Gretchen Rubin
Appearances
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Yes, because I think a lot of times people make the mistake of thinking like, well, I'm a perfectionist, and so what you're asking me to do is to lower my standards. And so I refuse to lower my standards, maybe, or maybe I do lower my standards, but it doesn't seem to help. That's because perfectionism is about anxiety. And so you have to address the anxiety, not the standards.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Because some people have extremely high standards, but they don't have the anxiety, and so then they don't feel, they don't have that feeling of, oh, I'm a perfectionist. They just think, I'm just doing my best.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Okay, Mike, this took me so long to understand. This was something that I realized that I did all the time. I delayed making a decision by pretending that I needed more information or I needed to consult with somebody. It was really just a form of procrastination. I didn't need more time. I just needed to make up my mind.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Or I just needed to just deal with the facts that I knew, which I had perfectly satisfactory amount of information. I just was hoping that somebody else would do the hard work of deciding. Or I just wanted to put it off. And yeah, you're right. Probably sometimes I kind of in my heart already knew what I wanted to pick.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
But sometimes you just you just you're just sort of hoping that somebody deciding is hard. Deciding is hard work. We get a lot of decision fatigue. And sometimes we're trying to I realize that a lot of my bad habits are me trying to foist off decision making on other people. Like I realized I had a bad habit of saying to my husband, like, well, what time do you think I should leave for the airport?
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I live in New York City. It's a hassle to figure out what time you leave for the airport because there's so many factors. What time of day is it? How is the traffic? Which airport are you going to? It's a multi-factor decision-making thing. I just wanted him to tell me. But why is that his problem? That is not his problem. He has no more information than I do.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I'd be like, I'll just wait and see what he thinks. No, I don't need more time. I just need to make a decision and I don't need to consult with somebody else. Or like, you know, make them do that work. That's for me to do. I'm the one going to the airport. Just deal with it, you know.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Well, that's true, too.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Yeah, no, see, that's another meaning of it that I hadn't even considered, but that's a great example of how an aphorism can reverberate in many ways. And this also reminds me of something that I've noticed, because I have the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and I've written all these books. Sometimes people will write it, and I try not to give advice, except to me, I give myself advice.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
People will write with situations and they'll say, well, what do you think I should do? And inevitably, I can just write back, It sounds like you already know what to do, because even in their framing of the question, they almost always tip their hand. You know, they know what to do. And so I think you're exactly right. You sort of you want someone to come in from the outside and sort of tell you.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I trained in law and I was actually clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor when I decided I wanted to be a writer. And people often say to me like, oh, how did you do that? Like, that must have been really hard and everything. But what made it much easier for me is I knew the book that I wanted to write. I had an idea for a book.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
And I was doing all this research sort of even before I thought, oh, this could make a book. Then it occurred to me, hey, this could make a book. And, hey, I could be the person to write that book. And so it was so much easier for me to leave because I knew exactly where I wanted to go. It wasn't even that I wanted to write.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
It was that I wanted to write this particular book, which, in fact, I was already well underway. And that made it so much easier for me that I realized, like – as I talked to other people and observed the world, that actually that was very unusual. And then I was extremely fortunate.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
That actually made my transition much easier than it usually is because often we know that we want to leave before we know where we want to go. And sometimes it's just helpful to realize like, yeah, you may not know where you want to go, but you know it's time to leave.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I think that's very true for some people, yep. One that I think is funny is you're unique, just like everybody else.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Oh, this is so helpful. So Dolly Parton can't read music. Michael Jackson couldn't read music. I think when I was growing up, I kind of had this idea that if I was going to do anything, I had to excel at all the parts of it. But now I know people who work in finance who are not good with numbers. I know people who are, you know, highly acclaimed artists who are not good at sketching.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
This idea that you have to be good at everything to be good at something. Like, you don't have to be good at something to be good at something. I feel like sometimes people limit their possibilities because there's some element that they think is necessary. Maybe you don't need it. Maybe you just work around that. Maybe there's just something that there's some part of it that you just don't do.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Yes, that is it. Not deciding is a decision. Yeah. One of the great challenges of life is making decisions, because that's just one of the hardest things that we have to do. And sometimes we just delay and delay and delay. without confronting the fact that not deciding is a decision.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Because at a certain time, events are foreclosed or something just isn't possible anymore or it's not realistic anymore. I remember when my husband and I first got married, We were moving cities a couple times, and my mother and father said to us, well, if there's someplace you want to go, get there. Because at a certain point, you're just going to stop moving. You get rooted in place.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
It becomes much more challenging to keep moving. Obviously, some people do, but it becomes harder. And I thought that was such good advice because... We might have just ended up someplace, not because we were deciding that we wanted to spend the next 30 years there, but just because we hadn't thought about it.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Or, you know, you just you miss a window of opportunity for something and not deciding is the decision.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I mean, yes, that's just a very helpful thing to keep in mind. Because people will say, oh, well, I'm doing this for self-care. I'm doing this because it makes me feel better. I'm doing this because I need to calm down. I need to energize myself. But if it just makes you feel worse, the minute it's over, if you've been impulse shopping or impulse snacking or impulse...
