Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life

by Gretchen Rubin

In other words, habits eliminate the need for self-control.

A “routine” is a string of habits, and a “ritual” is a habit charged with transcendent meaning.

Another Obliger summarized: “Promises made to yourself can be broken. It’s the promises made to others that should never be broken.” Obligers need external accountability even for activities that they want to do.

This contrarian streak among Obligers explains another pattern I’ve noticed: almost always, if a Rebel is in a long-term relationship, that Rebel is paired with an Obliger.

Interestingly, research suggests that Larks are likely to be happier, healthier, and more satisfied with life than Owls—in part, because the world favors Larks. Owls fall asleep later than Larks do, and because work, school, and young children start early, Owls get less sleep, which makes their lives harder.

The habit of the habit is even more valuable than the habit itself;

There’s no magic formula—not for ourselves, and not for the people around us. We won’t make ourselves more creative and productive by copying other people’s habits, even the habits of geniuses; we must know our own nature, and what habits serve us best.

Many strategies help us change our habits, and four strategies tower above the others: Monitoring, Foundation, Scheduling, and Accountability.

Actual measurement is crucial, because when we guess what we’re doing, we’re often wildly inaccurate.

From my observation, habits in four areas do most to boost feelings of self-control, and in this way strengthen the Foundation of all our habits. We do well to begin by tackling the habits that help us to: 1. sleep 2. move 3. eat and drink right 4. unclutter

(Being mildly but chronically short of sleep makes people more susceptible to hunger and temptation—perhaps

yet when I made the unoriginal suggestion that they go to bed earlier, they became upset and resentful. Why? I began to understand. These folks schedule very little time for themselves, they race around without a break, and their only leisure time comes at night.

“If I went to sleep earlier, that would mean the firm is getting all of me.” He shook his head. “No way.”

But for me, messy surroundings are a broken window that makes me feel less productive and creative, not more. When my office is crammed with open books, scribbled notes, half-empty coffee cups, and uncapped pens, I feel overwhelmed. Clearing my space clears my mind. Each person has different broken windows.

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

People raise the bar when they consider starting a new habit, and then, from an impulse that’s either enthusiasm or unconscious self-sabotage, they suggest refinements that make the habit prohibitively challenging.

The desire to start something at the “right” time is usually just a justification for delay. In almost every case, the best time to start is now.

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.”

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.

Now is an unpopular time to take a first step.

Along those lines, the Blast Start can be a helpful way to take a first step. The Blast Start is the opposite of taking the smallest possible first step because it requires a period of high commitment. It’s demanding, but its intensity can energize a habit. For instance, after reading Chris Baty’s book No Plot? No Problem!—which explains how to write a novel in a month—I wrote a novel in thirty days, as a way to spark my creativity. This kind of shock treatment can’t be maintained forever, but it’s fun and gives momentum to the habit.

A friend’s husband has a more idiosyncratic transition. He sits on a sofa that faces a built-in bookcase, and, one arm flung over the sofa back, looks at the bookcase. “He calls it ‘staring at the bookcase,’ ” she told me. “He’s not meditating or anything like that, and I can talk to him, but he wants fifteen minutes to stare at the bookcase when he gets home.”

There’s a magic to the beginning of anything. We want to begin right, and a good start feels auspicious.

I talked to a woman who marks the clean slate of the new year in a very literal way by tossing out everything in her fridge, right down to the mustard and pickles.

“We set out to be wrecked”; to fail was the very purpose of their undertaking.

To keep going, I sometimes need to allow myself to stop.

A finish line marks a stopping point. Once we stop, we must start over, and starting over is harder than continuing.

The true aim is not to break bad habits, but to outgrow them.