I’m always surprised by how many of my clients have never heard of the “Never miss twice” or “Don’t break the chain” rule so I thought I would share it here with my readers.
The source of "Never miss twice"
The rule can be attributed to several sources but the first time I came across it was from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits and his reference to a habit that comedian Jerry Seinfeld developed to become a better comedian.
Jerry’s theory is that to become a better comic, you need to write better jokes. And to write better jokes, you had to write every day. His suggestion, to make this daily writing habit a reality is to put a big calendar on your wall. Every day that you write a joke, you put a big X on the calendar. After a few days, you have a chain of X's. Your goal is to not break that chain.
Now, inevitably life happens, and you will break that chain, and this is where the magic comes of ‘never miss twice’. If you miss a single day, well that’s just an outlier, some odd thing in the universe that interrupted your daily habit. Maybe your car broke down, your dog was sick, or you got the flu. The trick is to see this as a simple outlier and get right back to it the next day and not to let this one day become two or three days. Missing once is an outlier, missing twice is a pattern that can lead to a habit.
"Never miss twice" and your health
Why choose "Never miss twice"?
There are several reasons but here are a few:
