In Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin answers the most perplexing questions about habits with her signature mix of rigorous research and engaging storytelling:
- Why do we find it tough to create a habit for something we love to do?
- How can we keep our healthy habits when we're surrounded by temptations?
- How can we help someone else change a habit?
Rubin reveals the true secret to habit change: first, we must know ourselves. When we shape our habits to suit ourselves, we can find success- even if we've failed before. Whether you want to eat more healthfully, stop checking devices, or finish a project, the invaluable ideas in Better Than Before will start you working on your own habits - even before you've finished the book.
About the Author
Gretchen Rubin is one of the most thought-provoking and influential writers on habits and happiness. Her books The Happiness Project, Happier at Home and Better Than Before were all instant New York Times bestsellers, and have sold more than two million copies in 35 languages. Her podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin (recorded with her sister Elizabeth Craft) has been downloaded millions of times. On her website gretchenrubin.com she writes about her adventures as she test-drives ideas from contemporary science and ancient wisdom about building good habits and a happier life. She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters.
Source: https://www.booktopia.com.au/better-than-before-gretchen-rubin/prod9781444769012.html
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The Book in Three Sentences
- A behaviour becomes a habit when it no longer requires a decision from you.
- To change a habit effectively, you need to understand your ’tendency’.
- Scheduling is one of the most effective ways to building better habits.
The Five Big Ideas
- “Habits are the invisible architecture of daily life”.
- “It takes self-control to establish good habits”.
- “A habit requires no decision from me, because I’ve already decided”.
- “When we change our habits, we change our lives”.
- “If we’re trying to persuade people to adopt a habit, we have more success if we consider their Tendency”.
Better Than Before Summary
- “Habits are the invisible architecture of daily life”.
- “The most important thing is to know ourselves, and to choose the strategies that work for us”.
- “[We] often learn more from one person’s idiosyncratic experiences than [we] do from scientific studies or philosophical treatises”.
- “To understand how people are able to change, [we] must understand habits”.
- “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”.
- “Habits eliminate the need for self-control”.
- “Yet one study suggests that when we try to use self-control to resist temptation, we succeed only about half the time, and indeed, in a large international survey, when people were asked to identify their failings, a top choice was lack of self-control”.
- “With habits, we conserve our self-control”.
- “It takes self-control to establish good habits”.
- “In ordinary terms, a “habit” is generally defined as a behavior that’s recurrent, is cued by a specific context, often happens without much awareness or conscious intent, and is acquired through frequent repetition”.
- “I concluded that the real key to habits is decision making—or, more accurately, the lack of decision making”.
- “A habit requires no decision from me, because I’ve already decided”.
- “This freedom from decision making is crucial, because when I have to decide—which often involves resisting temptation or postponing gratification—I tax my self-control”.
- “Habits make change possible by freeing us from decision making and from using self-control”.
- “Research suggests that people feel more in control and less anxious when engaged in habit behavior”.
- “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”.
- “For this reason, it’s all the more important to try to shape habits mindfully, so that when we fall back on them at times of stress, we’re following activities that make our situation better, not worse”.
- “Habit makes it dangerously easy to become numb to our own existence”.
- “Generally, I’ve observed, we seek changes that fall into the ‘Essential Seven'”.
The Essential Seven:
- Eat and drink more healthfully (give up sugar, eat more vegetables, drink less alcohol)
- Exercise regularly
- Save, spend, and earn wisely (save regularly, pay down debt, donate to worthy causes, stick to a budget)
- 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)
- Accomplish more, stop procrastinating (practice an instrument, work without interruption, learn a language, maintain a blog)
- Simplify, clear, clean, and organize (make the bed, file regularly, put keys away in the same place, recycle)
- 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)
- “A ‘routine’ is a string of habits, and a ‘ritual’ is a habit charged with transcendent meaning”.
- “Habit is a good servant but a bad master”.
- “Ask yourself, ‘To what end do I pursue this habit?’”
- “When we change our habits, we change our lives”.
- “We can use decision making to choose the habits we want to form, we can use willpower to get the habit started; then—and this is the best part—we can allow the extraordinary power of habit to take over”.
- “The first and most important habits question is: ‘How does a person respond to an expectation?’”
- “When we try to form a new habit, we set an expectation for ourselves. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand how we respond to expectations”.
