Are you curious about the productivity hacks of someone worth approximately $800,000,000? Jerry Seinfeld is hailed as one of the most successful comedians of all time. As a co-writer and creator of the hit sitcom Seinfeld, he is also one of the most successful writers and actors of a generation.

So what’s the secret formula he’s tapped into that even 6 years after completing the show Seinfeld he still raked in a cool $267,000,000? He already has the money and the fame, yet year after year he still consistently delivers entertainment to the world.

How about John Grisham who has released at least 1 book per year for the last 24 years? All this even while, at the beginning of his writing career, he was pulling 70 hour weeks at his job as a lawyer in a small Mississippi law practice.

Do you ever look at people like Seinfeld or Grisham and wonder how they do it? What are they doing that you aren’t? What do they have that you need? What’s the secret sauce to success that you haven’t been given?

Maybe you think people at his level of success have just gotten lucky.

On an article in Lifehacker, Brad Isaac talks about the night, many years ago, that he found himself face-to-face with Jerry Seinfeld at a comedy club. Brad asked for advice for young comedians starting out. Jerry Seinfeld gave him an answer that is the key to success in any industry.

Here’s an excerpt of how Brad describes the interaction in his own words:

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself — even when you don’t feel like it. He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here’s how it works. He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just 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. Your only job is to not break the chain.”

In case you didn’t notice, Seinfeld didn’t talk about how good the jokes he wrote were or anything about the results of what writing these jokes everyday meant for him professionally. That was already evident in his success. His only job and priority everyday was “not breaking the chain.”