Stop Before the Last Drop

A first strong impression is hard to repeat.

A new taste, a trip, a purchase, a game or falling in love delivers pleasure and novelty at once. On repetition the novelty shrinks, and the person tries to get the old effect with a larger dose.

That is how the chase appears not only in addictions but in ordinary entertainment: one more episode, one more drink, one more purchase, one more day of the trip, one more hour of the game.

It is wiser to stop before the point where pleasure turns definitively into fatigue.

Worth setting a limit in advance, because excitement degrades the ability to judge when enough is enough:

• an amount;
• a time;
• a quantity;
• the last train;
• a return date chosen beforehand;
• no second purchase.

This doesn’t mean always choosing the more modest option.

Sometimes the jewellery should be conspicuous, the photograph edited and the dessert a second one. The rule “always dial it down” produces not wisdom but a separate aesthetic of moderation.

It is more useful to pause and choose again:

Do I still want to go on, or do I just not want it to end?

Pleasure doesn’t have to run until it is completely used up. Some good things are better ended with a slight wish for more.

Otherwise the memory keeps not the best moment but the heavy morning after it.

This is clearest on the last day of a trip. Nine days were good; on the tenth come fatigue, packing and the thought of the inbox — and the whole week takes the colour of that morning. Someone who left a day earlier than they wanted remembers the trip. Someone who stayed to the limit remembers the station. A limit set in advance, in a calm state, costs less than trying to find it on the spot, where the decision is made by a tired person with a suitcase.

The mechanism is the same in small things: the episode, the glass, the purchase. Better to decide “how much” before you start, because during the process the judging of sufficiency is handled by the very system that has an interest in continuing.