If you have a pack of cigarettes in your pocket ...

But if you have a pack of cigarettes in your pocket,

So everything is not so bad today.

This is the famous phrase from the famous song of Viktor Tsoi. The song, it seems, is not about smoking at all, but not so long ago I understood that only a smoker could write that way. I do not know and, probably, I will never know what Viktor Tsoi meant, but the meaning of this phrase came to me about a year ago.



This phrase contains one of the main features of smoking and its influence on the psyche and values ​​of a person. You can ignore this feature, or reject it, but I suggest looking at it in more detail and using it for your own purposes. I closely watched the influence of smoking on my brain for a year, I hasten to share the results.

Smoker Passport

If you have been to the Czech Republic, you probably have heard that there is a so-called "Beer passport". This is a piece of paper that you can buy and carry along the bars, and each require a stamp, like "I've been here."

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Smokers do not have passports, but so that you do not have doubts about my competence, I will tell you a little about your tobacco adventures.



So, I smoke almost without interruption for 18 years. I started at the age of 17, I remember exactly this time - university, the end of the first year, session, summer, dorm, only three exams, the first one passed, before the second - a week, there is really nothing to do, money - the cat wept, and the roommate - the smoker . I shot a cigarette, tried it. I got used to it quickly, almost immediately, and after a couple of days I bought my first “Balkan” in a soft pack.



Well, then - the usual story of an ordinary smoker. The first years just smoked and not steamed. Then he began to think - not to quit? I tried it several times, mostly unsuccessfully, sometimes I did not smoke for several months, but the habit returned every time.

Feature

A year ago, in March 2018, I again tried to quit smoking. It turned out very badly - I did it before the holiday, as a result, I spoiled my impressions of the rest. Week lasted, but on returning to work again began to smoke. He made the second mistake - he smoked secretly from his family, only at work. It’s not that they would swear hard, I just announced to them that I had quit, and somehow it was dumb to confess my own weakness.



Then I noticed this damn feature - everything in life faded before the opportunity to smoke. Smoking took the first place in the system of values. And everything else faded into the background.



I almost became indifferent to my own appearance, life goals, food, rest, relationships with people, self-development - in general, everything except for a smoke. To myself, I already looked like a finished drug addict.



The only thing that more or less went - work. Exactly for one reason - I smoked at work like a steam locomotive. If earlier I smoked a pack in about 26 hours, now I planted it in one working day. At home, in the evening, I hung around without a goal, performing, like a robot, some duties and expecting only one thing - in the morning and arrival at work. By evening, I couldn’t physically smoke, I hated both myself and the habit, but I still stuffed myself as much as possible, to the point that, finally, standing near the car, I smoked two cigarettes in a row. I knew that in an hour the discomfort would pass, and I would again wait for the opportunity to smoke.



Such a hard regime made itself felt - I wanted to smoke more and more. As a result, he could not stand it, he went through humiliation and started smoking “officially” again.



Smoking has ceased to be the number one value, but, to my surprise, it did not return to its former place somewhere at the end of the list. It continued to significantly influence motivation, attitudes towards life, work, goals, and self-development.



Well, here it came to me. Smoking has always been very high in the value system, I just did not notice it. And this is a problem. Approximately, as health, there it is generally a hackneyed stereotype - you do not appreciate, until you lose, and then it will be too late.



The problem is that for 17 years I have not realized that “if you have a pack of cigarettes in your pocket, then everything is not so bad today.” And I began to retrospectively look at my many years of smoking experience to see how this habit influenced my life. Well, something, somehow, you know, it became uncomfortable.

Values ​​and Goals

I'll start with a simple one — values ​​and goals. Any person has a set of values ​​and goals. Someone has a great goal to buy, someone is dreaming about his own house, for some, a couple of nine are enough for the evening.



Accordingly, each has a built-in plan-actual analysis mechanism. At any point in time, this analyzer determines whether movement towards goals is going well, whether values ​​and principles are being followed, and in general, how are things going?



