Ask HN: How did you break a bad habit?

1. Verbalize what is bad about the bad habit.

2. Verbalize what would be good about the good habit that should replace the bad one.

3. Do the bad habit. Focus on the bad outcome of it.

4. Once in a while when you actually do the good habit, focus on the positive outcome.

In other words, train yourself as you would train a dog.

Example:

1. I like eating which makes me fat, my joints hurt, I'm slow.

2. If I would be more active, like going to a park, I would feel better just by being in nature and I would loose weight which means I would look better.

3. Eat crap. While you eat be very conscious that this is how the joints pain is made, how body fat is made. Don't stop.

4. While you eat healthy or go to a park or to gym or you walk also be very conscious that this is how fit people are made and that after doing it you are a little bit more fit than just before. If you keep this course for 3 years you will be very fit.

I looked in the mirror and lifted my t-shirt, noticed my belly was starting to get fat.

Then I quit sugar and carbs and never went back - but it was hard, after 2-3 months I got crazy cravings for carbs but I pushed through it, I compare the pain of changing something important to the most "extreme alternative" - which in this case and in many cases around bad habits is death.

Break the habit or die early?

By objectifying your actions as soon as you realize you're doing your habit and taking a minute to let those feelings pass.

You could start simple by putting a rubber band around your wrist and pulling the the elastic band back and slapping it on your skin each time you're getting the urge. That'll help you become mindful about how often the urge happens, what time of day it happens etc.

There's a good trick I once heard called "Don't break the streak." You know what you want to stop doing, so focus on getting through just this day without doing that thing.

Then the next day remind yourself that you've got a streak going -- one entire whole day, and you could make it two if you make it to the end of this day. And then keep the streak going the next day and the next...

Basically, it gives a feeling for what you're doing -- an in-built reward for successfully not-doing it.

With noprocrast.

EDIT: Maybe about time to use it again. It worked amazingly well the first time. (6hrs off after 1 hr on) It would be great to have something so immediately effective with other things-one-might-want-to-give-up.

Watch one of the 20 minute BJ Fogg videos on habit formation. Then figure out ways to morph your bad habit into a harmless 'other' habit. Or break the feedback loops that trigger the habit.

stickK app is very useful for breaking bad... habit. You put money on the stake to follow through.

In my experience, nootropics can be very helpful during first few weeks of trying to break a bad habit. You also need will power / other methods mentioned on this page, but proper nootropic can prevent giving up and going back after 3 days.

I follow the Seinfeld "don't break the chain" (duckduckgo it).

I do actually break the chain if:

- I'm ill

- I'm overseas

I might change the latter.

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.“

-Oscar Wilde

You replace it with a good (or, at least, better) habit.

put up barriers. but ultimately it has to come from deep inside. i had a bad habit for 22 yrs - nail biting. i took a job after freelancing for 8 yrs and stopped cold turkey because I wanted to be presentable. I had tried to stop countless times before.

What worked for me... Punching myself very hard in the arm.

I replaced it with another habit.