2. GIVE YOUR BAD HABITS A MONETARY VALUE. In 2012, two management scholars at the University of Toronto conducted a series of experiments in which they asked participants to think of their incomes in terms of an hourly wage, as well as assign a monetary value to the time they spent on leisure activities. For example, participants were asked to consider their (nonworking) time on the internet in terms of foregone wages. Thinking this way reduced the happiness people derived from their leisure activities. The researchers interpreted this finding as a negative consequence of monetizing leisure, but such a method can be of great value for dissuading us from engaging in addictive pastimes we dislike. Say, for example, that you find yourself bingeing on social media, which research has clearly found lowers happiness when overused, especially for young people. If you consume the average amount of social media in America (about 142 minutes per day) and earn the average hourly wage (about $29.92), you are effectively “spending” about $71 worth of time per day on this activity. Remember your hourly wage at the beginning of each day, and get in the habit of reminding yourself of it as you start something that might ordinarily gobble up your time. You’ll be more likely to make a cost-effective decision to use social media to quickly catch up on your friends’ lives and the news, and not to feed your brain’s reward system through a costly hour of mindless scrolling.