Have you ever wished that a future and improved version of yourself would travel back in time to tell you exactly what you need to do to become the person you wish you were?

Is it just me? Well, regardless, this book is the closest thing you'll get that.

I say this because I have been in your situation. I know your struggle all too well.

I know what it's like to languish for years and years, procrastinating on everything from school or work obligations to the actions you know would help you reach your dream life.

I know what it's like to make the same promises and commitments, always hopeful that this time around would be different, before everything fizzles out and find yourself at a new rock bottom. A dark place of social isolation, binges, and self-loathing.

Between my 18th and 28th birthdays, I went from being an excited and ambitious newly-minted adult to a worn-out, depressed cubicle-dweller, coasting through life in utter mediocrity and apathy.

But then, well...

I got better.

…

It would have been late 2014. On another one my nights of aimless Reddit browsing, I came across a random comment from someone raving about an 80’s self-help book, and how it helped them finally quit smoking after trying everything else.

My immediate thought was, C’mon? How could some ideas in a book make anyone quit the most notorious of bad habits? There’s just no way.

Yet, as I poked around, I came across more and more hype and success stories.

A tiny seed of hope was planted in my mind: if so many people were clamoring on about how a book miraculously made them quit the most notorious vice, maybe there was something there. Maybe I could borrow and bend the core concepts and use them to end my own set of bad habits.

It was a long shot—like reading a yoga book to improve my golf swing—but I had nothing to lose. So, I read it.

…

Man, looking back… that book… well, it changed everything.

The EasyWay to Quit Smoking changed the way I saw my vices. It changed the way I saw my past behaviors; my habitual patterns, my self-control failures, my shameful and unexplainable actions. It changed how I saw myself.

All of that was great, but it didn't really affect what I actually did. It was it long before I was back to my old ways—yet my perspective towards habits remained altered—my mind was reframed, if you will—and with that, I continued to explore.

In the years that followed, I went on I started on a strange and twisted journey. I read sobriety memoirs and other unconventional books on addiction—often written by people with stories I I could almost fully relate to, despite our starkly different vices. I also read books on psychology, biology, human behaviour. I read books on the pursuit of pleasure and happiness. Books on depression, and mindfulness.