Latest / The Action Catalyst / REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement)

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REMASTERED: Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin (Behavior, Productivity, Goal Setting, Self Improvement) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:37
  Host: Gretchen Rubin has books that were both instant New York
• 0:40
  Times bestsellers, The Happiness Project and Happier at Home. And
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  she truly is one of the world's leading thinkers and writers on
• 0:51
  habits and happiness. And Better Than Before is a book all about
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  how we change our habits. So Gretchen, thanks for being here.
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  Gretchen Rubin: Well, I'm very happy to be talking to you
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  today.
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  Host: Yeah, so I love the idea of habits and in changing
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  habits.
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  Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, you know, as you said, I've written over
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  two books about habits. And I mean about happiness. And I had
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  been spending a lot of time thinking and researching and
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  talking to people about happiness. And I began to notice
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  a pattern that often when people talk about will a happiness
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  boost that they'd have, but really even more often a
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  happiness challenge that they face. They often were pointing
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  to something that at its core, involves a problem with a habit
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  that somebody would never go, I'm exhausted all the time.
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  They're really to me that sounded like, you're not going
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  to bed early enough. Like why aren't you able to form the
• 1:40
  habit of turning the light out at 11 instead of 2am? What is
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  what's going on with your habits. And often people would
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  talk about a habit that they knew that if they needed or
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  broke, it would make them happier. But somehow, they just
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  weren't able to translate that into action. And then I had a
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  lunch with a friend who made a casual comment that got me
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  obsessed without it. And she said, the thing that I would be
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  happier if I exercise. And when I was in high school, I was on
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  the track team. And I never missed track practice. But I
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  can't go running now why? This just floored me. I was like,
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  what is it? It's the same behavior to the same person?
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  What's different? What meant that at one point to have it was
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  effortless and nasty? Can't do a try? See might? And so then I
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  was like, Okay, that's it my next book habits.
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  Host: I love it. Do you believe that there is kind of a one size
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  fits all solution to changing our habits? Or do you think it's
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  something different?
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  Gretchen Rubin: I think that so many people, they start small,
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  or do it for 30 days, or have a cheat day or do it first thing
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  in the morning. And all these strategies work? Well, for some
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  people, sometimes. But they don't work for everybody all the
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  time where we would all have perfect habits. And I think
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  really, what I found when I really delved into this is that
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  there is no magic wand, because loosen. And what we really need
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  to do is to think about ourselves, understand ourselves
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  the significant elements of our behavior, and then shape our
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  habits to suit us. You know, people are like, well, this is
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  what Steve Jobs did. So well, that doesn't tell you anything
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  about yourself. I mean, maybe it'll give you some interesting
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  ideas. But it doesn't mean it's going to work for you. And I
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  think a lot of times people get discouraged, because they try
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  and fail to form a habit over and over. But in fact, they
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  haven't set it up in a way that's right for them. And so
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  that's why they're not succeeding. But if they took a
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  different approach, they might very well have a different
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  outcome and so much better than before, what I'm trying to do is
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  talk about well, what how do we understand ourselves as it comes
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  to kind of our habit nature? What do we understand about
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  ourselves? And then how might we put that into practice, to shape
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  our habits to suit ourselves, some people didn't a lot of
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  caulk, and some people drink a lot of news, and some people
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  stay up late. And some people get up early, and people work
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  steadily. And some people work all at the end. And some people
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  work a lot every day. And some people read just a little bit
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  every day. I mean, what you see is that the people who are
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  happier, healthier, and more most productive are the people
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  who have figured out themselves and they set up their lives, to
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  suit them. If they are morning people, they do their most
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  important work in the morning. But if they're nice people,
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  that's not how they go about it. You know, it's all about fitting
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  your circumstances to what can allow you to succeed, figuring
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  out what is the combination, so that combination lock that a lot
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  of students, that's how you're hardwired. And so everybody
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  might say to you like, oh, you should get up early and work on
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  your PhD thesis. Like if you're a night person, getting up early
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  is not going to work for you. It might make sense on paper, but
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  it's not going to work for you.
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  Host: Yeah. So you have an opinion on using rewards and
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  incentives and treats. What's your philosophy on how rewards
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  fit into having good habits?
