The Profile Dossier: Jerry Seinfeld, the Lifelong Student of Comedy

“The less you know about a field, the better your odds. Dumb boldness is the best way to approach a new challenge.”

A fellow comedian once asked Jerry Seinfeld, “Where do you go after having the most popular show of all time?”

The answer? On stage, behind the mic, doing stand-up comedy. That’s because Seinfeld is simultaneously a comedic master and a lifelong student of his craft.

“Standup for me is a surfboard,” he says. “It’s just you. You paddle out, and you try and catch the energy and you’re all on your own. You can do it and go home, and nobody but you really even knows what happened.”

The comedian sees himself more as an athlete than an artist because it’s all about putting in the reps and producing tangible results. The desk is his gym, and the stage is his arena.

“If I don’t do a set in two weeks, I feel it,” he says. “I read an article a few years ago that said when you practice a sport a lot, you literally become a broadband: the nerve pathway in your brain contains a lot more information. As soon as you stop practicing, the pathway begins shrinking back down. Reading that changed my life.”

Seinfeld was only 27 years old when he made his first appearance on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson in 1981. At 35, he launched Seinfeld, one of the most popular sitcoms on television. Forty years since he entered the comedy business, Seinfeld, 67, is still working.

He says, “Do you realize what it takes to travel, to go to the airport in your 50s and your 60s, to fly on planes, to go to strange cities, to go to hotels, to put on a suit, to go out on stage at eight o’clock at night and run around and yell and project your physical energy for an hour in front of thousands of people?”

For four decades, Seinfeld has stuck to the same routine: Yellow legal pad, pen, and a cup of coffee. He’s a perfectionist when it comes to writing his jokes, some of which may take him months and even years to get just right.

“I’m looking for that connective tissue that gives me that nice, smooth link — like a jigsaw puzzle link,” he says. “And if it’s a split second too long, you’ll shave letters off of words. You’ll count syllables.”

You can hear him describe his process below.

So after all these years in the comedy business, how does Seinfeld define success? It’s the endless process of tinkering until you get as close as you can to perfection.”

“I like money, but it’s never been about the money,” he says. “It’s similar to calligraphy or samurai. I want to make cricket cages. You know those Japanese cricket cages? Tiny, with the doors? That’s it for me: solitude and precision, refining a tiny thing for the sake of it.”

As for the future? Seinfeld plans to keep tinkering and refining and performing “into my 80s, and beyond."

Here’s what we can learn from Seinfeld on the discipline of being funny, why systems promote creativity, and how good writing starts by training the mind.

READ.

On how comedy became his calling: Seinfeld approaches comedy like a craftsman. He’s obsessed with every part of the process — from the writing to the performing to figuring out exactly what type of laughs he’s getting. “A laugh to me is not a laugh. I see it, like at Caltech when they look at the tectonic plates,” he says. “If I’m in the dark up there and I can just listen, I know exactly what’s going on. I know exactly when their attention has moved off me a little.” This is a must-read.

On being a comedian with no jokes: Seinfeld is self-conscious in a way you never see in his act. Whenever he cracks a joke, he wonders whether it’s appropriate to do so or if people even want to laugh right now. Like the rest of us, Seinfeld was trying to figure out what he should do as live comedy was canceled along with everything else during the pandemic. In this interview, the comedian discusses his reflections in quarantine, his need for routine, and what he hopes comedy and New York will look like when this all ends.

On the #MeToo movement: Bill Cosby. Louis C.K. Roseanne. When asked about his disgraced peers, Seinfeld says the audience is always right (even about his #MeToo joke). “You can’t do whatever you want,” he says. “You can only do what works — if you want to have a career.”

WATCH.

On becoming a professional comedian: In this comedy special, Seinfeld returns to the Comic Strip, the comedy club that jumpstarted his career in the 1970s. He walks through his childhood and early days as a comedian while giving never-before-seen footage of his journey to becoming a household name.

On returning to stand-up: In this special from the early 2000s, you see Seinfeld workshopping jokes and giving advice to a younger comedian who is desperately trying to make it. This is a special one because you see his work ethic and you understand why he will never stop working.

