Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

by Gretchen Rubin

Habits make change possible by freeing us from decision making and from using self-control.

1. Eat and drink more healthfully (give up sugar, eat more vegetables, drink less alcohol) 2. Exercise regularly 3. Save, spend, and earn wisely (save regularly, pay down debt, donate to worthy causes, stick to a budget) 4. Rest, relax, and enjoy (stop watching TV in bed, turn off a cell phone, spend time in nature, cultivate silence, get enough sleep, spend less time in the car) 5. Accomplish more, stop procrastinating (practice an instrument, work without interruption, learn a language, maintain a blog) 6. Simplify, clear, clean, and organize (make the bed, file regularly, put keys away in the same place, recycle) 7. Engage more deeply in relationships—with other people, with God, with the world (call friends, volunteer, have more sex, spend more time with family, attend religious services)

As novelist John Updike observed, “Surprisingly few clues are ever offered us as to what kind of people we are.”

A Questioner told me ruefully, “I suffer from analysis paralysis. I always want to have one more piece of information.

“Every time you break the law you pay, and every time you obey the law you pay.” Every action, every habit, has its consequences. Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels, all must grapple with the consequences of fitting in that Tendency. I get up at 6:00 every morning, and I pay for that; I get more work done, but I also have to go to sleep early. We all must pay, but we can choose that for which we pay.

get so distracted by the way I wish I were, or the way I assume I am, that I lose sight of what’s actually true.

When trying to shape a habit, overbuyers tend to load up on equipment or services that they imagine will help them keep their good habits.

In fact, novelty lovers may do better with a series of short-term activities—thirty-day challenges, for instances—instead of trying to create an enduring, automatic habit. One reader commented, “I love planning routines and planning to create habits as if it’s going to work, but the follow-through is rarely there, almost as if I have some inner repulsion to doing the same things in the same way. On the other hand, the buzz I get from trying new things is brilliant.”

How I Like to Spend My Time At what time of day do I feel energized? When do I drag? Do I like racing from one activity to another, or do I prefer unhurried transitions? What activities take up my time but aren’t particularly useful or stimulating? Would I like to spend more time with friends, or by myself? Do I have several things on my calendar that I anticipate with pleasure? What can I do for hours without feeling bored? What daily or weekly activity did I do for fun when I was ten years old? What I Value What’s most satisfying to me: saving time, or money, or effort? Does it bother me to act differently from other people, or do I get a charge out of it? Do I spend a lot of time on something that’s important to someone else, but not to me? If I had $500 that I had to spend on fun, how would I spend it? Do I like to listen to experts, or do I prefer to figure things out for myself? Does spending money on an activity make me feel more committed to it, or less committed? Would I be happy to see my children have the life I’ve had? My Current Habits Am I more likely to indulge in a bad habit in a group, or when I’m alone? If I could magically, effortlessly change one habit in my life, what would it be? If the people around me could change one of my habits, what would they choose? Of my existing habits, which would I like to see my children adopt? Or not?

All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits—practical, emotional, and intellectual,—systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny. —WILLIAM JAMES, Talks to Teachers and Students

Self-measurement brings self-awareness, and self-awareness strengthens our self-control.

If we want something to count in our lives, we should figure out a way to count it.

People who love to self-monitor can join the Quantified Self movement, a community of those who use technology to track every aspect of their daily life and performance—but most of us aren’t ready to make quite such a commitment to the process. Monitoring is valuable, but it’s also time-consuming and a bit tiresome, so I monitor only the aspects of my life that really matter.

A Secret of Adulthood (cribbed from Voltaire) is “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

I should monitor whatever is essential to me. In that way, I ensure that my life reflects my values.

Secret of Adulthood: Keeping up is easier than catching up.

Scheduling also forces us to confront the natural limits of the day. It’s tempting to pretend that I can do everything if only I get the “balance” right, but scheduling requires choices. Scheduling one activity makes that time unavailable for anything else. Which is good—especially for people who have trouble saying no.

When scheduling a new habit, it helps to tie it to an existing habit, such as “after breakfast,” or to an external cue, such as “when my alarm rings,” because without such a trigger, it’s easy to forget to do the new action. An existing habit or cue works better than using a particular start time, because it’s so easy to lose track of the hour. Instead of “meditating at 6:15 a.m.,” therefore, I inserted “meditate” into my schedule right after waking up and getting dressed.

Bad habits can be easy to create, though they make life harder, while good habits can be hard to create, though they make life easier.

We may not be able to form a habit in twenty-one days, but in many situations, we do benefit from scheduling a habit every day. The things we do every day take on a certain beauty, and funnily enough, two very unconventional geniuses wrote about the power of daily repetition. Andy Warhol said, “Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.” Gertrude Stein made a related point: “Anything one does every day is important and imposing.”

For most people, whenever possible, important habits should be scheduled for the morning. Mornings tend to unfold in a predictable way, and as the day goes on, more complications arise—whether real or invented—which is one reason why I’d scheduled my new meditation habit in the morning. Also, self-control is strongest then;

Consistency, repetition, no decision—this was the way to develop the ease of a true habit. In fact, I knew, the habit of the habit is more important than the habit itself. On any particular morning, it was more important to try to meditate than actually to meditate.

While we often overestimate what we can accomplish in the short term (in one afternoon, in one week), we often underestimate what we can accomplish over the long term if we work consistently. A friend wrote a well-regarded novel by sticking to a habit of writing for just four hours a week—every Saturday, he and his wife gave each other a half day free—over the course of several years. As novelist Anthony Trollope observed, “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.”