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I'm so happy to be talking to you again.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
So something like a quest is more fun than a jaunt. I just noticed that. A quest is more fun than a jaunt. It's more fun to go to the flea markets of Paris than to just go to Paris. Or, you know, it's more fun to walk, and I find it's more fun to sort of walk through the Metropolitan Museum and look for something than to just be wandering around.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Because it's true. I know. It's helpful because it's true. Well, one of the things that I'm really excited about having the book going out into the world is which of these are going to resonate most with people? Because I think you're exactly right. Some of them will strike a chord with people and you're like dog-earing the page and underlining it.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
And then for other people, it might not be that meaningful.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I'll take it.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Well, and I found that the hard way because I do write about happiness so much. People would often say to me, but what's the best way to make yourself happier? And I gave a very unsatisfying answer clearly, which is, well, you know, there's no one right way. It all depends on your nature and your temperament and your challenges and your situation. And they'd say like, okay, sure.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
But what's the best way or what's the right way or just what's the most efficient way? And I could never find a way to answer that question to people's satisfaction until finally I started saying, well, what's the best way to cook an egg? And people would always look at me very puzzled and they would say, well, it depends on how you like to eat your eggs.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Here's one I think that is very helpful. Before declaring that something is superficial, unhealthy, inefficient, dangerous, disgusting, or immoral, we should consider, maybe this just doesn't suit my taste.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
And then some people would say, well, I don't even like eggs. You know, like, oh, I escaped this whole, you know, the whole premise of your question. And I'm like, that's right. There's no one best way to cook an egg. Because everybody has it. It feels different. Everybody has a different view. So there can be no one right way.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Well, one that has many people who have seen the book have quoted back to me is we care for many people we don't particularly care for. People are sort of like, oh, yeah, I get that. We care for somebody, even though we don't particularly care for them. And there's sort of a paradox there. And the form of the aphorism often will embrace the paradox as a way to make a point.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Another one that I think, and some of these are literally true and then also metaphorically true. So one that I like is the place that hurts isn't always the place that's injured. And I learned this from when I strained my back because they said, oh, well, you know, your back hurts and you think it's your back that you've injured, but actually it's your hip flexor or something like that.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
So the place that hurts isn't always the place that's injured. But I think that's also true in life where often we say, oh, well, um, You know, I need to switch careers, but in fact, it's my marriage that's in trouble or something like that. You know, sometimes what we identify as the pain point isn't actually the place that needs to be fixed.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Yes, that is so true. And it's very helpful when you're just dreading something that's on your to-do list. Just think, in five years, I will not remember this. But it's also true about remembering how to appreciate the present as well, that it feels like it's now and it will be this way forever.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
