eat your dessert first.

Here's a random idea that just popped into my head: Eat dessert before your meal to eat less.

This is purely hypothesis, and I don't think it'd be a good idea for every meal (that's just asking for diabetes), but it might be worth a shot. I just ate a cookie before lunch today and it really killed my appetite. This resulted in me eating a surprisingly small lunch considering I didn't have breakfast today. Had I not eaten that cookie, I probably would have filled myself up on lunch, then fallen to my cravings and stuffed in a cookie afterwards anyway.

This all seems a pretty logical if you think about it. Dessert is usually that extra temptation at the end of your meal, but why wait 'til you're full to indulge if you know you're probably going to anyway? Indulge first. Get it over with. Then move on to finish as much of your main course as you can. I bet the second half of that steak is much easier to leave behind than that deep fried triple fudge cheesecake volcano that you can't wait to try.

 

A quick google search: There's a short 1962 Time article that seems to agree with me (although since I started watching Mad Men, I became keenly aware of everything wrong with '60s culture, so I wouldn't give this too much credit without some more investigation)

epic to-dos

I've spent a lot of time trying out various to-do lists and task managers and even creating my own before settling on one amazing one. After finally settling in with something that does (almost) everything I want it to, I'm moving on to the next big step in productivity: getting myself to actually do the shit I put on my list.

 
This is not to say I haven't been doing the things I write down until now, but I've long lost count of the number of items that have stayed on my to-do lists for days, weeks, or even months without getting completed. Finally, I just get sick of them or realize they don't apply anymore and they get tossed out with the other remains of the list like the moldy leftovers in the fridge. Sure, there are many strategies out there already for making a manageable to-do list, but let's say you tried them all and it's still not working for you. You sit there and stare at your perfectly worded and structured laundry lists, and the freaking motivation to move just doesn't come, what do you do?
 
I propose a [simple] solution: Take that one to-do on your list that you're absolutely dreading into an epic to-do. Make it sound so freaking awesome and ridiculous that you can't help not crossing it off your list. Hell, make it so embarrassingly crazy that you just want to cross it off and burn your list before someone finds it and refers you to the nearest psychiatric ward. Instead of the generic "do laundry", put down something so bad you want it off your list immediately, like "MAKE IT RAIN ON DEM CLOTHES!!1!" I feel awkward just typing that out.
 
Fine, if you don't want to do something quite so drastic, I understand, but just make it a little more entertaining for yourself every time you check your list. You don't have to be laugh out loud funny, but you can at least be smiling on the inside. You are your own audience when it comes to to-do lists, so why not ease the tension a little? It'll make life more interesting, and hopefully a little easier, too.
 
My to-do for writing this entry? "blog some epic shit" (changed after i postponed "write post about epic to-do (posterous)" for 2 days). It works.