Looking back at my life, I realized that my affairs almost always went well. There were, of course, crises, but, usually, it was something out of the ordinary, severely disturbing the usual course of events, like the illness of someone from a family, getting into an accident or financial difficulties with a mortgage. In the rest of the time, I had "everything is not so bad today."



Although, if you look objectively, everything was bad. Of these 17 years, only a few can be considered fit, when I somehow tried to move and move somewhere. The rest of the time I was fine. The most rotten thing - I thought that I was fine, because I was fine. And in fact, I just had a smoke.



Smoking was cozy, warm, alone as my refuge from all the hardships of this world. Something does not work? Well, okay, but you can smoke. Did a bad job and got a play? Yes, and to hell with him, smoke, no one takes. Has my wife quarreled? It's time to smoke. Too lazy to work? That's right, from the work of horses die, it is better to smoke.



If you read the book by Allen Carr "Easy way to quit smoking", then remember how much he argued that a cigarette does not relieve stress, does not help to relax or concentrate. Alas, here I disagree with the respected author.



The point is not that a cigarette is not relaxing. It eliminates, replaces the very reason for which it was necessary to relax. Cigarette easily and imperceptibly replaces any life purpose.



Is it difficult to achieve a goal like promotion at work? Well, it is not necessary, achieve a better goal easier - to smoke. Can't increase your income? Smoke it easier.



In this sense, smoking is an ingenious product. First, relatively inexpensive, there is a choice for any wallet. Secondly, special conditions are not necessary to smoke - it is enough to step aside. Compare, for example, with booze - it is impossible neither at work, nor at the wheel, nor in the morning. Thirdly, there is almost no momentary influence on the psyche, behavior and adequacy. From the smoke does not stagger, as if from a booze, the smell disappears quickly, you can continue to work, even with complex tasks. Fourthly, it is very well dosed - it is not necessary to smoke a pack in order to reach some condition.



Smoking is very easy. Everything else in life is more complicated. Therefore, the brain chooses a cigarette as a target. Well, then the algorithm is simple: achieved the goal - and good. The brain is satisfied, and no longer wants to engage in any other goal.



When I was a secret smoker, I felt all these processes very sharply. In general, now I am glad that it happened, and smoking opened for me from such an unexpected side.

Efficiency

I am a big fan of efficiency in work, so I can not ignore the influence of smoke on the purely technical parameters of my own activity.



The first thing that catches your eye is the time spent on smoking. Take a clean time to hike to the place, smoking a cigarette, returning to the workplace. Here, of course, depends on the conditions of a particular office.



Now, to smoke, I have to walk a few meters. The process of smoking a cigarette itself always took me about 3 minutes. A simple calculation shows that I lose 30-60 minutes during the working day.



Once I worked in an office high-rise, inside which there was not a single smoking room. You want to raise - stamp on the street, go around the building and push on a dirty spit-hole with the rest of the lucky ones. And our office was located on the 12th floor. If my memory serves me, one iteration took 10 minutes, and for a working day, it took about 2 hours.



In winter, i.e. about half of the year, by the time of smoking it is necessary to add a minute for dressing / stripping. In a decent office, they did not allow me to hang a jacket on the back of a chair, and had to be dragged to the closet.



Next, add time to use SEC - means that support / provoke smoking. In my case, this is coffee and tea. Without the SEC, I can not smoke all day - just do not climb. For example, on weekends, at home, I sometimes smoke only 3-5 cigarettes per day, and no longer pulls. And at work everything is different - I want to smoke, but I can not. Here tea and coffee come to the rescue.



Smoking after coffee is a special pleasure. Actually, all the pleasure lies in the absence of trouble. Coffee so strongly affects the receptors that tobacco smoke is almost not felt, and is drawn in like air. Tea is worse, and I use it, rather, to dilute coffee.



