Before you start

This is a short book and you can read it in two or three sittings. It's about one habit, which is giving yourself something at the end of every day and calling it a treat. What the something is varies. A glass of wine at six. A bar of chocolate once the children are down. An order placed on a bad Tuesday. The takeaway that was Friday's and is now Thursday's as well. The next episode. The phone in bed. A cigarette on the step, or the vape, "as a treat". What doesn't vary is what gets said with it. I've earned it. I deserve this. I need this. And what doesn't vary is that it happens every day, whatever the day was like.

I'm going to argue three things. The first is that the daily treat makes sense from the inside. The day was long, there was nothing in it that was for you, and here's something that is. The second is that a reward given every day regardless of the day isn't a reward any more. It's a routine, and a routine can't do the job a reward does, because a reward marks a day out from other days and the daily marks nothing. Most of what it now gives you is the relief of its arriving, and "I've earned it" is found after the decision, not before it, which is why it gets said on every day and never once turns you down. The third is practical. You can tell a chosen treat from one that just arrived, and there are two ways out that both work. Keep the treat and drop the story, or keep the story and make the treat rare enough to be true. Chapters 17 to 21 cover how.

This isn't a book against pleasure. It won't tell you to give up wine or chocolate or television, and it doesn't think you should feel bad about any of them. It's about the daily, the one that comes at the same hour whether you earned it or not, and what it's quietly stopped doing for you.

Three cautions, and they matter more in this book than in most.

If your treat is alcohol and it's every day, read chapter 22 before you change anything. The NHS says that someone who has become physically dependent on alcohol can come to harm by stopping overnight, and should get advice from a GP about how to cut down and whether medicine is needed. If you drink most days and the thought of a day without it makes you anxious, or you've noticed shaking or sweating in the morning, that's a conversation with a GP first and this book second.

If your treat is food and eating feels out of your control, or you eat and then try to undo it, or you spend much of the day thinking about your weight and shape, that isn't this book. The NHS says to see a GP as soon as you can, and the charity Beat has a helpline.

And if the reason the treat is the only good thing in your day is that nothing has felt good for weeks, most of the day, most days, the NHS says to see a GP. Chapter 15 is about the empty day, but an empty fortnight is something else.

Smoking and vaping have their own books in this series, The cigarette does nothing and The vape in your pocket, and if that's your treat those books say what this one can't.

The notes at the back give my sources and their limits. Where I'm giving my own reasoning and not a finding, I'll say so.