<story><title>How to make quitting your addiction easier</title><url>https://www.deprocrastination.co/blog/how-to-make-quitting-your-addiction-easier</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tcskeptic</author><text>I have found it very useful to frame things in terms of my future self.  This works for both things I want to do, and things I want to stop doing.&lt;p&gt;For example — get home from work, tired, don’t want to go row.  Instead of saying to myself “You really should go row, you said you wanted to do it 4 times a week.” I say “1 hour from now do I want to be a person who has sat on the couch for an hour or do I want to be the person who has worked out, taken a shower, and feels good”. Same thing for stopping mindless doom scrolling or making dinner vs ordering deliver or whatever.&lt;p&gt;I know it’s just a mental trick — but reframing things in terms of my future self has been &lt;i&gt;incredibly&lt;/i&gt; powerful for me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Ozzie_osman</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re actually triggering two things with this trick.&lt;p&gt;First, the piece you call out is delayed gratification (ie focusing on the future over the short-term).&lt;p&gt;But there&amp;#x27;s a second piece hidden in there, which is identity-orientation. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m the type of person who does X&amp;quot;. Tying actions to your identity is actually really powerful.</text></comment>
<story><title>How to make quitting your addiction easier</title><url>https://www.deprocrastination.co/blog/how-to-make-quitting-your-addiction-easier</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tcskeptic</author><text>I have found it very useful to frame things in terms of my future self.  This works for both things I want to do, and things I want to stop doing.&lt;p&gt;For example — get home from work, tired, don’t want to go row.  Instead of saying to myself “You really should go row, you said you wanted to do it 4 times a week.” I say “1 hour from now do I want to be a person who has sat on the couch for an hour or do I want to be the person who has worked out, taken a shower, and feels good”. Same thing for stopping mindless doom scrolling or making dinner vs ordering deliver or whatever.&lt;p&gt;I know it’s just a mental trick — but reframing things in terms of my future self has been &lt;i&gt;incredibly&lt;/i&gt; powerful for me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>emerged</author><text>I sometimes explicitly create a log of the before and after state of mind. Before rowing: “I feel fine, but pretty lazy and stressed about XYZ” after rowing: “Struggled through and got a big endorphin rush toward the end, feeling good and much less stressed.”&lt;p&gt;Seeing fitness progress graphs helps as well (heart rate vs power output etc). I know for me personally monitoring my resting heart rate made a strong argument against pretty much any alcohol consumption.</text></comment>