That Quitting episode of This American Life keeps running through my head. I listened to it several times. I took notes. I looked at the notes each day. I outlined a post about them in my head. I ordered Evan Harris’s books. I did nothing. I did not write. I did not quit.
These are the stages of quitting the episode outlines.
- The quitter thinks about it
- The quitter thinks about it some more
- The quitter quits
- And then there’s the post quitting stuff
Two whole stages of “thinking about it,” in which we tell ourselves we are coordinating a careful and thoughtful attack. The reason for our delay is logical and tactical. We can’t jump in hastily or we will fail. We think and think and think. We delay the quit.
But, it seems to me that this “we” is not everyone. There are those who like to plan action and those who like to act. Being a planner myself, I instinctively envy the advantages held by the action hero set. An idea pops into their heads, they efficiently assess its merits, and they execute it. What a thing of beauty. Having been in a relationship with such a person, it retroactively occurs to me that his quitting didn’t go any more smoothly than my quitting. For me, the devilish stage was getting past steps 1 and 2. For him, the pitfalls popped up in step 4… you guessed it, due to lack of forethought. So, there are no clear winners to the quitting game. Still, this quote nags at me.
I don’t have anything to quit anymore… I suppose I could quit smoking or quit eating things that are bad for me, or, you know, there are a lot of little quits I could execute, which I might do just to tide me over.
That’s Evan Harris talking about, yes, what appears to be quitting withdrawal. She is so good at quitting that major lifestyle quits that evade me like antelope on a plain are barely mentionable. My first reaction was intense frustration and envy. But, then I thought, maybe I just need to start thinking about these quits like Evan does, as small potatoes. So much time is spent researching why things are hard to quit, picking apart our neurochemical relationships with processed food, gambling, and shopping sprees. But all that is step 4. If you can’t get past step 1 and 2 you aren’t wrestling with those problems yet. I’m not saying they don’t merit some sort of strategy, but you can’t fight the Final Boss before you conquor the Mini Boss you’re on now.
So, what are these step 1 and 2 bosses? They seem to be perceptual problems. The perception that you are making a lifetime decision, instead of a this moment decision. The perception that you are giving up familiar pleasures versus pursuing novel pleasures. The perception that the new behaviors will consume more resources than the old behaviors. The perception that failure is more likely than success. The perception that quitting is painful, even if you succeed.
So, what if I switch gears from “momentous decision” to “no big deal”? As in, “I’m just going to do X today, no big deal.” No rewarding myself as though I’d just climbed Mt. Everest. No freaking out about what will happen if I don’t do it the same way next time. Just a small smug smile. That’s it. Because this is a little quit.
It is a little quit.
It is.
Hello, Door. 