Better Than Before Quotes

“the real key to habits is decision making—or, more accurately, the lack of decision making”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: How to Make and Break Habits - and Build a Happier Life from the no.1 New York Times Bestselling Queen of Self-Help

“Surprisingly, stress doesn’t necessarily make us likely to indulge in bad habits; when we’re anxious or tired, we fall back on our habits, whether bad or good.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“Questionable Assumption Loophole: We make assumptions that influence our habits—often, not for the better—and many of those assumptions become less convincing under close scrutiny. A reader posted a good example: “I set up weird mental blocks around my time. For instance, if it’s 9 a.m. and I have an appointment at 11 a.m., I’ll think ‘Oh, I have to go somewhere in two hours, so I can’t really start anything serious’ and then end up wasting my whole morning waiting for one thing to happen.” Our assumptions sound reasonable … but are they?”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“Lack of Control Loophole: Weirdly, we often have an illusion of control over things we can’t control—“If I spend a lot of time worrying, the plane is less likely to crash,” “If I play my lucky numbers, I’ll win the lottery eventually”—but deny control over things we can control (“If my cell phone buzzes, I have to check it”). We argue that circumstances force us to break a habit, but often, we have more control than we admit.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“Although some people assume that strong feelings of guilt or shame act as safeguards to help people stick to good habits, the opposite is true. People who feel less guilt and who show compassion toward themselves in the face of failure are better able to regain self-control, while people who feel deeply guilty and full of self-blame struggle more.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“Although many people believe that habits form in twenty-one days, when researchers at University College London examined how long people took to adopt a daily habit, such as drinking water or doing sit-ups, they found that, on average, a habit took sixty-six days to form.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“Also, there was a Princeton study that found that visual clutter reduces your ability to focus and process information.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“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.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

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

“Eventually, I decided to count my daily walk or cross-country ski as a treat—my time for myself in a day otherwise filled with responsibilities. Somehow, that made it much easier to make it a priority.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life

“Challenge: we find personal meaning in pursuing a goal that’s difficult but not impossible. Curiosity: we’re intrigued and find pleasure in learning more. Control: we like the feeling of mastery. Fantasy: we play a game; we use our imagination to make an activity more stimulating. Cooperation: we enjoy the satisfaction of working with others. Competition: we feel gratified when we can compare ourselves favorably to others. Recognition: we’re pleased when others recognize our accomplishments and contributions.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life

“To a truly remarkable extent, we’re more likely to do something if it’s convenient, and less likely if it’s not. For this reason, we should pay close attention to the convenience of any activity we want to make into a habit.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: How to Make and Break Habits - and Build a Happier Life from the no.1 New York Times Bestselling Queen of Self-Help

“Self-measurement brings self-awareness, and self-awareness strengthens our self-control.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life

“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “New England Reformers”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: How to Make and Break Habits - and Build a Happier Life from the no.1 New York Times Bestselling Queen of Self-Help

“The Strategy of Scheduling, of setting a specific, regular time for an activity to recur, is one of the most familiar and powerful strategies of habit formation”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life

“One study estimated that for every hour of interrupted sleep during the previous night, people wasted 8.4 minutes in online puttering”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life

“once the habit is in place, we can effortlessly do the things we want to do.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: How to Make and Break Habits - and Build a Happier Life from the no.1 New York Times Bestselling Queen of Self-Help

“It’s a Secret of Adulthood: Make sure the things we do to make ourselves feel better don’t make us feel worse.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“While physical activity is a key aspect of the Foundation and has many emotional and physical benefits, people often assume that its most important benefit is something that, ironically, it doesn’t provide: exercise doesn’t promote weight loss. It seems to help people maintain their weight—active people are less likely to gain or regain weight than inactive people—but it’s not associated with weight loss. There are many compelling reasons to exercise, but study after study shows that weight loss isn’t one of them. The way to lose weight is to change eating habits. Third:”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life

“Habits are the invisible architecture of daily life.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life

“Many assume that offering a reward will help people to jump-start a healthy habit, which will then persist after the reward fades away. Not so. Often, as soon as the reward stops (and sometimes before it stops), the behavior stops.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“For most of us, the real aim isn’t to enjoy a few pleasures right now, but to build habits that will make us happy over the long term. Sometimes, that means giving up something in the present, or demanding more from ourselves.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“Moral Licensing Loophole: In moral licensing, we give ourselves permission to do something “bad” (eat potato chips, bust the budget) because we’ve been “good.” We reason that we’ve earned it or deserve it.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“The harder it is to do something, the harder it is to do it impulsively, so inconvenience helps us stick to good habits. There are six obvious ways to make an activity less convenient: Increase the amount of physical or mental energy required (leave the cell phone in another room, ban smoking inside or near a building). • Hide any cues (put the video game controller on a high shelf). • Delay it (read email only after 11:00 a.m.). • Engage in an incompatible activity (to avoid snacking, do a puzzle). • Raise the cost (one study showed that people at high risk for smoking were pleased by a rise in the cigarette tax; after London imposed a congestion charge to enter the center of the city, people’s driving habits changed, with fewer cars on the road and more use of public transportation). • Block it altogether (give away the TV set).”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“Any beginning is a time of special power for habit creation, and at certain times we experience a clean slate, in which circumstances change in a way that makes a fresh start possible—if we’re alert for the opportunity.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“the habit of bed making is correlated with a sense of greater well-being and higher productivity. Other common broken windows include having a messy car; accumulating piles of laundry or trash; not being able to find important items, like a passport or a phone charger; hanging on to stacks of newspapers, magazines, and catalogs; wearing pajamas or sweats all day; or not shaving or showering”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“Research suggests that about 40 percent of our behavior is repeated almost daily, and mostly in the same context.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

“I’ve learned to put great store in my own observations of everyday life, because while laboratory experiments are one way to study human nature, they aren’t the only way.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life

“When I think of myself in the third person, many things become clearer.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life

“Because we’re quite susceptible to “goal contagion,” we may rapidly pick up someone else’s habits, so it’s helpful to be around people who are good role models.”
― Gretchen Rubin, Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life