LISTEN.

On the creative process: Seinfeld describes his early-career writing sessions like "pushing against the wind in soft, muddy ground with a wheelbarrow full of bricks." To be good at standup comedy, he says, you need to learn to be a writer. In this podcast episode, Seinfeld explains the two phases of his creative process that have allowed him to become a master of his craft.

POLINA’S TAKEAWAYS.

Build a system to promote creativity: You can probably be creative for an hour or two, but you can’t be creative all day. Seinfeld says you need to create tiny systems to help you organize your thinking. Say, for example, you want to write. Seinfeld’s tip: Never, ever make a writing session open-ended. Set an exact time limit and once the alarm goes off, you’re done. “You have to have an end-time to your writing session,” he says. “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, the alarm goes off, and you’re done. You get up and walk away and go have some cookies and milk. You’re done.” Think of the brain like a puppy: you need to confine it, train it, and reward it.

Play ‘good cop/bad cop’ during the writing process: Seinfeld says the key to being a great writer is mastering the two sides of the brain — the nurturing one and the critical one. He says that during the initial writing process, you need to treat yourself like a baby and be “extremely nurturing and loving.” After 24 hours, you need to transform into a “harsh prick, ball-busting son of a bitch”-style editor. Over time, you’ll learn how toggle back and forth so that you can strengthen your writing and editing muscles.

Routine is the antidote to depression: Seinfeld once read that depression is part of a kit that comes with the creative aspect in the brain. He’s learned to keep it at bay with rigid routines. “I think I could solve just about anyone’s life with weight training and transcendental meditation,” he says. One is a stressor while the other is a stress reducer — and you need both. Anytime he thinks something is painfully hard — whether it’s exercise, meditation, or writing — he offers the following mental framework that has transformed how he thinks of pain: “Pain is knowledge rushing in to fill a void with great speed.” Build a routine into your life that expends and re-builds your energy.

Consider your ‘why:’ Why do you do the work that you do? Is it out of genuine passion or out of obligation? Is it for prestige or is it for money? All of us have our reasons, but when Howard Stern asked Seinfeld whether he willed his way to success, here’s how he responded: “I’m going to adjust your perspective a little bit. That was no will. What you were using, what Michael Jordan uses and what I use, is not will. It’s love. When you love something, it’s a bottomless pool of energy. That’s where the energy comes from. But you have to love it sincerely. Not because you’re going to make money from it, be famous, or get whatever you want to get. When you do it because you love it, then you can find yourself moving up and getting really good at something you wanted to be really good at. Will is like not eating dessert or something that’s just forcing yourself. You can’t force yourself to be what you have made yourself into. You can love it. Love is endless. Will is finite.”

Know when to step away from success: Perhaps Seinfeld’s greatest strength is that he is hyper-aware of when he needs to step on the gas and when he needs to step away. His wildly popular sitcom Seinfeld ran for nine seasons and was reportedly making $1 million per episode when its creator decided to pull the plug. “I pulled out of it before I had to, before anyone wanted me to, because I didn’t want to be on a boat that was starting to struggle,” he says. Seinfeld even turned down more than $100 million to produce a 10th season of the series because he wanted to go out on top rather than give way to burnout and complacency. “The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That’s my way of life,” he says. Part of enjoying great success is knowing when to leave on a high note.

Understand the secret to a happy life: What makes life worth living? I’ll leave you with Seinfeld’s sage advice: “My three rules for living: First, bust your ass. Second, pay attention. Learn from everything and everyone. My third rule: Fall in love. Fall in love with your street, your tennis game.”

QUOTES TO REMEMBER.

“I like to try anything... You have to do the experiments to find out what the formulas are.”

“The less you know about a field, the better your odds. Dumb boldness is the best way to approach a new challenge.”

“You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That's how you know you're still alive.”

“I feel like humor is the answer to everything. If you have a little bit of humor in the shaker and you can sprinkle that on, that's your answer.”

“Keep your head up on failure, and your head down in success.”

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