Willpower Not Included

For those few who already pack a lunch to work regularly, these bowls will help keep your salads and other fresh foods cool. They include a little tray with cooling gel that you put in the freezer the night before. You should feel good about yourself for being so responsible and healthy, and these will help you become even more so.

However, for the vast majority of us who never or almost never pack lunches for ourselves, who look with envious spite at the lunch-packers referenced above, these bowls could provide a nudge in the right direction.

We’re not saying these bowls are a silver bullets that will solve all of our dietary and financial woes. They’re not. Nothing is. But they could tip us from “never packing lunch” to “sometimes packing lunch,” and really that’s all we can ask for at this point.

You’ll notice we’re saying “we” and “us” here, because we’re admittedly terrible at this. We tell ourselves every few months that we’ll start packing lunch, and we never do. Eating out always lures us back with its delicious siren song.

These cute little containers won’t bind us to the mast. They won’t solve a problem that has dogged us our entire professional lives. But they’ll provide one less excuse for not bringing a lunch. And maybe that’s the last excuse we need (or don’t need?)

We also need a couple other things, like willpower, motivation, and the ability to pack a lunch that doesn’t suck. We’re probably not going to sell any of those here — certainly not for less that $20 — so in terms of solving this problem through daily deals, this is the best we’re gonna do.

We also need some work friends who are willing to sit with us at lunch and eat the lunches they brought. There’s nothing sadder than an office drone silently munching on carrot sticks in the break room while everybody else is at Qdoba.

And we’ve been around the block with this problem to know we shouldn’t try to do everything at once. If we promise ourselves we’ll pack lunch every day this month, we’ll only let ourselves down. So let’s aim for one time this month, OK? Let’s not get greedy.

Another potential pitfall: Healthiness. Sure, part of the reason we’d love to pack lunches to work is the health benefits, but if we start bringing nothing but kale to work every day we’re going to create negative associations with packing lunch. Then the next time we contemplate the decision, the little devil on our shoulder will have another piece of ammunition with which to dissuade us from responsibility: it doesn’t taste good.

No, we’ll aim to bring lunch to work 1 time in the next month and we’ll make it the most indulgent, unhealthy food imaginable. That way we’ll positively reinforce the behavior we wish to cultivate.

That’s right. In January we’re going to start this thing for real.