No, I’m not talking about cheating as in one would cheat a person. Cheating, here, refers to the concept of cheat days. For example, let’s say you’re on a strict carbohydrate diet for a month. If you fill your stomach with a nice meal full of carbohydrates, that’d be a cheat meal. If you do that for the entire day, that’d be a delicious cheat day. So that’s the cheating I’m talking about: Pausing an ongoing behavior for a limited amount of time, only to get back to the same behavior right afterward.
The concept of cheating, though, is controversial even to me. I’m talking about it in a publication called Sustainable Productivity, but it doesn’t mean I fully endorse it either. There are pros and cons to cheating, especially when it comes to finding a balance. It’s not easy to adjust the dose. You could aim for one cheat meal every week, but then you would spoil the whole diet by turning one meal into one full day. When you let go of the discipline, cheating can put you back at the starting point—sometimes even more behind.
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Since cheating is so controversial to me, I am still not sure if it’s worthy of a place among other Sustainable Productivity principles. Yet, I also believe it can be an excellent catalyst to provide sustainability. That’s why I decided to write about it—and that’s why I’m going to analyze the concept from a sustainability point of view.
Artist: Gülfemin Buğu Tekcan — cosmodotart
Let’s first take a look at how cheating can benefit sustainability. Consider that you set yourself a goal to take 8,000 steps a day. It’s not a significant number, so the first few days go easy. Day by day, every day, you continue to take at least 8,000 steps. You begin the reap the health benefits. You start feeling more energized, and a warm feeling surrounds you, assuring that you can do even more. Everything’s going right on track—but then, one day, you postponed your walk every hour only to see it’s already midnight. There could be several reasons: Perhaps the weather was quite wet that you couldn’t risk going outside, or you were too busy with work during the day and then spent the rest of your time with your family but could not step outside. It happens.
Now you have two choices: You either get demotivated and stop chasing your goal since your streak is broken, or you call the day off and don’t drag the day’s failure to the next one. Tomorrow is a new day, and it begins with a fresh start. If you utilize this mindset, then occasional cheat days won’t hurt your long-term goals. When it happens, you don’t allow yourself to get emotional because you’d know that you already have a sustainable way to achieve your goal. Now, this is a good way.
On the other hand, cheating can seriously harm your aims to achieve sustainability. If you are trying to alter a habit, for example, cheating can remove your gains. Habits are neural pathways, and the more you do something, the stronger the path becomes.1 When you are changing a particular habit, you make two different neural pathways fighting each other. However, the new one is weak, and the strong one is always trying to put you back on the right track. An excellent example of this case would be to change eating habits. According to nutritionist Lucie Villeneuve, a cheat meal is a disguised way of encouraging an unhealthy relationship with food.2 They feed the all-or-nothing mentality. Once you cheat, you feel like you can continue cheating. Thus is gone your efforts to change your eating habits. The key to avoiding the harms of cheating is to encapsulate the moment and leave it behind. What’s done is done and should not affect your future decisions.
There is one more thing to beware of when it comes to cheating, and that is consciousness. When you cheat consciously, you have the opportunity to stop whenever you want. If you’re unconsciously cheating, then what you’re doing might benefit the sustainability of the opposite of what you want to achieve. Oftentimes you lose control if you cheat on a roll. For example, if you have two consecutive days cheating on your goal to take 8,000 steps, you might unconsciously skip it again on the third day. One helpful way to have consciousness without putting too much effort is to build a habit gradually. Instead of starting with 8,000 steps, you could start with 2,000 and increase the number gradually over a month. By the time you get to the point of steps you want to take daily, you’ll already have built some habit of walking. Then, your brain will remind you to go out and walk on the third day.
What’s your experience with cheating? Do you think it might be a good way to achieve a sustainable way of life? Or does it bear too much of a danger to your healthy habits? Let me know in the comments.
Neural Plasticity: 4 Steps to Change Your Brain & Habits by Hilary Stokes Ph.D. and Kim Ward Ph.D. from Authenticity Associates
The Problem with Cheat Meals by Lucie Villeneuve from Edukale