"It's the best bit of my day"

It may be. If the day was a long run of things done for other people, the treat at the end of it can be the only stretch that's yours, and I'm not going to tell you it's nothing. What I'd ask is how much of the best bit is the treat, and how much is the looking forward to it.

Jeff Galak and Joseph Redden, reviewing what researchers call hedonic decline, describe the usual pattern. Repeated exposure to the same pleasant thing typically reduces the enjoyment of it, and they sort the reasons into three kinds, the body's feedback, changes in how the thing is perceived, and what people think about what they're doing. The third is the interesting one for the daily. Part of what wears a pleasure down is knowing you've had it, and knowing you'll have it again tomorrow. The glass on day three hundred can't taste the way the glass on day one did, not because the wine changed but because you did.

There's a second finding from a different field. Kent Berridge and colleagues, working mostly with animals, have argued that what looks like one thing, reward, is at least three things that come apart. Liking is the pleasure itself. Wanting is the pull towards a thing, which can be strong when the liking has faded. Learning is the link between a cue and the thing. Those are their terms, and how far the animal work carries to a person at six o'clock is a question I can't settle. But the shape is familiar. A cue, the hour. A strong wanting, all afternoon. A liking that lasts a mouthful and a half.

So here's my reading. The best bit of the day is real, and most of it is the wanting. It's the expecting, the stretch from about four o'clock when the treat comes into view, and the settling when it arrives. The treat itself is over quickly and mostly not attended to. If that's right, then what you'd lose by changing the daily isn't the best bit. It's the expecting, and chapter 12 is about what the expecting is really doing, and chapter 7 is about whether losing it is as bad as it sounds.

And if the treat is genuinely the best bit, taste and all, that's information too. It means the rest of the day has very little in it, and chapter 15 is about that, because a glass of wine can't fix an empty day and shouldn't be asked to.