But I remember when my children were young and it just annoyed me to have a stroller right by our front door. It just... There was no other place to put it. It just looked terrible. It just bugged me so much to have that stroller. I thought we'd have a stroller by our front door forever. Then looking back, I thought, that now is a long time ago.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's very, yeah. Yeah. Pick another one. This is a good thing to remind ourselves of, yeah.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Well, another one that's metaphorically true and literally true is, if you don't like a pair of pants, don't pay to get them hemmed. I think that's funny. Here's one I think that is very, very helpful. Before declaring that something is superficial, unhealthy, inefficient, dangerous, disgusting, or immoral, we should consider, maybe this just doesn't suit my taste.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Because a lot of times, in my estimation, the things that people say are superficial, unhealthy, inefficient, dangerous, disgusting, and immoral are often things that you're like, nah, that's just not my taste. I used to tell people, oh, you should just get up early and do everything first thing in the morning. That's the most efficient way. And it's like, yeah, but that just suits my taste.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I'm a morning person. Like for me to say to somebody, oh, there's no way for you to be productive at 1130 at night. Who am I to say that? Many people are highly productive at 1130 at night. It just doesn't suit my taste.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Right. That's not me. Yes. And it's very often that you can just say, I don't have to tell you how to do your business. Another one that I really like, this is very helpful. And when I was writing these, I wrote many aphorisms or secrets of adulthood, which I realized were just sort of mere observations. They were just my observations about the world.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
They were things like, the tulip is an empty flower. I really believe that the tulip is an empty flower. To me, that's an interesting idea and interesting way to put it. But it's just an observation. It's not a secret of adulthood. It doesn't have any kind of, it doesn't, there's nothing helpful about it in terms of moving through life. Um, but one thing, and so I cut all those out.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
These are the secrets of adulthood are only things that I think are useful in navigating adulthood. Um, whether it's like young adults and people are entering adulthood or people are well into adulthood like me. Um, and one, I, one that I, I live by all the time, which is when in doubt about how to spend our time, energy or money, spend it on relationships.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Because ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree that the most important element of a happy life is relationships. And so if we're debating, should I spend money on going to my college reunion? Should I spend time joining a poker club? Should I make an effort to go to that happy hour to see some friends from work?
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
The answer is probably yes, because anything that we spend on relationships benefits our happiness.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Mm-hmm. Yes, that's so true. It's something that we have to remember. Sometimes people, they don't bring out our best side.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Maybe. Maybe not. Right. Absolutely.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I think a lot of people have sort of an almost superstitious belief that if they review and review and rehearse disaster, that somehow they'll prevent it. But that doesn't happen. I mean, it's good to mindfully prepare for disaster, but just going over it and over it in your mind is not going to do anything to offset it.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
One that many people say are kind of puzzled by, and that's part of what I like about some of these is that you have to stop and reflect and ask yourself what they mean. It might be that some of the people will disagree, and that's good, too. That's one of the strengths of the aphorism is it forces us to clarify our own thinking because we have to decide whether we agree or not.
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The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
But one of them is don't expect to be motivated by motivation. And this is something I believe very profoundly. In my observation, people are not motivated by motivation. Being highly motivated does not at all correlate with whether somebody does something. So don't expect to be motivated by motivation.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
I think a lot of times people get discouraged because they try and fail to form a habit over and over. But in fact, they haven't set it up in a way that's right for them. And so that's why they're not succeeding. What you see is that the people who are happier, healthier, and most productive are the people who have figured out themselves and they've set up their lives to suit them.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
So somebody would say, like, oh, I'm exhausted all the time. But really to me that sounded like, you're not going to bed early enough. Like, why aren't you able to form the habit of turning the light out at 11 instead of at 2 a.m.? What's going on with your habits?
