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Comment by raspyberr | Hacker News Reader

There are no cool tricks to improving yourself. If you want to stop eating sugar then stop eating it. If you want to stop drinking alcohol stop drinking it. If you want to get fit start exercising. If you want to stop being addicted to social media then delete it. You can make all the excuses about how you need it to stay in contact with friends, or deals on the local market, or find events in groups but in the end if you delete it you'll continue living and everything will be fine. If you think it's affecting you negatively, get rid of it, and do the myriad of other things that exist in this world.

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> There are no cool tricks to improving yourself.

This is bullshit. There are lots of simple tricks you can employ to improve yourself. For example:

>If you want to stop eating sugar

If you want to stop eating sugar, throw it all away, and when you go to the supermarket go when you have just eaten, and avoid buying sugar and sugary products.

This gets recommended a lot, but because it is good - Atomic Habits by James Clear.

"""If you want to stop eating sugar, throw it all away, and when you go to the supermarket go when you have just eaten, and avoid buying sugar and sugary products."""

So much easier when you live alone. My spouse buys sugary crap for my kids and then I have to resist all the time. Which I can't. Thus I am overweight.

Well it sounds like you need to discuss things with your spouse. If she doesn't want to stop buying sugary crap, then ask them to put it in a locked cupboard, and them to keep the key.

If your spouse doesn't want to collaborate with you on your goals and things related to your health, then you have some serious discussions to have.

Here's a simple trick - stop shifting the blame on other people.

I really don't get your defeatist attitude:

1. You don't have the willpower to stop eating sugary stuff

2. You don't have the willpower to have a conversation with your spouse to stop buying sugary crap

3. Barring 1 or 2, you aren't talking to your kids to convince them to stop demanding less sugary stuff or aren't presenting them with tasty alternatives.

I'm sure in response to this I'll get a lot of angry replies to the tune of "it's not so simple" or "I don't have enough time for that" or "willpower theory is a myth".

I agree that will is required; the trick though is recognizing where to apply it. I think 1 is a losing strategy. 2 is an excellent starting point, but it might be blocked by another bad practice of some kind...so maybe that needs to be identified and fixed first. I guess the point is that, like that old joke[0], having the hammer is not enough -- knowing what bit to bang on is also critical.

[0]:https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/06/tap/

Do you think you could communicate them that it's ok to have treats as long as they stay outside the house? Seems like they don't yet know or understand your underlying need to keep them out of the house.

Talk to your kids :)

Also, suggest lower-calorie snacks.

> Which I can't.

C’mon, just say no

So the cool trick to not eating sugar is... not eating any sugar.

No, it is two steps before that: re-arranging your day-to-day so that there is no sugar to eat.

No, there is a lot around that, which results in not eating any sugar.

It's really simple and intuitive once you actually think about it. If you found yourself in a situation in which eating sugar was more effort you would be less prone to doing it. Not doing something makes it easier to not doing it afterwards too.

Treatment of any addiction steers right away from the "just don't". It's silly, humans just don't work by simply willing things into place harder and harder, they can either just do things or not, in the former case it's not a problem and in the latter there are things that work and can transition into the former.

> There are no cool tricks to improving yourself.

This is simply not true. There are tons of tricks and strategies. For me, the best strategy is to replace a bad habit with a good one. For example, replace going to the bar after work with going for a run after work.

Isn't this just not going to the bar, except reframed using the somewhat nebulous concept of "habits" that are implied to be some sort of external force that steers our fate and determines our action, not entirely dissimilar to the gods of old.

As much as my brain would like to agree with you and find the black and white more calming of a world to live in, at least for one of these examples I’ve found it untrue in a practical sense.

I’m now 5 years from any sucrose or fructose and I’m getting pretty close to totally zero carbohydrate. I’ve tried dozens of times over decades to “eat less sugar”. Until I learned about how eating fat will help satiate me (not saying it’ll work for everyone but it worked for me), I was unable to successfully eat less or no sugar.

There are plenty of tricks to make improving yourself easier. I could list dozens, especially with respect to eating, drinking, and exercising.

As for social media, I'm not aware of as many, and I'm guessing the OP isn't either, which prompted his post.

When I got my new phone I never installed Instagram, Facebook or TikTok.

I kept the social media apps on my old phone only, so that one became my 'social media phone's instead of my main phone.

> I could list dozens

Please do.

What I mean by "tricks" is that there's only one thing that matters and that's doing it. You're right that there are efficient methods but I certainly have spent a lot of time researching "the best methods" before realising that the most important thing is to actually just start and then everything works out fine later. Everything else is an excuse to put off doing it.

