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

Perhaps—like writing, leadership, and a sense of humor—good habits are something that must be learned, but can’t be taught.

In an odd but effective trick, I view myself from the outside. When I think of myself in the third person, many things become clearer.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. —WILLIAM JAMES, Psychology: Briefer Course