• Convince yourself that you want to quit. Write out a list of pros and cons that examines how smoking enhances your life and how it detracts from it. A realistic and comprehensive list will almost certainly show the cons to outweigh the pros. Furthermore, reflect on everything that is unpleasant and harmful about smoking. Think about how much money you spend on cigarettes, about how your clothes and breath smell, about the discoloration of your teeth, about how people complain about it.

  • Be prepared for the psychological pain. The psychological components of nicotine addiction are the habits and routine you have built around smoking, and they take a long time to go away. For some people, they never really go away.

  • Be prepared for the physical pain. The physical component is the body's dependence on nicotine, and this takes much less time to go away but its effects are painful and difficult to withstand. Reports vary, with some saying that it takes three days for the body to rid itself of nicotine, while others say it takes as much as a week. We think it takes five days, because we're diplomatic. The initial five days of craziness is our general rule for just about any quit-smoking method, but the five days are particularly painful if you quit cold turkey.

  • Pick the right time to quit. If you are a student and you are about to have final exams, you should probably wait until after you've walked out of your last exam before you settle down and quit. Look at your calendar, think about what stressful events you have coming up, and pick a day that leaves you at least three weeks between major crises.

  • Pamper yourself. In order to boost your resolve, we suggest that you treat yourself nicely in return for not smoking. Spend the money you would otherwise spend on cigarettes on some useless but pleasing crap that you've always wanted. Take yourself out to nice restaurants that don't allow smoking. Feel better about yourself because you are no longer a filthy smoker cowering out in front of your office building.

SoYouWanna know more? Check out our full-length article SYW quit smoking?