Why the daily makes sense

Nobody sets out to have a glass of wine every night of the year. It starts as an occasional thing on a hard day, and then hard days are most days, and then the glass is there on the easy days too because six o'clock has learned to expect it. By the time you notice, it isn't a decision. It's the hour. It's worth being honest about what the daily gives you, because a habit that gave nothing wouldn't have survived a week.

It gives you an end to the day. Work stops, or the children stop, and the treat is the line under it, the thing that says the demanding part is over. It gives you a pleasure, and the pleasure is real, and I'm not going to pretend chocolate isn't nice or that the first mouthful of a cold glass isn't good. It gives you something that's for you, in a day that was mostly for other people. It gives you a small ritual, a shape to the evening that would otherwise be a shapeless stretch between getting in and going to bed. And it gives you the earning, the feeling of having been paid, which on some days is the only pay you'll get.

Underneath those there's a set of beliefs, and they're the chapters that follow. That you've earned it. That it's a reward. That it's the best bit of your day. That it's only small. That you'd be miserable without it. That it's how you cope. That a bad day needs one. That taking it away would be punishing yourself. That it sets you up for tomorrow. Each has something true in it. Each is also doing the same job, which is making sure the treat arrives at six whatever kind of day it was, and that you don't look too closely at whether you wanted it.

The daily is an answer to real needs. An end to the day, a pleasure, something for you. This book isn't going to tell you those needs aren't real. It's going to ask whether the daily still meets them, because I don't think it does, and the research on rewards and habits points the same way. A reward that comes every day stops rewarding. What's left is the routine and the earning, and the earning is doing most of the work. Then it'll look at what the daily costs, which isn't mainly money or health. And then it'll give you a way to have treats again, which is a different thing from having the daily.