to have to push yourself no one is ripped like Arnold Schwarzenegger who never goes to the gym and just Grunts and gets after it but Seinfeld says that writing is harder than weight training way harder because you're trying to create something when all you got in front of you is a blank white page and that's hard sonel was talking about how his daughter is a writer now too and there's one time where they're sitting down and she was all frustrated

that writing was difficult and sad goes of course it is get over it writing is hard you either want to write you either want to be a writer or you don't but if you're expecting writing to just come easy if you're expecting to just sit down and easily write something great drop the pen walk away from the keyboard from the piece of paper and just go do something else if you think it's to be like that and then you're turned off sfi's like look you just don't want it bad enough so that's the first lesson that writing is hard you have to internalize that because that sets the context for the rest of the lessons that I'm going to share the next one is there's no such thing as writers block there's no such

thing he's like doesn't exist so what do you do how do you actually sit down to get your writing done Seinfeld says you got to time box your Writing Practice what does that mean well Seinfeld's been writing for 50 years right and even people greats like Jerry Seinfeld who Revere the craft of writing and know how core it is to their work they have to develop ways to actually get themselves the page when they don't feel like it there's days when I want to write but I don't feel like it it happens to everybody actually I've been reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck and he wrote this book called The Journal of a novel where he talks about his writing process for the book same thing he'll just have these journal entries got nothing done today got nothing done today but he sat down he showed up that day and at least tried and here's the thing if you're going to be a writer there's going to be days

where you just don't feel like it but that's why Seinfeld says you got a time box so what does that mean how do you push through and get yourself to write when you don't want to and here's what Seinfeld says he says commit to a set writing time what a lot of people do is they'll just give themselves an unlimited time to work on some open-ended problem so they're like I'm working on this thing in my writing I'm trying to write this joke and I need to get it done today and then all day you're like ah I'm just not feeling it you feel that resistance right sefel says Nope do the opposite say I'm going to try to get this done in 30 minutes or an hour and trainers know this right you go to the gym for a set amount of time and you show up and it sucks I was talking to a a friend over the weekend and he works with a trainer and I was saying hey what is it that you like about a trainer and he goes if I

was at the gym by myself i' just get distracted I'd get nothing done he goes I hate going to the gym but the thing that helped me with the trainer is I know it's 60 minutes and I show up and I grunt and I'm like I don't like this but I know that once the clock hits the top of the hour we're done we're done so I can get through the heavy weights I can get through a bunch of reps I can push through when I don't feel like it because I know that this is time boxed writing is the same way set yourself a time limit you can say an hour I can do that okay an hour is too long how about 30 minutes how about 15 you can do 15 minutes Seinfeld says you can do 15 minutes and once again Seinfeld said to his daughter he's sort of consoling her is she's working through the the arduous struggles that we face as a writer and he goes you have to have an end time to your writing session if you're going to sit down at a desk with a problem and do

nothing else you've got to get a reward for that and the reward is this the alarm goes off and you're done you walk up you walk away and you go of some cook p and milk you're done and that leads me to Seinfeld's actual writing process it's simple it's really simple it's just this full Focus no distractions do it every day full Focus no distractions do it every day but you can't do anything else you don't have to write when you're sitting there but you can't do anything else there's none of this getting distracted on Twitter none of this checking texts going to some some website that you use to distract yourself reading the news checking ESPN going to your favorite blog no no you got to cut that out one of the things I've started doing is I work in this room at my office and two rooms over in the studio where we record the the episodes I keep my phone there plugged in so I literally got to walk like 20

seconds just to go get my phone it's helped so much but that full Focus no distractions do it every day that process for Seinfeld basically hasn't changed in five decades he sits with the same yellow legal pad and he writes and because that he he just doesn't believe in writer block he won't even entertain the idea of writer's block he goes just sit down get a piece of paper and just be focused then you can be lazy you can be scared you can be a crummy writer but there is no writer block okay that's what he says then he says don't break the chain

don't break the chain I actually think this was the very first writing lesson I learned from Jerry Seinfeld and The Story Goes Like This many years ago Seinfeld's at a theater and he meets this young comedian guy's name is Brad Isaac who's just kind of getting started in his comedy career and he meets Jerry Seinfeld so naturally he asks hey Jerry you got any tips for a young comic and the answer applies for writers too seille says that the best way to be successful is to write better jokes okay obviously but this where it gets interesting and the best way to write better jokes is to write every day so Seinfeld tells the young comic to get a big old wall calendar that has a whole year on one page you got this giant calendar you just hang it on a prominent wall inside your house inside your office and then you get a big old fat red marker and for every single day that you get your writing done you get to put