- “We face two kinds of expectations: outer expectations (meet work deadlines, observe traffic regulations) and inner expectations (stop napping, keep a New Year’s resolution)”.
The Four Tendencies:
- Upholders. Respond readily to both outer expectations and inner expectations.
- Questioners. Question all expectations, and will meet an expectation only if they believe it’s justified.
- Obligers. Respond readily to outer expectations but struggle to meet inner expectations (my friend on the track team).
- Rebels. Resist all expectations, outer and inner alike.
- “Our Tendency colors the way we see the world and therefore has enormous consequences for our habits”.
- “Upholders respond readily to outer expectations and inner expectations”.
- “Because Upholders feel a real obligation to meet their expectations for themselves, they have a strong instinct for self-preservation, and this helps protect them from their tendency to meet others’ expectations”.
- “Questioners question all expectations, and they respond to an expectation only if they conclude that it makes sense”.
- “Because Questioners like to make well-considered decisions and come to their own conclusions, they’re very intellectually engaged, and they’re often willing to do exhaustive research”.
- “Obligers meet outer expectations, but struggle to meet inner expectations”.
- “Obligers may find it difficult to form a habit, because often we undertake habits for our own benefit, and Obligers do things more easily for others than for themselves”.
- “Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike”.
- “Rebels sometimes frustrate even themselves, because they can’t tell themselves what to do”.
- “Knowing our Tendency can help us frame habits in a compelling way”.
- “If we’re trying to persuade people to adopt a habit, we have more success if we consider their Tendency”.
- “Self-measurement brings self-awareness, and self-awareness strengthens our self-control”.
- “A key step for the Strategy of Monitoring is to identify precisely what action is monitored”.
- “Unsurprisingly, we tend to underestimate how much we eat and overestimate how much we exercise”.
- “Surprisingly often, when people want to improve their habits, they begin with a habit that won’t deliver much payoff in return for the habit-formation energy required”.
- “It’s helpful to begin with habits that most directly strengthen self-control; these habits serve as the Foundation for forming other good habits”.
- “Habits grow strongest and fastest when they’re repeated in predictable ways, and for most of us, putting an activity on the schedule tends to lock us into doing it”.
- “Scheduling also forces us to confront the natural limits of the day”.
- “Scheduling one activity makes that time unavailable for anything else. Which is good—especially for people who have trouble saying no”.
- “To apply the Strategy of Scheduling, we must decide when, and how often, a habit should occur”.
- “Consistency, repetition, no decision—this was the way to develop the ease of a true habit”.
- “Scheduling can also be used to restrict the time spent on an activity”.
- “Although scheduling time to worry sounds odd, it’s a proven strategy for reducing anxiety”.
- “The Strategy of Scheduling is a powerful weapon against procrastination”.
- “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”.
- “Accountability means that we face consequences for what we’re doing—even if that consequence is merely the fact that someone else is monitoring us”.
- “To a truly remarkable extent, we’re more likely to do something if it’s convenient, and less likely if it’s not”.
- “It’s not easy, as an adult, to make a new friend. It can feel very awkward to say, “Would you like to get a cup of coffee sometime?” The convenience of group membership makes it easier to become friends”.
- “Two kinds of clarity support habit formation: clarity of values and clarity of action”.
- “It’s easier to stick to a habit when we see, with clarity, the connection between the habit and the value it serves”.
- “The fact is, changing a habit is much more challenging if that new habit means altering or losing an aspect of ourselves”.
- “Research shows that we tend to believe what we hear ourselves say, and the way we describe ourselves influences our view of our identity, and from there, our habits”.
- Source: https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/book-summaries/self-help/better-than-before/
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Here's the remarkably simple secret to forming lifelong habits
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars
As I studied habits, I slowly began to recognise the tremendous importance of the time of beginning.
The most important step is the first step. All those old sayings are really true. Well begun is half done. Don’t get it perfect, get it going. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Nothing is more exhausting than the task that’s never started, and strangely, starting is often far harder than continuing.
That first step is tough. Every action has an ignition cost: getting myself to the gym and changed into my gym clothes can be more challenging than actually working out. That’s why good habits are a tremendous help: they make the starting process automatic.
Without yet having a name for it, in fact, I’d invoked the power of the Strategy of First Steps as I was starting to write this book. I’d spent months reading and taking copious notes, and I had a giant document with a jumble of material about habits. This initial period of research for a book is always exhilarating, but eventually I have to begin the painstaking labour of actual analysis and writing.
