Despite my body being fatter than I'd like and my 'stache being thinner than I'd like, I found that I kept rather mindlessly doing two things that contributed to both problems.
1. Hitting the snooze button over and over until I no longer had time to bike to work and "had" to drive.
2. Drinking beer too habitually -- just grabbing a beer before stopping to ask myself if water would please me just as well, or having a second just because the first one was empty and the night was still young.
So I'm trying something new, and it's been pretty great so far. I have a sticky note that I keep in my notebook (it could just as easily live in a wallet). It's divided into a "bike" column and a "beer" column. Every time I commute to work by bike, I put a mark in the bike column. Every time I drink a beer, I put a mark in the beer column.
The rule is simple: beer column marks can never outnumber bike column marks.
The permission-to-drink element hasn't really made me ride more, but the little dose of dopamine I get every time I mark down my bike point is a definite reinforcer (mostly, the ride is its own reward. It's just hard to remember that at #%#$ in the morning).
And it definitely makes me slow down and think, "do I want this beer enough to spend a beer mark on it?" Usually the answer is no. If the answer is yes -- man, that beer tastes better these days.
Anyone want to join me? Or have other self-imposed "this for that" point system ideas to share?
