Tagged “smoking”

thread from 7 lessons smokers can teach us about getting shit done

huh, weird that I already had a tag for smoking

Importantly, it helped me overcome my fear that if I quit smoking, I wouldn’t be able to write anymore, since I’d always done the two activities together (today I tell writing students not to smoke at all, but if they must, not to smoke while writing, lest they prolong their addiction to protect their artistic production).

But what really helped me kick was Alan’s advice about motivations: “You’re 33 years old. You might smoke for 40 more years before you get sick. Not getting sick in forty years won’t be much of a motivation next week when you’re craving a cigarette. You need a motive for next week, not forty years from now.”

The next-week reason he came up with was "I spend two laptops per year on smokes". So he now buys a laptop each year.

When I quit smoking 17 years ago, a wise doctor counselled me that if I was going to resist cravings, I needed a more immediate reason than "I won't get cancer in 40 years." My answer: "I spend two laptops per year on a product whose makers want to murder me and my friends."