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“You know what? I think I’m ready to do it.” We’re driving back to Minneapolis after a long cabin weekend and my never-ending yammering about habits and goals has my friend all riled up.

“I’m gonna do it for real this time,” he nods. “I’ve got this terrible habit of checking my phone first thing in the morning and I’m going to go cold turkey.” He passes an old Nissan and takes a sip of his gas station coffee.

“I’m going to stop checking my phone and start meditating! Yes!” He slaps the steering wheel.

“Oh dude, you don’t have to do that,” I tell him. “Why don’t you just Indiana Jones it?”

Unsurprisingly, this makes zero sense to my friend. So I elaborate.

“You’ve seen Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark, right?” (This is a trick question because we’re both children of the 80s and OBVIOUSLY HE’S SEEN IT.)

“Indiana Jones doesn’t just, like, snatch the golden idol and leave that pedestal empty. He replaces the it with a bag of sand that’s about the same size and weight.”

Now, leaving aside the fact that it’s, uh, pretty problematic that Indiana Jones is stealing ancient artifacts from indigenous people and his sandbag swap triggers a series of booby traps, I think what he does nicely illustrates something we should do when we’re trying to break bad habits. Instead of trying to break a bad habit cold turkey or replace it with something painfully virtuous, what if we swapped in something slightly less ‘bad’? Share on X read more…