check out my kegerator got a six tap kegerator and it's pretty cool really
like now my name is Doug Cunnington I'm the founder of niche site project I
write about Amazon affiliate marketing productivity and project management this
improve your habits change your habits to be more productive so let's get to it
on December 31st my wife and I decided we're gonna do dry January that means no
alcohol in any form beer or liquor or you know any other kind of mixed drinks
or anything like that and here's the deal I know some people may think not a
big deal that would be really easy to do but as I showed you I have a kegerator
I'm actually really into beer I home brew beer I judge beer I'm a certified
beer judge by the BJCP a national level so I'm really in the beer and we
probably have one to two beers on most days not all days but most days we have
like one to two beers and giving up alcohol for a month is pretty difficult
now I am gonna tell you how I use the steps outlined by Charles Duhigg in the
power of habit it's a great book if you haven't read it check it out
but there's a couple like key things that we did to make it pretty easy in
fact I found it like really easy to just stop drinking beer and like make it
through the whole month now today is February 2nd I had some beers
yesterday and I'm gonna have some beers later today and I'm excited about that
but during January not a big deal here's some background information on habits so
of course the book goes into great detail but habits work like this you
have a cue and then you have a behavior and then you have a reward and it sort
of feeds itself and it becomes a habit the thing is you know think back from
when you drove to work or the grocery store or some common place that you go
several times a week you may not even remember you know pulling out at the
driveway going forward putting the car drive making decisions on where you
turned because you're basically on autopilot so when things become habit
through this cue routine and reward you end up going on autopilot things become
a habit you do them without making a decision to do them or not and this is
where you know I sort of fell into the trap so if I try to stop drinking cold
turkey when I didn't have any plan or didn't understand the triggers or the
cues or anything like that it'd be super difficult when you're trying to like
break habit or change a habit you have to understand a little bit of the
process so there's a few different kinds of cues there's five and again Charles
outline as well in the appendix of the power of habit so that's where a lot of
this information is the five cues are this location time emotional state the
other people that are around you in the preceding action for me and my wife
drinking beer or having some you know cocktail or something like that it
usually hit almost all five of those cues so it was a very strong habit and
this is why it would have been very hard or impossible to break without
identifying them thinking ahead of time and then having a plan so for us we
often would have a beer at dinner time so a couple things are going into play
right there so I mentioned the five different areas of the cues and we hit
almost all of them number one was the location we're in our kitchen or living
room having dinner so that's the location the time it's dinnertime after
work or in the afternoons and evenings so we kind of know after 5:00 or
something we may have a beer two three is the emotional state and most of the
time at the end of the day maybe a little bit mentally drained potentially
frustrated or stressed out depending on how the day went and you know generally
ready to wind down so the emotional state is one as well other people of
course my wife and I were around each other in the preceding action was often
making dinner or getting ready for dinner getting ready to sit down to eat
so most at the time we had four to five of the
Q's different types of Q's in place to trigger our habit of having a beer right
and actually when I phrase it like that it sounds like a problem but we would we
would have the Q we would do the routine which is like grab a beer from the
refrigerator or from the kegerator that I showed you and then the reward is you
know we get to enjoy drinking the beer that's a reward and the slight
intoxication that comes with drinking beer but you know I'm not gonna lie
that's a that's an enjoyable part as well so you know remember we're drinking
responsibly but we do enjoy having a beer
the trick with replacing a habit or curbing it or changing a habit that you
have is to understand the cues and understand why you're doing certain
things in the book Charles mentions getting a like a cookie from the
cafeteria at his office and he would go in the afternoon so like three o'clock
so he sort of kept a log over several days to identify what the cues could be
so maybe it was you know at the time of day the people that he was around the
emotional state and various things like he could have been hungry right so it
may not be the emotional state but he could have been hungry and he would want
a snack so he logged you know how he felt what was going on over a few days
he would try a few strategies like instead of having a cookie he would have
an apple a healthier snack or maybe instead of going to the cafeteria he
would go to a coffee shop and get a coffee so he was testing different
things to see what worked for Charles it turned out that he wanted a little break
he was bored in the afternoon and eventually he found that if he went to
go for a walk and gossip with a couple of his office mates that would take care
of it it would take care of his boredom and he'd get up take a little break can
come back to work he stopped getting so many cookies for us since we had so many
queues it's really important to like replace the routine with something else
so we have the queues and if you replace the routine and develop some sort of war
then you're much closer to being able to remove the routine or change the routine
to a better habit really that's what we're doing like if you have the cues
it'll be really hard to not do anything so the best way to take care of it is to
replace the routine so for me I knew that we had many cues and I knew that it
would be difficult to remove the cues or anything like that so I had a plan and
that is a key thing ID the routines I did accuse ID what you're gonna replace
the routine with and then you know see how it works so for me I knew I wanted
to drink something but it couldn't be alcoholic so I replaced the routine with
other beverages so my choice was to replace drinking an alcoholic beverage
with carbonated water sometimes flavored carbonated water simple as that you know
get a couple benefits from it one you know I wanted to drink something you
know that time of day so having something that was carbonated slightly
mimicked the mouthfeel and some of the sensations that one would get from
drinking a beer so not only was it enjoyable to drink but it kind of
mimicked what a beer was like so that worked great additionally I started
drinking herbal teas more often like I said it was at the end of the day and I
don't necessarily want to have like a caffeinated beverage even if it was
green tea or black tea definitely wouldn't want to have a coffee you know
after the evening time frame so herbal teas were great and made it interesting
so there were many different flavors of herbal teas that I tried and it made it
a little interesting a little bit novel so just a quick recap I identified the
different cues realized that there were many different cues to do the routine
which was drinking a beer and I replaced the routine of drinking beer with
drinking other beverages some of which you know mimicked the qualities of beer
one with the carbonated water it was just fizzy and carbonated that's
like beer and then the other with herbal tea it was interesting to drink those
because of the diverse flavors and they could try something new I enjoy trying
new beers and different drinks in general so having an herbal
tea with a unique flavor that I haven't had before worked out great all in all
it was a good experiment and a good experience we have done dry months in
the past and you know it's a nice thing to do to take a break from something
that you're you know you have a habit on and then you know for me personally it's
really cool to see something where it's really ingrained as a habit and then it
was frankly pretty easy to not drink for thirty-one days after probably drinking
almost every single day the preceding you know two years or something like
that if you have any questions about the process that I went through leave a
comment below really interested to hear if you know I left something out or
you're interested in the details question of the day is do you have a
habit that you want to change if so let us know in the comments below really
would be interesting to hear what's going on with you
you
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