And sometimes the inability to start (or to persist) is caused by preexisting conditions and it’s helpful to get medication or other help to overcome it.

I agree with you in some sense but stopping a bad habit immediately works for some but not for most people. That's why we have so many businesses that are setup to help you beat a bad habit. There is no one way to beat it that's effective for all.

One that I've found is effective to me is to replace the habit with some other habit. One that's beneficial. Example, every time you feel the need to go on social media replace social media with reading. Be sure to have a book at hand. Or a quick 1 minute or so workout. I heard of a guy that curled dumbbells, 10 reps. He got huge biceps. I don't know if it helped his habit but he sure got results. Think of something beneficial to you that you want to improve. You might fail at first but keep at it you'll succeed.

I disagree that there are no cool tricks. See my answer below.

I do agree that simply stop doing the thing is great, but that doesn't seem to work for many people. It can sound ridiculous if you have the will power, but if it were that simple we would have few overweight people, no addicts in the world, etc.

It is simple. It's just not easy. Lots of cool tricks and yet all the addicts are still there. The most important thing is to start. I even think talking too much about it is a negative because it feels like you're heading towards your goal without actually having done something. Spending lots of time talking and researching uses up energy and makes you feel like you've achived something when you actually haven't done anything at all.

Agree in concept, but now moving goal post? First mentioned that "there are no cool tricks". Many addicts _don't know_ about the tricks to help, and many of them are helped when they do have them.

I agree that I've seen many fall into the trap of thinking they have done something when they haven't done anything at all, but that's completely a separate discussion than using behavior psychology to your advantage.

This is needlessly nihilistic. Increment is key. Stopping cold on learned habits and sensory comforts is neurologically difficult. At the first sniff of strife we reach for them as comfort. Incrementally changing input over time is the only manner compatible with how we work.

You didn't dig yourself into a metaphorical hole with a single bite of a shovel, so expecting to step out of it in one go doesn't work. Steps in and steps out.

> There are no cool tricks to improving yourself.

There are and many have been invented very long ago.

Arguably, the concept of "sin" in its original meaning was not a crime but a miss, like when you get disturbed by something and shoot a wrong way rather than straight your target. St. Ignatius of Loyola (the founder of the religious order of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits) never meant his followers to be punished for every sin they commit, he in fact wisely expected them to commit numerous sins every day and train themselves to commit less of them gradually. As taught in his "Spiritual Exercises" scripture (which is the fundamental book of a Jesuit training) one should select one particular sin (eating sugar when not actually starving qualifies by all definitions) they want to fight at the time, do their best observing themselves, draw dots for every time they commit it, connect the dots with a line, recall the cases and observe the daily progress they make. Doing just this can be very effective for many. I encourage to study this text even if you are an atheist, for sake of extracting applicable psycho-technology and some philosophy to think about perhaps. If you consider yourself a Christian I would recommend that particularly strongly as it teaches exactly what to do to progress on your way to Salvation.

> If you want to stop eating sugar then stop eating it.

The problem is there is no single solid "you".

The first lie we tell ourselves is when we say 'I'. It is a lie because in saying 'I' we presume certain things: we presume a certain unity and a certain power. And if I say 'I' today and say 'I' to-morrow, it is supposed to be the same 'I', when in reality there is no connection between them. We are in this present state because of certain obstacles or certain facts in ourselves, and the most important fact that we do not understand is that we have no right to say 'I', for it will be a lie. When you begin to observe yourself you will see that it is really so: there are 'I's in you which do not know one another and never come into contact. For instance, begin to study your likes and dislikes and you will see that you can like one thing one moment and like another thing another moment, and the two are so opposed to one another that you will realize at once that those 'I's never meet. If you observe your decisions you will see that one 'I' decides and another has to carry out the decision, and this one is either unwilling to do it or never heard about it. (Peter D. Ouspensky, "The fourth way".)

The Jesuits' technique can hack this system by teaching the 'I' which makes the decision to persist awake.

Note that both the sources I cited have been written centuries ago :-) (both available on libgen nowadays)

Needless to say, in many cases there also are simple psychological and/or chemical solutions. Many can greatly decrease their craving to specific foods (or foods at all) by adjusting their diet to contain more of specific substances (i.e. specific vitamins, fiber, fatty acids, proteins) or by just healing some specific stress-inducing psychological trauma with assistance of a good psychotherapist.

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