At some point I realized I was drinking way too much coke, so I resolved to not drink any when I went back home for a few days (small step, concrete, environment, fixed period). Once I had succeeded doing that, it was easier to carry the new behaviour back to everyday life. The first time I succeeded for a period of 8 months or so then lapsed again, bootstrapped again with the same process about 2 years ago, haven’t drank coke since.
This seems congruent with most of these points except “involves a new behavior, not stopping an old one,”. I generally find it’s easier to stop doing something than to start doing something else. Anyone else have the same experience?
every so often I’ll decide to stop biting my nails and I can devote lots of mental energy to stop myself whenever I see it starting up again. On a really stressful day though, I can’t devote that energy and I wind up chewing them off again. Usually I stay on this wagon for a few weeks before I can re-dedicate myself to the non-nail biting mental effort. On the whole though, stop biting my nails is not that all that difficult, the problem is to be consistent about it.
It’s difficult to start doing things when the path of least resistance still takes a lot of mental energy. Checking lesswrong is easy, reading science papers for class is hard. Having a goal (not failing class the next day) is a big help though.
Ancedote coming up:
At some point I realized I was drinking way too much coke, so I resolved to not drink any when I went back home for a few days (small step, concrete, environment, fixed period). Once I had succeeded doing that, it was easier to carry the new behaviour back to everyday life. The first time I succeeded for a period of 8 months or so then lapsed again, bootstrapped again with the same process about 2 years ago, haven’t drank coke since.
This seems congruent with most of these points except “involves a new behavior, not stopping an old one,”. I generally find it’s easier to stop doing something than to start doing something else. Anyone else have the same experience?
every so often I’ll decide to stop biting my nails and I can devote lots of mental energy to stop myself whenever I see it starting up again. On a really stressful day though, I can’t devote that energy and I wind up chewing them off again. Usually I stay on this wagon for a few weeks before I can re-dedicate myself to the non-nail biting mental effort. On the whole though, stop biting my nails is not that all that difficult, the problem is to be consistent about it.
It’s difficult to start doing things when the path of least resistance still takes a lot of mental energy. Checking lesswrong is easy, reading science papers for class is hard. Having a goal (not failing class the next day) is a big help though.
There are bitter nail polishes to help people stop thumb-sucking or nail-biting. Have you tried that?