My lovely wife approached me after work one day with a book in hand.
"Will you do this with me?"
She caught me off guard with the hard pitch and was waiting for an answer.
The cover looked awfully healthy and that wasn't how I was trying to live at that time. But how hard can it be. It's just 21 days.
"Sure. I'm in."
Then once she had buy in she hit me with the fine print.
"But you know it also means no alcohol... and I want to do it for 30 days."
Bravo. Somebody get her into a sales role.
At that time in my life I had a schedule that mostly looked like:
- Sales meetings to win new customers over drinks
- Drinks with existing clients to keep them happy
- Recruiting new team members over drinks
- Keeping existing team members happy over drinks
- Conference in Vegas with a lot of drinks
- Pitching angel investors my side hustle over drinks
She had me hogtied with commitment and consistency persuasion
As Cialdini says:
Put ’em on paper. Get the customer’s OK on paper. Get the money up front. Control ’em. Control the deal. Ask ’em if they would buy the car right now if the price is right. Pin ’em down.
So I casually said "Got it. Lets do it."
Week 1
I'm sleeping like shit. Worse than ever. But I didn't expect this sugar detox to do anything for my sleep anyway and I just chalked it up to a lack of a night cap to help me wind down from the modern rat race.
I start taking melatonin every night to get some sleep.
Week 2
Same. Sleeping like shit. Melatonin helps.
Week 3
Same. Sleeping like shit. Thinking about how we'd be done with this stupid detox if we were following the instructions for 21 days on the cover.
. .
.