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
And often people would talk about a habit that they knew that if they made it or broke it would make them happier, but somehow they just weren't able to translate that into action. And then I had a lunch with a friend who made this casual comment that got me obsessed with habits. And she said the thing is I would be happier if I exercised. And when I was in high school, I was in the track team.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
And I never missed track practice. But I can't go running now. Why? This just floored me. I was like, what is it? It's the same behavior. It's the same person. What's different? What meant that at one point to have it was effortless and now she can't do it. Try as she might. And so then I was like, okay, that's it. My next book, Habits.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
I think that so many people say start small, or do it for 30 days, or have a cheat day, or do it first thing in the morning. And all those strategies work well for some people, sometimes, but they don't work for everybody all the time where we would all have perfect habits. And I think really what I found when I really delved into this is that There is no magic one.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
And what we really need to do is to think about ourselves, understand ourselves, the significant elements of our behavior, and then shape our habits to suit us. Sometimes people are like, well, this is what Steve Jobs did, so this is what I'm going to do. Well, that doesn't tell you anything about yourself.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
I mean, maybe it'll give you some interesting ideas, but it doesn't mean it's going to work for you. And I think a lot of times people get discouraged because they try and fail to form a habit over and over. But in fact, they haven't set it up in a way that's right for them. And so that's why they're not succeeding.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
But if they took a different approach, they might very well have a different outcome. And so in Better Than Before, what I'm trying to do is talk about, well, how do we understand ourselves as it comes to kind of our habit nature? What should we understand about ourselves? And then how might we put that into practice to shape our habits and suit ourselves?
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Some people drink a lot of coffee and some people drink a lot of booze and some people stay up late and some people get up early and some people... Work steadily and some people work all at the end and some people work a lot every day and some people work just a little bit every day.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
I mean, what you see is that the people who are happier, healthier and most productive are the people who have figured out themselves and they've set up their lives to suit them. If they are morning people, they do their most important work in the morning. But if they're night people, that's not how they go about it.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
You know, it's all about fitting your circumstances to what's going to allow you to succeed, figuring out what is the combination to that combination lock. But a lot of it is just how you're hardwired. So everybody might say to you like, oh, you should get up early and work on your PhD thesis. But if you're a night person, getting up early is not going to work for you.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
It might make sense on paper, but it's not going to work for you. Yeah.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Well, rewards are very, very dangerous when it comes to habits. Whoa. They're very dangerous. And so you have to distinguish between a reward and a treat. Treats are good. Rewards are very dangerous. So a treat is something that you get just because you want it. You don't earn it. You don't deserve it. You just want it. So you get it.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
And we should really load ourselves with healthy treats because when we give ourselves treats, we feel comforted and taken care of. And our battery gets energized. And so that gives us more self-command. And we want our self-command to be as high as possible. We want self-control. We want willpower to be – we want those reserves to be very high.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
And when you do those little things for yourself, whether it's doing a cluster puzzle on your iPad or buying yourself new music on iTunes or, you know, whatever it might be, people have all different treats, then that's good. Now, there are unhealthy treats, which are like food and drink. You don't want to do something to make yourself feel better that's going to end up making you feel worse.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
So treats are good because they boost our self-mastery and they keep us from getting into that dangerous land of feeling deprived. I need it. I've earned it. I should get this. That's when we start giving ourselves unhealthy treats. I need this. Rewards are bad because the reason that habits are superpowers is
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
is that they get in and out of the dangerous, draining, difficult job of using decision-making and using willpower. If it's a habit, it just happens automatically. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to judge it. You just do it automatically. I do not decide to wake up at 6 a.m. I do not decide whether to take dessert. I just know. And that happens automatically.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
It doesn't take anything from me. And so that frees up my mind and it frees me from having to use my self-control because It doesn't take any health control. I know exactly what I'm going to do and I do it. A reward, though, always requires a decision. Have you earned your reward? And that interferes with a habit because I'm saying, well, if I run, I get to have a beer. Well, I ran half today.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Do I get a beer? But I hurt my foot, so I really couldn't run, but I still want the beer. Do I get the beer? I'm on vacation. Who could run? I should get the beer. And then sometimes what happens is you make a habit of reward, and the habit itself falls away. You have a beer every night because you got used to that, but you're not even running. But they're also bad because...
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
When you give yourself a reward, you're telling yourself that you're only doing something in order to get the reward. So you're undermining intrinsic motivation because you're giving yourself an extrinsic motivation. So you're saying, well, this is why I'm doing it. And with a habit, you want it to just happen automatically. You don't want to be judging it.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
And you don't want to give it a negative association. You want to do it because you want to do it. And if you're rewarding it, then you're just teaching yourself that it's something that you wouldn't otherwise do. When also often we give ourselves perverse rewards. We give ourselves rewards that exactly contradict whatever we want.