And I didn’t allow myself to use Power Hour for recurring tasks, like paying bills or answering emails. Power Hour was only for those one-time tasks that I kept postponing. Something that can be done at any time is often done at no time.

The Strategy of Scheduling is a powerful weapon against procrastination. Because of tomorrow logic, we tend to feel confident that we’ll be productive and virtuous—tomorrow. (The word “procrastinate” comes from cras, the Latin word for “tomorrow.”) In one study, when subjects made a shopping list for what they’d eat in a week, more chose a healthy snack instead of an unhealthy snack; when asked what they’d choose now, more people chose the unhealthy over the healthy snack. As St. Augustine famously prayed, “Grant me chastity and continency, only not yet.” Tomorrow.

Procrastinators can’t make themselves work—often, ironically, because they’re so anxious about work that they have to distract themselves from it—but they can’t enjoy free time, either, because they know they should be working. A regular work schedule can help procrastinators because progress and engagement relieve their anxiety.

“Remember,” I added, “working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.

But when I want to do original writing—my most intellectually demanding work—I go to the library or to a coffee shop, where I don’t connect to the Internet.

The goal is to develop habits that allow us to have time for everything we value—work, fun, exercise, friends, errands, study—in a way that’s sustainable, forever. Favoring work at the expense of everything else makes work itself less pleasant, diminishes quality of life, and creates a constant feeling of “emergency.”

Scheduling is an invaluable tool for habit formation: it helps to eliminate decision making; it helps us make the most of our limited self-command; it helps us fight procrastination. Most important, perhaps, the Strategy of Scheduling helps us make time for the things that are most important to us. How we schedule our days is how we spend our lives.

noticed something perverse in myself. If I feel anxious about the fact that I haven’t started, I become even more reluctant to start, which just makes me more anxious.

The fact is, while some habits are almost unbreakable, some habits remain fragile, even after years. We must guard against anything that might weaken a valuable habit. Every added link in the chain strengthens the habit—and any break in the chain marks a potential stopping point. For many people, don’t-break-the-chain is a powerful strategy—for the same reason that some people want to get the attendance award in grade school. It’s very satisfying to have a perfect record.

It’s a Secret of Adulthood: What we assume will be temporary often becomes permanent; what we assume is permanent often proves temporary.

“I can’t drink a little, child; therefore I never touch it. Abstinence is as easy to me, as temperance would be difficult.”

Within the study of habits, certain tensions reappear: whether to accept myself or expect more from myself; whether to embrace the present or consider the future; whether to think about myself or forget myself. Because habit formation often requires us to relinquish something we want, a constant challenge is: How can I deprive myself of something without feeling deprived? When it comes to habits, feeling deprived is a pernicious state. When we feel deprived, we feel entitled to compensate ourselves—often, in ways that undermine our good habits.

There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need do only inner work … that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself.… The fact is, a person is so formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings. —CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER, The Timeless Way of Building

It’s a Secret of Adulthood: The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.

Also, when impulsive people feel anxious about performing a task, they often try to make themselves feel better by avoiding the task, by procrastinating.

“For many years, I’ve had my salary paid into a savings account, and then moved money into my current account to spend. As there’s usually a delay in the move, I have to plan ahead and perhaps delay/not purchase something until the cash is there. I’ve always attributed my ability to save to this system.”

One of the paradoxes of habits? Habits are surprisingly tough, and habits are surprisingly fragile. For that reason, even though habits come fairly easily to me, I use safeguards to protect my good habits. Instead of resisting temptation, I try to anticipate and minimize temptation—both in my environment and in my own mind—and I plan for failure.

Therefore, the first step in the Strategy of Safeguards is the elimination of the cues that lead to those temptations.

The next step, and a highly effective habit-formation tool, is to make detailed plans of action for keeping good habits, with what researcher Peter Gollwitzer calls “implementation intentions,” also known as “action triggers” or “if-then” planning. “If ________ happens, then I will do _______.” With “if-then” planning, we try to plan for every habit challenge that might arise, so we don’t make decisions in the heat of the moment—we’ve already decided how to behave.

“A stumble may prevent a fall” and “He that stumbles, and does not quite fall, gains a step.”

“I feel too anxious to tackle my bad habits, but my bad habits are what make me anxious.

It’s a Secret of Adulthood: Make sure the things we do to make ourselves feel better don’t make us feel worse.

“How about this,” I suggested. “Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, ‘I’ll get back on track tomorrow,’ try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big.”

Loopholes often flit through our minds, almost below the level of consciousness. If we recognize them, we can judge them and stop kidding ourselves. It’s when we deceive ourselves that our bad habits tyrannize us most.

“I use the False Choice loophole all the time at work. I make to-do lists with some items that are easy and fun, and some that are way too ambitious, then I do the easy, fun things because ‘I have to do them, they’re on my list,’ but then I don’t have time for the hard things. This results in procrastination on the large or unpleasant tasks under the guise of being productive.”

(Samuel Johnson observed, “Those faults which we cannot conceal from our own notice, are considered, however frequent, not as habitual corruptions, or settled practices, but as casual failures, and single lapses.”)

This teaching story highlights a paradox that’s very significant to habits and happiness: often, when we consider our actions, it’s clear that any one instance of an action is almost meaningless; yet at the same time, the sum of those actions is very meaningful. Whether we choose to focus on the single coin or the growing heap will shape our behavior. True, any one visit to the gym is inconsequential, but the habit of going to the gym is invaluable.