elfs | Subversively hacking the environment.

One of the lifehacks gurus recently said something to the effect that he could leave post-it notes for himself all over his own home, but he couldn't do the same thing at work. People would notice.

I beg to differ. I hacked one piece of my office environment a few weeks ago. I put up a little post-it note in one corner of the glass on the refrigerator where my company dutifully supplies its employees with free soda pop. On it I wrote in my best handwriting "CFD."

CFD is one of those annoying diet buzzwords from the Eighties, so obscure that Googling for it brings up exactly nothing at all. It's probably the easiest to remember because it stands for one of those obvious things: conscious food decision. It's a pretty straightforward idea: Do I want to eat this? Why do I want to eat this? Is there a better way to get what I want? (Often, when standing in front of a 'fridge and I'm thinking that I don't know what I want, I'm reminded of the rule of thumb: if you don't know what you want, it's probably sleep.)

It seems to be working. I've gone from drinking three or four pops a day, down to two a day all of last week, to one a day on Monday and yesterday, and so far none today.

I've done this in cycles, which is bad. I'm hoping that this minor hack, one little thing, will remind me not to cycle back up to a three-or-four a day habit. The nice thing about this lifehack is that nobody else on my team will take it down becaue they don't know why it's there. It was obviously put there with deliberation so it must be important.