Something that has helped me kick some bad but undeniably comforting habits in the last year is keeping actual data. For a few months I logged simple stuff, like whether or not I’d imbibed alcohol, how much sleep I’d got, whatever. And on the other side I’d track simple subjective measures of my mood and energy. I put all this into some simple linear regressions and the evidence was so overwhelmingly clear that it became very hard to convince myself that staying up until 1am was the only way to have quality ‘me time’, or having a boozy night with my wife was the only way to fully relax.

I don’t really go for quantified self stuff generally, I do quite like living intuitively as much as I can. But sometimes you do need to call yourself on your own bullshit.