Doing vs. not doing

Yesterday, I had a revelation that I found kind of interesting. I used to think that it's easier to avoid doing something that one wants to do than to do something that one doesn't want to do. Example: Let's say a person wants to smoke a cigarette, and wants not to slap himself hard in the face. Previously, I would have said that it's easier to avoid smoking the cig, because that's just being passive, whereas the autovisoslap is an active action. But I think I've changed my mind. (Obviously, the true calculus requires an account of the relative strengths of the desires.) Doing something requires doing it once. Not doing something requires not doing it all the time. A single face-slap will get the unpleasant (but, for some unknown reason, needed) face-slap out of the way, but every second, every instant, is a potential time to smoke a cigarette, and therefore a battle that must be waged.