a big old X over that day and here's what Seinfeld said after a few days of writing you'll have a chain keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day you'll like seeing that chain especially when you get a few weeks under your belt and your only job is not to break the chain so the chain is all the X's that you're writing when you get your work done March 22nd x March 23rd x March 24th X x x x x x and that consistency that's what gets you to improve your writing and James CLA made a good observation about this and it's that Seinfeld did not give him advice about what words to use or how to actually write it didn't say anything about results all that mattered was showing up consistently and not Breaking the Chain which leads me to the next lesson

distraction is the enemy dist distraction is the enemy and there's two kinds of distractions okay sometimes the distractions that come with being a writer they show up when you're actually writing we were talking about this before right checking emails scrolling some stupid social media feed somebody's trying to get your attention there's emails coming in one of the things that I struggle with is like I call this checking we're like I'm going to check to see if there's any good tweets recently hey has anybody texted me hey has anyone sent me a slack message hey how about my email how about WhatsApp and I'm just looking for the next dopamine hit I do it all the time it's checking and then I'll like go around the circle of checking and then I'll go back and do it again it's ridiculous you got to avoid this you got to avoid this that's what we've been talking about that sort of checking that

is the distraction that happens when you're writing you got to avoid that but then there's bigger distractions to avoid and these become really prominent as you become more successful and these big distractions this is the scene these are the parties these are different media events and what you see all the time is people who become successful by writing or by making films and then once they get successful they get really into the scene they get swept into the glitz and the Glam and then they stop doing the thing that make them that made them successful in the first place and yes avoiding this stuff is going to take work it means they're going to have to say no to a lot of other things that aren't the writing and one of the hardest parts of getting that early success is not being distracted by those big things so that you can do the work that you're actually supposed to be doing that also means

just saying no to all the admin work that inevitably comes up when you're working on something those speaking opportunities the schmoozing that famous people get into it can be a full-time distraction and all of a sudden you've gotten away from that work that made you successful in the first place you got to avoid these distractions if you're going to sustain the Excellence but it looks like Seinfeld never really let that happen one of the things I respect most about him and he says that most TV shows the writers they'll spend roughly half their time working on the show doing the writing that's great but then they'll spend the other half dealing with people and personalities and political dramas and all sorts of issues that come up whenever you try to do something hard but Seinfeld and Larry David who co-wrote Seinfeld with him they spent 99% of their time writing just the two of them door closed no

distractions they wanted to ignore the outside world so that they could focus on the show because the work is What mattered and this leads me to what might be my favorite anecdote and I'm going to read you the whole thing because it's so dang good so this is from an interview that that Jerry Seinfeld did with a Harvard Business review and I don't know if this is true but you can kind of Imagine The interview and here's how I like to think about it I like to think of it taking place in this stuffy boardroom with people who are taking themselves all seriously right and here's how the interview goes so here's the Harvard Business Review people talking they go like this you and Larry David wrote Seinfeld together without a traditional writer's room and burnout was one reason you stopped was there a more sustainable way to do it could McKenzie or someone have helped you find a better model Seinfeld goes who's McKenzie then the

Harvard Business Review people go it's a consulting firm Seinfeld goes are they funny the hbr people go no and this is where seidenfeld just lets it rip he goes then I don't need them if you're efficient you're doing it the wrong way the right way is the hard way the show was successful because I micromanaged it every word every line every take every edit every casting that's my way of life that's so hardcore and that is who Seinfeld is he's like what's going on there right he's like are they funny that's the thing that matters that's the thing we're going for we're not trying to be efficient here he goes the right way is the hard way and I'm going to micromanage everything every word every line every edit every casting that's my way of life I'm going to get my hands in the clay and I'm going to shape the heck out of this thing and if it means that burnout comes from it if it means I'm exhausted I'm putting 14 16 hour days in

then fine so be it but I'm going to do great work the next lesson is to fail doing

exactly what you want to do when you're creative you need to think about what projects am I going to pursue there's a bunch of options but you can only really do one or two things well at any given time right and if you look at Seinfeld's career he thinks of himself like a stand-up comedian but he's done the TV show Seinfeld he's done a talk show called Comedians and Cars Getting Coffee and then he recently did a movie about Pop-Tarts and as he was thinking about doing the movie he was a little bit nervous he hasn't made as many movies and he's afraid of failure at this time and he runs into a comedy Legend at a party and he tells this story I can't tell a story better than he can he tells this story in killer interview with Neil Brennan here's what he says uh Dave Letterman I have to say gave me I told him I'm writing this pilot for NBC it was one of his year-end uh Christmas parties or