Estimate the difference in quantity. On weekends - one morning cup of tea per day. On weekdays - about ten, coffee and tea in half. Each mug is to go to the kitchen, boil water (if there is no cooler), pour in, add sugar, stir, return. A couple of minutes, no less.



Plus collateral loss - frequent trips, sorry for being direct, to the toilet. And if there is an old dryer in it, then you can safely add a couple more minutes.



So it’s not two, but three hours, if not more. Smoking can safely deduct 40 percent of the working day - this is a purely technical loss of time.



You can, of course, reassure yourself that this time is not wasted - I can not just smoke, but think about the task, or discuss some working problems with my colleagues. I do not know about you, but I noticed a long time ago: crap is all. Yes, getting up from the table, you are going to think about work. In fact, either you are just fluttering with someone from your acquaintances, or you are listening to conversations of strangers, or you are blunt on the Internet, or you are simply blunt.



Yes, I almost forgot - there is still time to unload from the context and dive back. If you are going to smoke, you do not get up immediately and decisively, but, so to speak, you are doing some nonsense, like watching a Facebook tape, checking mail or writing a message in the messenger. Returning to the place, doing the same thing.



So, perhaps, still lost 50% of the time.



I will not discuss the negative effect of smoking on the quality of the thought process, because, alas, I have no data for analysis. I smoke from the institute, and have never worked while being a non-smoker. To compare, for example, smoking and non-smoking programmers, there is no special meaning, because too large non-smoking differences.

Using

Perhaps the features of smokers can be used for the benefit of the company. This is not the promotion of smoking and its benefits, but pure pragmatism: if a person smokes anyway, then why not take this into account in management?



First - do not try to discourage smoking, complicating the process itself. I do not know of a single example for someone to quit smoking due to the fact that the company, for example, moved the smoking room away. I did not break run from the 12th floor. My smoking colleagues - too. In the same way, we ran across the entire plant when the smoking room was moved to the back.



The smoker perceives such events as a challenge. He can not quit, or smoke less, because it turns out that he "won". It will freeze, squish in new sneakers over muddy puddles, tolerate haughty looks, but continue to smoke. And the company just spends more time employees.



They say that the option of a complete ban on smoking works well. I can not say anything on this subject - I did not see such examples live.



When working with a smoker, it is quite possible to take into account his reduced criticality to what is happening and all its manifestations. A tobacco lover is not as important a promotion as a non-smoker. To refusal to increase the salary, he will react easier. The discomfort of the workplace will be less embarrassing him.



But there is a downside. The smoker will aim less at the goals that the company sets. It makes less quality product. He will not so much steam, if something breaks.



But because of the lack of coffee, he will be much more upset. It is better not to experiment with it. Although, hell knows. Maybe there will be less smoking without coffee?



It is necessary to take into account the special communication between smokers. As a rule, they all know each other, because periodically shoot cigarettes and lighters. They may not know the name and position, but the common habit of them makes some kind of community.



Well, do not forget about the constant guilt of the smoker. Almost everyone has it. It is a shame before oneself, before a family, parents, a boss, a society, random passive smokers, interlocutors, inhaling the aroma of a smoked cigarette. I don’t know how to use this feeling of guilt - here you need manipulation skills. But I have a firm conviction that someone had once manipulated me on this topic.

Summary

When they talk about the dangers of smoking, they usually mean the effect on health. Of course, I do not question the facts revealed by numerous scientific studies. But there is, as they say, grief from the mind. The brain of the engineer does not want to believe a word, he wants to make sure himself. Desirable - on the basis of the experiment. Ideally, above oneself, as above the most controlled object.



Like most smokers, the potential harm to my health is, of course, annoying, but not enough to quit. And I could not find other compelling reasons for a decisive step.

And now I found it. I saw that half of my life lived in half. I was content with the minimum, I strove for the most accessible, I wanted the simplest one, because "If you have a pack of cigarettes in your pocket, then everything is not so bad today."