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REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Like my friend said, the minute I lose 10 pounds, I'm going to have a big piece of chocolate cake. The one kind of reward that is good is a reward that takes you deeper into the habit. So let's say you're doing a lot of yoga. You would buy yourself a new yoga mat because the person who does a lot of yoga needs a new yoga mat.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Or let's say you're doing a lot of work on a side project and so you buy a new fancy laptop because the person who's doing all this extra work needs technologic support. That makes sense. I talked to one company that had a really smart reward, which was that if you exercise 75 times in a year, you got the next year free. So the reward for exercise... was more exercise.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
So that's a reward that's taking you deeper into the habit. It's not irrelevant to the habit or actually undermining the habit. It's just making it easier for you to do the habit and more pleasant. And that's good because the easier and more pleasant, more convenient it is to do a habit, the more likely you are to stick to it. That's my strategy of convenience.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
But you don't want a reward that's not related to it or that actually pushes you in the opposite direction. So rewards are dangerous. They're tempting. It's a tempting solution, but I think it's often counterproductive when it comes to habits.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
I think we often think of habits as forming very gradually. And I was surprised when I really started looking at the pattern in my habits and how often habits change very quickly. People say to me all the time, like, I want to go through my day making healthy choices. And I'm like, no, you don't.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
You don't want to spend your day making healthy choices because you'll probably choose wrong a lot of the time. You want to choose once, then no more choosing. Are you going to bring lunch today? Yes, you are. Are you going to eat fast food today? No, you're not. Are you choosing? No, you're not. That already happened. That happened months ago. You don't revisit that choice. There's no emotions.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
There's no debate. There's none of that inner struggle. It's just so tiresome and boring. Today, tomorrow doesn't count. You know, it's done.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Well, the easiest kind of habit is when it happens in exactly the same way every day. So like if you get up and the first thing you do is you brush your teeth, like that's what I would call a fixed habit. Like it happens exactly the same way. And so that's easier. You use the same strategies. So I have, I identify 21 strategies that people use to shape their habits.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
You use the same strategies to make a habit or break a habit. It's the same strategies. And so with a simpler habit, it might take less to cement it in. But if there's a more complex habit, then there has to be more thought put into, like, how do you get this into your life and keep it in there? How do you safeguard it, too?
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
I feel like the idea of a habit is it's completely automatic, and that's really what we strive for. But I think for a lot of habits, they're never 100% automatic. Like, you know, if every day is a little bit different and you have to kind of think about your exercise every day, you might be in the habit of exercising, but it takes a little bit of work every time. Like, when am I going to go?
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
What am I, you know? Right. And so you need to, and one of the strategies is the strategy of safeguards, which is what are the things that you do to protect a habit once you've got it going? If you do this, then do that, which I would call the strategy of if-then planning, which is if this happens, then I do this. You go ahead and figure that out in advance.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
So with the simple habit, it might take less, and then a more complex habit might take a little more thought to figure out how to get that into place. You know, I started a podcast myself. It's called Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and I talk about all this stuff. It's so much fun. And one of the first things that we talked about was the habit of making your bed.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Because whenever I talk to people about what habits do you feel like make you happier and more productive and feel healthier, and so often people mention it's the habit of making your bed. And as you say, it's a very simple habit. You can do it first thing in the morning, and then the rest of the day, you're like, oh, look, if I did nothing else, I made my bed.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Well, I'm very happy to be talking to you today.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
And it's funny how much that resonates with people.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
Thank you so much. It was great. I feel like we could talk for hours.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
On my website, which is just GretchenRubin.com, there's a bunch of blog posts about habits and also a lot of downloads, a habit change checklist, some one-pagers about working better than before, eating better than before, exercising better than before, like to get you started because those are some of the habits people most want to form.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
A starter kit for people who want to start habits groups for people who are going to help each other change their habits. And I have this podcast called Happier with Gretchen Rubin where we talk about a lot of these kinds of issues about science from ancient wisdom and also around experiences.
