The "Seinfeld method" suffered a bit over the holiday season. My first streak was over 140 days. My second was 2 days, December 27-28. Now I am on day five of my third effort beginning on December 30. What was my downfall?-- travel home from California. Driving one day to see my Mom in Davis and stopping in Berkeley later to show my daughter the campus.

The idea is to string along as many days as possible in which you work on a major project or projects for some substantial number of hours, preferably at least two hours. It's like a marathon made of many tiny sprints. It works for me; Sure, I would have gotten something done anyway, since I am on leave, but I doubt I would have written 60,000 words in a little over five months. Having a leave is a good way to get nothing at all accomplished, since time seems to spread out in amorphous stretches that don't necessarily demand to be filled with work.