This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Several months ago I noticed one of my colleagues taking breaks from work during the day.

At first I thought Max Nestrak was trying to build some exercise into his schedule.

Good for him I thought.

But when I asked him about it he confessed that he was stepping outside to smoke.

We did a podcast episode about New York's resolutions

and Max's resolution to quit smoking at the start of the year.

It's 2016 and I have not smoked for two minutes.

Lots of you have written and phoned and emailed to ask how Max is doing

and whether he's managed to stick to his resolution.

I really want to cigarette.

Yeah, about that.

We'll get to it in a few minutes.

Today we're going to talk about Max's story and three interventions I suggested to help him quit smoking.

You can apply these ideas in your own life, whether that's giving up smoking or that three latte a day Starbucks habit.

When Max decided to quit he and I sat down to chat.

I asked him how he became a smoker and what cigarettes meant to him.

So you told me that you started smoking when you were 14 or 15 years old.

That seems shockingly young to me.

It seems shockingly young to me too.

I should say the first cigarette I actually smoked.

I was 10 years old. It was Christmas and my aunt smoked.

...