What was the most auspicious date to start? I asked myself. The first day of the week, or the month, or the year? Or my birthday? Or the start of the school year? Then I realised that I was beginning to invoke tomorrow logic.
Nope. Begin now. I was ready. Take the first step. It’s enough to begin.
Now is an unpopular time to take a first step. Won’t things be easier — for some not-quite-specified reason — in the future? I have a fantasy of what I’ll be like tomorrow: Future-Gretchen will spontaneously start a good new habit, with no planning and no effort necessary; it’s quite pleasant to think about how virtuous I’ll be, tomorrow. But there is no Future-Gretchen, only Now-Gretchen.
A friend told me about how she used tomorrow logic: “I use a kind of magical thinking to procrastinate. I make up questionable rules like ‘I can’t start working at 10:10, I need to start on the hour’ or ‘It’s already 4:00, it’s too late to start working.’ But the truth is that I should just start.” It’s common to hear people say, “I’ll start my new habit after the holidays are over/I’ve settled into my new job/my kids are a little older.” Or worse, the double-remove: “I’ll start my new habit once I’m back in shape.”
Tomorrow logic wastes time, and also it may allow us to deny that our current actions clash with our intentions. In an argument worthy of the White Queen, we tell ourselves, absolutely, I’m committed to reading aloud to my children, and I will read to them tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow — just not today.
The same tendency can lead us to overcommit to responsibilities that take place in the comfortably distant future — but eventually the future arrives, and then we’re stuck. My father-in-law has a mental habit to correct for that kind of tomorrow logic. He told me, “If I’m asked to do something — give a speech, attend an event — I always imagine that it’s happening next week. It’s too easy to agree to do something that’s six months off, then the time comes, and I’m sorry I agreed to do it.”
Better than before by gretchen rubin
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This story comes from ‘Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives’ by Gretchen Rubin.
When taking the first step toward a new habit, a key question from the Strategy of Distinctions is “Do I prefer to take small steps or big steps?”
Many people succeed best when they keep their starting steps as small and manageable as possible; by doing so, they gain the habit of the habit, and the feeling of mastery. They begin their new yoga routine by doing three poses, or start work on a big writing project by drafting a single sentence in a writing session.
As an exercise zealot, I was pleased when my mother told me that she was trying to make a habit of going for a daily walk.
“But I’m having trouble sticking to it,” she told me.
“How far are you going?”
“Twice around Loose Park,” she told me, “which is about two miles.”
“Try going just once around the park,” I suggested. That worked. When she started smaller, she was able to form the habit.
Small steps can be particularly helpful when we’re trying to do something that seems overwhelming. If I can get myself to take that first small step, I usually find that I can keep going. I invoked this principle when I was prodding myself to master Scrivener, a writers’ software program. Scrivener would help me organise my enormous trove of notes, but I dreaded starting: installing the software; synchronizing between my laptop and desktop computers; and most difficult, figuring out how to use it.
Each day gave me a new opportunity to push the task off until tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’d feel like dealing with it. “Start now,” I finally thought. “Just take the first step.” I started with the smallest possible step, which was to find the website where I could buy the software. OK, I thought. I can do that. And then I did. I had a lot of hard work ahead of me — it’s a Secret of Adulthood: things often get harder before they get easier — but I’d started. The next day, with a feeling of much greater confidence and calm, I watched the tutorial video. Then I created my document. And then — I started my book.
However, some people do better when they push themselves more boldly; a big challenge holds their interest and helps them persist. A friend was determined to learn French, so he moved to France for six months.
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 twenty-one-day project, a detox, a cleanse, an ambitious goal, a boot camp — by tackling more instead of less for a certain period, I get a surge of energy and focus. (Not to mention bragging rights.) In particular, I love the retreat model. Three times, I’ve set aside a few days to work on a book during every waking hour, with breaks only for meals and for exercise. These periods of intensity help fuel my daily writing habit.
However, a Blast Start is, by definition, unsustainable over the long term. It’s very important to plan specifically how to shift from the intensity of the Blast Start into the habit that will continue indefinitely.
There’s no right way or wrong way, just whatever works.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/better-than-before-by-gretchen-rubin-2015-1?r=US&IR=T
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