This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantan.
We're a couple of weeks into the new year, and perhaps you've already fallen behind on your resolutions to floss every day, eat healthy, exercise.
Today we're going to help you get back on track.
We'll talk about the psychology of resolutions, and Dan Pink will join me to offer tips to help you stick to your goals.
Before we get to that, though, I want to take a few minutes to talk about something happening on my own staff.
It's 2016, and I have not smoked for two minutes.
This is Max Nestrack.
He's been working at Hidden Brain for the last couple of months.
His resolution was to quit smoking.
I decided I wanted to help.
I told Max to do three things based on findings from social science research.
We'll come back to one of them later in this episode, and we'll have another episode in a few months to discuss how and whether the interventions worked.
Max has been recording an audio diary since the day he quit.
Today is day one.
I've noticed that time goes really slow when you're quitting smoking.
Day one of quitting smoking continues.
It's like this mental obsession.
So you're kind of like, oh, should I have a granola bar?
No, I want to have a cigarette.