something he said just make sure you fail doing exactly what you want to do he told me that and that's the best advice you can give someone going into a big scary project make sure you fail doing it exactly the way you want it because that you can live with yes that you can live with when it's someone else's idea that kills you that's hard hard to live with yeah that's you'll be homicidal hold on hold on hold on stop the podcast because this was the clip that maybe want to do this episode this Hit me hard this hit me really hard because when you're creative and you're serious about your work you're going to have a vision not just for what you want to achieve but how you want to do things and if you're not careful the world will suck the oxygen out of your individuality it'll take your voice and it'll just squash it maybe it's an editor who says no I don't want you to write like that I know that's how you

usually write but that writing like that's not going to sell books and a lot of times when you want to follow your heart but you're afraid to do that it's because you're afraid to fail you're afraid of what's going to happen fear of rejection fear of judgment fear of looking bad in front of a big audience whatever it is fear of not doing things the right way this has happened to me a trillion times and when I think of my own regrets a lot of times it comes back to not doing things in a way that was true to me and this clip Hit me hard because when you give yourself the permission to fail like this and you really listen to what to what Dave Letterman's trying to communicate here and you lean into that failure there's this strange way that the fear of failure just goes away and it allows you to focus on your creative expression I have a friend who he was running uh is a mentor and he was running a big big company in the 90s and

he was the CEO they brought in a it was a CFO or something to basically temper him because he was a super intense CEO and they said you're intense we'll bring in the CFO and there'll be a good balance and it wasn't working super well somebody then who was on this guy executive team said hey you're thinking about this the wrong way we're thinking about this the wrong way people are here to work for you the CEO they came here to work for you and they would rather be on your boat doing things how you want to do it with your Creative Vision and they would rather row that boat off the cliff than to be in a boat in Still Water something that feels safe but not go anywhere people are here for you to follow your vision and that day maybe a week later he let go of that CFO and he said you know what you're right we're going to do things my way we're going to follow my vision and if it means that we fail that's fine and

I want you to listen closely here the percent chance of failure might go up but the chance that you have regret will go down because you've accepted failure from the beginning and you've said I'm going I'm not going to compromise I'm not going to compromise

so that ends the first section that's how you get it done we've talked about embracing the difficulty we've talked about how there's no such thing as writers block you got a time box then we spoke about don't break the chain how distraction is the enemy and how you want to fail doing what you want to do and now I want to break down a piece of Seinfeld's writing for you this is a intro from a New York Times oped that he wrote we're going to break it down talk about what makes it so good and then we'll get back to the second half of the episode here we go when I got my first apartment in Manhattan in the hot summer of 1976 there was no pooper scooper law and the streets were covered in dog crap I signed the rental agreement walked outside and my car had been towed I still thought this is the greatest place I've ever been in my life okay this introduction is an odyssey remember remember the context here this is the

New York Times and when you open up a New York Times article you expect it to be serious but here Jerry Seinfeld is the author and he's like nah I'm a comedian this introduction is both funny and captivating because of the way that every sentence just ping pongs between emotions so check this out he goes when I got my first apartment in Manhattan in the hot summer of 1976 I'm thinking blue skies I'm thinking parades I'm thinking all the good stuff stuff but now he goes there was no pooper scoper law and the streets were covered in dog crap so now we've gone from good to bad from green to red but then things get good again right he goes I signed the rental agreement walked outside and at this point you're thinking oh my goodness we're about to get the greatest thing to happen New York City summertime and he goes my car had been towed so now high low high low and then what happens he ends with a high he says this is the

greatest place I've ever been in my life now if you wrote an entire piece like this it'd be exhausting it wouldn't work but it works well for an intro this opener is only two sentences long and that's all that it takes for Seinfeld to break the frame of a New York Times article to create tension to release it and then make the reader laugh not once but twice it's an odyssey it's a roller coaster and it's a series of setting expect ations and immediately breaking

them so hey there's a look at how Seinfeld does his thing and look I do one of those every single week so if you want me to send it to you go to writing examples.com and end your email now let's get back to the episode now I want to move into the