The Action Catalyst
REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)
You know, as you said, I wrote two books about happiness, and I had been spending a lot of time thinking and researching and talking to people about happiness, and I began to notice a pattern that often when people talk about, well, a happiness boost that they've had, but really even more often a happiness challenge that they face, they often were pointing to something that at its core involved a problem with a habit.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
You have an opinion on using rewards and incentives and treats. What's your philosophy on how rewards fit into having good habits? Well, rewards are very, very dangerous when it comes to habits. Whoa. They're very dangerous. And so you have to distinguish between a reward and a treat. Treats are good. Rewards are very dangerous. So a treat is something that you get just because you want it.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
And that interferes with a habit because I'm saying, well, if I run, I get to have a beer. Well, I ran half today. Do I get a beer? But I hurt my foot, so I really couldn't run, but I still want the beer. Do I get the beer? I'm on vacation. Who could run? I should get the beer. And then sometimes what happens is you make a habit of reward, and the habit itself falls away.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
If you have a beer every night, because you got used to that, but you're not even running. But they're also bad because when you give yourself a reward, you're telling yourself that you're only doing something in order to get the reward. So you're undermining intrinsic motivation because you're giving yourself an extrinsic motivation. So you're saying, well, this is why I'm doing it.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
And with a habit, you want it to just happen automatically. You don't want to be judging it. And you don't want to give it a negative association. Like you want to do it because you want to do it. And if you're rewarding it, then you're just teaching yourself that it's something that you wouldn't otherwise do. When also often we give ourselves perverse rewards.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
We give ourselves rewards that exactly contradict whatever we want. Like my friend said, the minute I lose 10 pounds, I'm going to have a big piece of chocolate cake. The one kind of reward that is good is a reward that takes you deeper into the habit. So let's say you're doing a lot of yoga. You would buy yourself a new yoga mat because the person who does a lot of yoga needs a new yoga mat.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
Or let's say you're doing a lot of work on a side project and so you buy a new fancy laptop because the person who's doing all this extra work needs technologic support. That makes sense. I talked to one company that had a really smart reward, which was that if you exercise 75 times in a year, you got the next year free. So the reward for exercise was more exercise.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
So that's a reward that's taking you deeper into the habit. It's not irrelevant to the habit or actually undermining the habit. It's just making it easier for you to do the habit and more pleasant. And that's good because the easier and more pleasant, more convenient it is to do a habit, the more likely we are to stick to it. That's my strategy of convenience.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
But you don't want a reward that's not related to it or that actually pushes you in the opposite direction. So rewards are dangerous. They're tempting. It's a tempting solution, but I think it's often counterproductive when it comes to habits.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
You don't earn it. You don't deserve it. You just want it. So you get it. And we should really load ourselves with healthy treats because when we give ourselves treats, we feel comforted and taken care of. And our battery gets energized. And so that gives us more self-command. And we want our self-command to be as high as possible. We want self-control.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
We want willpower to be – we want those reserves to be very high. And when you do those little things for yourself, whether it's doing a cluster puzzle on your iPad or buying yourself new music on iTunes or, you know, whatever it might be, people have all different treats, then that's good. Now, there are unhealthy treats, which are like food and drink.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
You don't want to do something to make yourself feel better that's going to end up making you feel worse. So treats are good because they boost our self-mastery and they keep us from getting into that dangerous land of feeling deprived. I need it. I've earned it. I should get this. That's when we start giving ourselves unhealthy treats. I need this.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
Rewards are bad because the reason that habits are superpowers is is that they get inside of the dangerous, draining, difficult job of using decision-making and using willpower. If it's a habit, it just happens automatically. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to judge it. You just do it automatically. I do not decide to wake up at 6 a.m. I do not decide whether to take dessert.
The Action Catalyst
CLIP: Treats, Not Rewards
I just know. And that happens automatically. It doesn't take anything from me. And so that frees up my mind and it frees me from having to use my self-control because It doesn't take any health control. I know exactly what I'm going to do and I do it. A reward, though, always requires a decision. Have you earned your reward?