About ten years ago, I made an observation. Some people enjoyed tea without sugar, some with one spoon of sugar, others with two spoons, and others with more. I was a one spoon person, something that I found came with a price when I was Greyhounding around the USA with a friend. We had limited supplies and it wasn’t easy for me and my friend to arrange our morning cup of tea. Tea is quite simple, but when you go from needing hot water, milk, and a tea bag, to needing hot water, milk, a tea bag and sugar, you’ve made your job quite a bit more difficult.

But for me, drinking tea without sugar was a horrible experience. Of course the odd time that anyone mistakenly put two sugars in my tea, it was a horrible experience as well. But then I realised that for non-sugar-in-tea people, having a teaspoon of sugar in their tea was a horrible experience for them. Likewise, two-sugar people found one-sugar tea horrible too.

So, I thought – wouldn’t it be useful in life to be a no-sugar person? Given things seem to be relative and just a question of habit, why not become a no-sugar person and get the double-win of having a less complicated life (not needing the extra ingredient) and also reducing a teaspoon of sugar (i.e. calories), from the several cups tea drunk every day, for most days in my life.

Over the period of a year in my final year as an undergraduate I went through months of ‘half a spoon’, to ‘a quarter spoon’, and finally ‘no sugar, please.’

It seems to me that these two lessons have a wider application in life – that given many things are relative, if we can just get used to good habits, then good habits become a natural part of our lifestyle. And also secondly, if you do something regular (e.g. several times a day) and can fine tune this regular activity to make it as healthy/useful/productive as possible, then it adds up to a big gain over a year/decade/life-time. Hence perhaps the points raised in my previous post about the importance of the morning programme.