second half of this which is how do you make your writing good and the first principle here is that the work never stops the work never stops so I'll start with a story I have a comedian friend in town and I said you know what his name is re jaffre I said you know what re it'd be fun to go to the symphony together I just thought that pairing a Hy toyy fancy Symphony with a comedian would be really funny so we get all dressed up and we show up early we get some drinks beforehand and we're just hanging out in the theater before the before the show starts and we're looking around and the median age of the people in this theater must have been 70 years old so we're cracking jokes we're talking about the aesthetic of the play the vibe the different people who knows what but we're like two 10-year-old boys just cracking jokes but I don't know what it was but my friend said something and we're 10 minutes into sitting there

and we are laughing so hard it is like that kind of laughter it's belly laughter where it hurts your abs to be laughing so hard and we're going back and forth we're just sort of working on the bit he's he's making most of the jokes but all of a sudden I couldn't believe it he pulls out a notebook from his back pocket and I'm like Rea why do you have this notebook the guy starts drawing 2 by two axis like he's working for McKenzie or something breaking down his joke I'm like what are you doing and he's getting everything on paper and he goes when I find a joke like that that's that funny what I try to do is I try to get as much out as fast as possible while it's still fresh and here's what stuck with me there what he did did was he switched from a right brain and intuitive mode into a left brain and analytical one instantly instantly because when you have new ideas it'll come from that intuitive place they'll just come out

but if you can learn to recognize that you found a good joke a good piece of writing a good idea that then is when you can switch into that analytical State and try to figure out what is it about this joke this idea that's making it work and I want to share with you this clip from Seinfeld's interview with Howard Stern and what I want you to listen for is this idea of look for the torture that you're comfortable with look for the torture that you're comfortable with you went to a Chinese restaurant and uh you're like I I really admire Chinese people because they're really sticking to this Chopsticks thing the line is I like how they're hanging in there with the chopsticks right because they've seen the fork they've seen the fork we've got it you beat yeah but they're going out to me this is a brilliant observation yes now when you had that observation were you're sitting at a Chinese restaurant and can you go to a

Chinese restaurant and not sit there and work on material I'm never not working on material so even even when you're sitting with your wife you're sitting with the kids it's material every second of my existence I'm thinking could I do something with that it sounds like a tortured life and you it is it is it is but you know what your blessing in life is when you find the torture you're comfortable with see that's what I mean the work never stops whenever you're talking about ideas you're getting feedback on which ones are good or bad if I'm talking to someone I can see in their eyes I can see in their body language if what I'm saying is interesting or or if I've gone too far it's the same thing with comedy right I'm sitting with my friend we're cracking a bunch of jokes all of a sudden both of us have a Billy laugh and that means we've stumbled on something good and no you're not going to be like

a standup comedian like you're not going to get on stage in front of a bunch of different people but you are always H getting that feedback in the form of conversations at lunch and dinners and with the water cooler at work or coffee chats with friends whatever it is you're on a walk with somebody you're always getting that feedback and when I talk about the work never stopping pay attention to how people are reacting to what you're saying which leads me to the next lesson of talk through your ideas and get feedback talk

through your ideas and get feedback I call this writing from conversation and for Seinfeld the writing process it begins away from the page it begins in conversations with other Comedians and the lesson that I want to get across here is that it's hard for you to know if your ideas are worthy we're talking about it earlier with don't break the chain right Seinfeld did not focus on the results he said the best way to have better ideas is just to produce more more of them and the best way to produce more of them is to commit to writing every day and then you get that big old red X as a Creator it's your job to come up with a bunch of ideas then it's the audience's job to respond to them and as the Creator you're just listen to their reactions and then you're doubling down on the stuff with the very best potential I was at a at a party a few weeks ago and this this guy comes up to me he goes hey David love your stuff and

I'm really new to writing but I'm struggling to get started because I don't feel like my ideas are any good so I go okay how often are you writing and he goes well I'm not putting pen to paper because I don't have good ideas and I go you're not writing at all he goes yeah I'm not going to write until I have a good idea and I just look at him and I say you have everything backwards you need to write consistently day in and day out day in and day out and at first your stuff might not even be that good but what you need to do is put in the Reps of consistency and if you do that that's going to get you to good ideas way faster than sitting down on some chair and just stroking your beard all day waiting for some idea to come it reminds me of Seinfeld's book it's called is this anything and it's called that because is this anything is something that comedians say to each other all the time after test testing out a new bit a lot

