I was watching The Today Show a few days ago and an expert was recommending to a viewer that the answer to changing her bad eating habits was to start by eating one healthy item every day starting January 1st.

Most of the research shows that stopping cold turkey and cleaning out the cupboards leads to your best chance for success. Get rid of anything in your house that you can pick up and eat now. Fruits and vegetables are the obvious exceptions.

But the expert’s answer is so much easier to hear. The small step. The doable step.

Alan Webber says change is a math formula. When the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change, movement starts to happen.

With that time of year upon us and everyone readying their resolutions for the New Year, don’t make a promise to yourself. Find a way to raise the cost of something in your life that needs to change.

For me, I am raising the cost of not writing. I started hiding the Dock on my Mac to eliminate the temptation to check to Mail or Tweetie. I have gotten back to using WriteRoom to create a clean workspace for writing (OmmWriter is also good). Before the New Year, I am going to remove all the clutter from my desk to remove more distractions. This is my version of cleaning the cupboards.

Nothing changes the fact I have to put my fingers on the keys and start typing.

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Check out Alan’s book Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self; C(SQ)>R(C) is Rule #5