(This is a comment that has been turned into a post.)
From Chris_Leong’s post, “Making Exceptions to General Rules”:
Suppose you make a general rule, ie. “I won’t eat any cookies”. Then you encounter a situation that legitimately feels exceptional , “These are generally considered the best cookies in the entire state”. This tends to make people torn between two threads of reasoning:
Clearly the optimal strategy is to make an exception this one time and then follow the rule the rest of the time.
If you break the rule this one time, then you risk dismantling the rule and ending up not following it at all.
How can we resolve this? …
This is my answer:
Consider even a single exception to totally undermine any rule. Consequently, only follow rules with no exceptions.[1].
Can't agree more. I've found this mindset to be super useful for health and weight loss journey. Anytime I encounter someone with a lot of rules that involve "trying" or "sometimes" it's pretty clear they're not gonna make it (and i've never seen a non drug-assisted exception to this)