of what you're doing in writing and comedy is you're putting things out in the world to see what lands you're just throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks and comedians have an advantage of that instantaneous feedback I'll 100% admit it but they pay for it with the horror of having to go on stage and test out their jokes the advantage for them is instant feedback they're on stage and they immediately know if something is good or terrible based on the audience's reactions if there's no laughter your joke isn't any good but what they can do is they can take that data and then they can let it inform the next iteration of a joke so something you see all the time is that comedians will play around with Tempo they'll play around with word choice and for whatever reason if you wait one second longer there or you change a word from take a sip to take a swig now Swig is way funnier than Sip

and that joke is going to resonate way more so what does this look like in practice well I want to show you with this short clip from a talk that I gave at the main street summit the example I use here is from Chris Rock but it applies to Jerry Seinfeld's comedy too and if you're listening this is a good time to open the video how does Chris Rock refine his ideas how does he do it how does he do it how does he do it so what he does is he starts off in those small comedy clubs and he'll throw out a set and it'll get to the end of the first set and'll be like all right purple stuff not that good but you know what honestly people act pretty hard for the two green things okay so I'm going to keep those green stories those are my jokes and now I'm going to go for set two throw them at the front bunch of new material okay so we'll try this new material let's take a look at it after all right the green stuff we like the

purple stuff we don't like let's let go the purple stuff the green stuff you know it's not perfect but it definitely has potential and you do that over and over and over and over again right and then eventually now we're at Madison Square Garden now it's game day baby now it's the Netflix special and now you get all green so when you watch Chris Rock you're like how does he do all green it's because you're not seeing all this work that went into it that's the magic that's the juice that's what it means to write from conversation that's what it means to make writing social so you see that clip and you think to yourself but David I'm a writer I don't have an audience that I get to talk to what do I do and this is what I call writing from conversation and it is the essence of what we teach to write a passage the reason that we we get hundreds of people together in a cohort is so that we can

write from conversation just like comedians do and what we say to every student is we say talk about your ideas with people see what interests them look for the things that get their eyes to to light up look for the things that hey maybe they're bored about but the audience is always going to give you feedback and there's three things that you can look for you can look for what's interesting double down on those ideas you can look for what's confusing rewrite those ideas and you can look for what's boring what is not really getting people to engage and just cut those ideas and now if you're thinking but David I need to keep the ideas cuz I don't have enough ideas well that goes back to some of the things that we were talking about earlier then you just need to write more if something is boring it doesn't have that potential just cut it just cut it you don't need it just go out and make more material so the

question is how do you do that and that

leads me to the next principle don't write and edit at the same time don't write and edit at the same time the key to writing to being a good writer is to treat yourself like a baby very extremely nurturing and loving and then switch over to L goset An Officer and a Gentleman and just be a harsh prick ball busting son of a about that is just not good enough that's got to come out or it's got to be redone or thrown away so flipping back and forth between those two brain quadrants is the key to writing so two phases there's the baby phase and this is that free play Creative phase this is when you're messing around with whatever idea pops into your head nurture love support the Kumbaya Vibes and in this baby phase you're just not paying a lot of attention to how good the ideas are you're letting them flow you're following the intuitive flow of that moment you're not analyzing what you're creating hey is this good is this

going to be worthy of publishing just make stuff just write just get stuff down on paper that's the baby face but then there's the officer face this is Polish and construction refining and perfecting every single word this is when your analytical mind is active your standards are high this is the time to be strict this is when you're ready to be critical you're red pening the heck out of your work you're asking questions like how do I make this better is this worthy how can I improve Pro the structure of this story this sentence is bothering me this word is not the right word now we got to find what's going to make it excellent so there's the baby phase there's the officer phase and you can't get them mixed you can't get them mixed so here's my recommendation whenever you sit down to write think to yourself what phase am I in now am I in the baby phase or the officer phase for this for this time

being choose one and just live inside that pH one of the things that I do is I have different places and different times a day where I enter these phases I try to just keep them separate and distinct when I sit at this desk I'm creating in the mornings I'm creating that's the baby phase when I sit on the couch in the other room that's when I'm editing towards the end of the day maybe at night a weekend that's when I like to edit things are a little bit slower I can take some time I even have less caffeine in my system editing is crucial don't get me wrong but it's got to come later and editing is so crucial not just in writing but for Seinfeld show his talk show Comedians and Cars Getting Coffee he would produce an original edit of that that'd be something like and a half hours long and then he would cut the episode Down to 20 minutes or so bunch of editing bunch of editing bunch of editing that is how the creative

