I really loved this book by Gretchen Rubin. It is a very fast-paced, well-written book that gives many practical suggestions on how to leverage habits to serve our long-term well-being and happiness.
She begins with the importance of self-knowledge. She lays out a simple framework based on how individuals generally respond to internal and external expectations (Upholders, Questioners, Obligers and Rebels) and then makes some distinctions for each of us to think through in order to better understand ourselves. She does not offer a one-size-fits–all solution. Rather, she advocates that we use self-knowledge to understand how we can apply habits in the service of our lives.
After self-knowledge, she discusses 4 Pillars of Habits. These are:
• Monitoring – self-measurement brings awareness and it prevents us from fooling ourselves.
• Foundations – we need to focus on “first things first” and she notes the areas that will most directly strengthen self-control – sleeping, movement, eating and drinking right, unclutter. One of my favorite ideas from this section was the one-minute rule (if you can do a task in less than a minute, do it) – and I have already used it to my benefit
• Scheduling – scheduling makes us confront the time limits of the day and realize that we need to make choices. It can even help by making sure we schedule time for leisure. Her is a great quote: “How we schedule our days is how we live our lives.”
• Accountability – we must actually follow the habit
The best time to begin is now. She discusses the danger of “tomorrow logic” – the key is to take the first step and then make the temporary permanent. Throughout the book she offers many “secrets of adulthood”, 2 of my favorites are on how to make habits more convenient:
• “The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all”
• “Make it easy to do right, and hard to go wrong”
She has a lot of useful ideas on how to make sure we keep habits on track. Here are a few that I found useful:
• Anticipate and minimize temptation – plan for failure (a good technique in this regard that is not covered in the book is Gary Klein’s idea of the pre-mortem – he discusses it for projects but the same concept could be applied to habits)
• Use If-then planning to stick to good habits
• Avoid Loopholes – she notes 10 categories of loopholes including moral licensing (permission to do bad because I was good), the tomorrow loophole, and the one-coin loophole (which is quite fascinating)
She also covers the danger of rewards. We can see a reward as a finish line and that marks a stopping point. Continuous progress is the opposite of a finish line. Making the habits we want rewarding in themselves is important if we want them to last a lifetime.
We need clarity of values and clarity of action to support habit formation – when we have conflicting goals, we don’t manage ourselves well. This is one of the reasons that self-knowledge is so important. We need to be clear on our values so we can understand how to connect the habit to the value that it serves. We want habits that serve our lives – as she notes early in the book “habit is a good servant but a bad master.”
I really enjoyed reading this book and I recommend it highly. I have already starting working some of the ideas into the fabric of my life (such as the one minute rule). I am thinking about a question she posed late in the book: “What change would add more happiness to my life?” – that is an important question for each of us to ask so we can develop that habits we need across a lifetime in order to achieve our own self-fulfillment. My thanks to Gretchen Rubin for writing a valuable work for “mastering the habits of our everyday lives.”
Note #1: I took extensive notes while reading the book over the last three days and I was able to begin using ideas right from the start. This is a book I will definitely be coming back to in the future.
Note #2: Remember that her framework notes general tendencies, details will vary for each individual
Note #3: She provides lots of great personal examples throughout the book
Note #4: I recommend the reader also consider these other books on self-control, habits and mindsets: Willpower by Baumeister and Tierney, The Willpower Habit by McGonigal, Mindset by Dweck, The Power of Habit by Duhigg.
Note #5: One’s values are very important but how to think about what one should value is not covered in the book – I think the virtue ethics tradition aligns nicely with this work (for example, Aristotle)
Note #6: There are great quotes at the start of each chapter – several from Samuel Johnson and Montaigne have me more interest in their writings as well.
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Popular Highlights in this book
Habits make change possible by freeing us from decision making and from using self-control.Highlighted by 5,468 Kindle readers- Self-measurement brings self-awareness, and self-awareness strengthens our self-control.Highlighted by 3,554 Kindle readers
- In other words, habits eliminate the need for self-control.Highlighted by 3,469 Kindle readers
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Perfect book for people who are introspective enough to want to understand the "why" behind the "how"
In this book, Gretchen Rubin uses the power of examples and stories to show us how to incorporate positive habits into our everyday lives. I listened to the audio version and loved it so much that I bought a hard copy for reference. If you have been fortunate enough to read two of Gretchen's other books (The Happiness Project and Happier at Home) you will have a better understanding of why she uses examples and stories from her own life, family, and friends to give us a framework for how we can apply positive habit changing practices to our own lives.The amount of research that she has put into writing this book is astounding. There are layers upon layers of wisdom here, but you have to be at least a little bit introspective to see them. Understanding yourself and why you do the things you do is the key to making a change. If you need a "quick fix" where a lightweight book gives you Three Easy Ways to Change Your Habits Overnight, this is not the book for you. However, if you are a deep thinker who is introspective enough to want to understand the "why" behind the "how", this is a perfect book for you!
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 30, 2022