process functions all the time when you study these grades from editing I want to give you one final

point about making it good and that's not everybody's going to like what you write and that's the point got a text yesterday friend had writer block I was trying to help him out what's going on why is he struggling and it came down to this the reason that he had writers block is because he had the voice of a thousand critical readers in his head as he was trying to write and that just suffocates the oxygen out of your creative Spirit Seinfeld says Nope you cannot do that because the easiest way to crush your creative Spirit as a writer is to insist on making something that everybody likes with the whole earth catalog Stuart brand and Kevin Kelly they wanted to offend one of the audience because they said that if we're not offending one of our audience making them angry in some capacity we're probably not being truly honest as as writers I love that and Seinfeld takes it a step further than

even I'm comfortable with he actually reads the bad reviews he thinks they're funny and he's in this interview with Barry wife and she challenges him on this and here's how it went down okay but you actually will read bad reviews oh yeah really they're funny have you always been like that yes it doesn't matter what you think of me why would I think that I'm going to make something that everyone will like what sense does that make okay you got to be insane to think that man that is so liberating that is so liberating because when you can accept the idea that not everybody is going to resonate with what you're saying but you have this inner conviction that what you're doing is of quality or that it's true that it's this sincere expression of what you of what you need to say that's when you can enter a creative flow that's when you can enter that Divine State where you're kind of unconscious as a

Creator but the second that you're trying to make something that everybody likes you get stifled there is no creative expression that can flow when you are trapped by the judgmental eye of your audience when that's top of mind is you're creating nope can't do it actually here's a little how I write story so if you go back and you listen to the Jason freed episode that I recorded and you listen to that you'll notice that there's about a 25 minute segment where we break down his writing process for for these founder letters and it is my favorite part of the episode but we actually thought about removing it we we thought it might be too geeky for what most how I write listeners would want we're sitting there we're having this conversation and I have this realization and I say exactly this I go if somebody doesn't like if somebody doesn't like how I write because we geek out too hard on the writing process it's

just too too obsessive about the craft we're doing something right my goal in creating this show and creating how I write is to make something that most people don't like so that you wackos who are obsessed with writing who want to learn all about the creative process that you can have something that you adore and that you can't get anywhere else and the cost of that is that most people aren't going to like how I write and I'm totally down with that Seinfeld's got good stuff on endings too at a macro level I want to show you a chart what are we looking at here these are season by- season ratings for popular TV shows you'll see that The Simpsons and Family Guy and Two and a Half Men they get bad reviews at the end at the beginning the seasons were were pretty good but they just dragged it on too long and all of a sudden people didn't like it that much anymore but sign refused to let that happen his show

is the only one on TV where the last season ended up in the top 20% of IMDB ratings after going n years or more the only one NBC offered Seinfeld 110 million to do a 10th season of the show and seel said nope nope he didn't want the show to wither he wanted to end it on a high because here's what he says a small amount of too much changes the whole feeling about it I want wanted to end the show with a feeling of it was never bad Warren Littlefield wrote that if you would have given him another season in of Seinfeld he would have paid you $110 million for the year $110 million I could have got more than that it's a small amount of too much too much cake too much anything and changes the whole feeling about so we had this wonderful intense love affair right the people are making show and the audience and I wanted it to end with a like a fireworks

burst of it never was bad at a micro level Seinfeld talks about dosage this concept of dosage where he says a good writer or comedian you leave the audience wanting more you have the Best comedian in the world Seinfeld Louis CK whoever it is and a comedian can leave everybody happy with 70 minutes of content but all of a sudden you stretch it out to 90 and the audience says meh that was fine you just went from 70 to 90 and it goes from Wow to me whatever and this notion of restricting Supply to only what is excellent to only the length of time that's going to keep the audience's attention this applies to every creative medium every piece of writing that you're working on it'll apply to that notice this isn't about being short this isn't about hey we're only going to do Tik toks YouTube shorts now not at all if that's what you're thinking you're missing the point this is just about saying what is the right amount of

dosage for this and never letting people get bored and that's why I'm going to end this show here that's the episode I'm just going to do a quick review of what we covered then we're done what are the main lessons part one getting it done embrace the difficulty there's no such thing as writers block so time box don't break the chain don't get distracted and fail doing what you want to do and then we talked about making it good be obsessed with the craft the work never stops talk through your ideas and get feedback then don't write and edit at the same time finally not everybody's going to like it and that's the point and remember dosage