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  Gretchen Rubin: Well, we weren't they're very, very dangerous
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  when it comes to habit. Oh, they're very dangerous. And so
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  you have to distinguish between a reward and to treat. Treats
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  are good rewards are very dangerous. So treat is something
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  that you get tough because you want it you don't earn it. You
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  don't deserve it. You just want it so you got it. And we should
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  really, really hold ourselves healthy treats. Because when we
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  give ourselves treats, we feel comforted and taken care of, and
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  our battery gets energized. And so that gives us more self
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  command. And we want our self command to be as high as
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  possible, we want to self control we want willpower to be,
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  we want those reserves to be very high. And when you do those
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  little things for yourself, whether it's doing a crossword
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  puzzle on your iPad, or buying yourself new music on iTunes,
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  or, you know, whatever it might be people of all different
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  treats, then that's good. Now, there are unhealthy treats,
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  which are like food and drink, you don't want to do something
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  to make yourself feel better, that's gonna end up making you
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  feel worse, the tweets are good to good, they they boost our
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  self mastery, and they keep us from getting into that dangerous
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  land of feeling deprived, I need it, I've earned it, I should get
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  the that's when we start giving ourselves unhealthy treats I
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  need, the rewards are bad, because the reason that habits
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  are superpowers is that they get us out of the dangerous draining
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  difficult job of using decision making and using willpower. If
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  it's a habit, it just happens automatically. You don't have to
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  think about it, you don't have to judge it, you just do it
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  automatically. I do not decide to wake up at 6am, I do not
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  decide whether to take dessert. I just know. And that happens
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  automatically. It doesn't pick anything for me. And so that
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  frees up my mind. And it frees me from having to use my self
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  control. Because it's undertaking self control. I know
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  exactly what I'm going to do. And I do it. A reward though,
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  always requires the decision. Have you earned your reward. And
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  that interferes with a habit? Because I'm saying well, I, if I
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  run, I get to have a beer. Well, around half today, do I get a
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  beer, but I hurt my foot. So I really couldn't run but I still
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  want the beer do I get the beer, I'm on vacation. So good one, I
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  should get the beer. And then sometimes what happens is you
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  make a habit of reward and the habit. It's awful boy, if you
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  have a beer every night, you get used to that, but you're not
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  even running. But they're also bad. Because when you give
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  yourself a reward, you're telling yourself that you're
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  only doing something for them in order to get the reward. So
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  you're undermining intrinsic motivation. And you're giving
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  yourself an extrinsic motivation. So you're saying
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  like, well, this is why I'm doing it. And with a habit, you
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  want it to just happen automatically, you don't want to
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  be judging it. And you don't want to you don't want to give
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  it a negative association, like you want to do it because you
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  want to do it. And if you're rewarding it, then you're just
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  teaching yourself that it's not something that you wouldn't
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  otherwise do. When also often we give ourselves perverse rewards.
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  So give ourselves rewards. Exactly countered contradicts,
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  whatever we want, like my friend who admitted I was 10 pounds,
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  I'm gonna have a big piece of chocolate cake. The one kind of
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  reward that is good is the reward that takes you deeper
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  into the habit. So let's say you're doing a lot of yoga, you
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  would buy yourself a new yoga mat, because a person who does a
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  lot of gilgen needs a yoga mat. Or let's say you're doing a lot
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  of work on a side project. And when you buy a new fancy laptop,
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  because a person who's doing all this extra work needs
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  technological support. That makes sense. I talked to one
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  company that had a really smart reward, which was that if you
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  exercise 75 times in a year, you got the next year very another
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  reward for exercise was more exercise. So that the reward is
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  picking deeper into the habit, it's not irrelevant to the habit
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  or actually undermining the habit it's taking just give it
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  making it easier for you to do the habit and more pleasant. And
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  that's good, because the easier and more pleasant more
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  convenient it is to do a habit, the more likely we are to stick
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  to it. That's my strategy of convenience. But you don't want
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  to reward that's not related to it, or that actually puts you in
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  the opposite direction that we work. They're dangerous. They're
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  tempting their ticket tempting solution. But I think it's often
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  counterproductive when it comes to habits.
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  Host: So how do I get myself to quickly change a habit?
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  Gretchen Rubin: I think we often think of habit forming very
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  gradually. And it's the price when I really started looking at
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  the pattern of my habits and how often have they change very
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  quickly. People said to me all the time, like I want to go
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  through my day making healthy choices. And I'm like, No, you
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  don't you don't want to spend your day making healthy choices,
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  because you'll probably choose the wrong a lot of times you
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  want to choose one than no more choosing. Are you going to bring
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  lunch today? Yes, you are. Are you going to eat fast food
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  today? No, you're not. Are you choosing? No, you're not that
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  already happened that happened months ago. You don't revisit
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  that choice. There's no emotion. There's no debate. There's none
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  of that inner struggle. Because tomorrow you're slam and born
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  today tomorrow's workout, you know, it's done.
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  Host: I love that. So there are some habits that are really
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  simple, right like to use one of your examples is wearing a
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  seatbelt. And then some are a little bit they seem more
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  involved or complex like I'm trying to stop smoking or I'm
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  trying to drink glass or workout more. Do you feel like the same
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  strategic plan works in both cases? Or is it different
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  depending on the complexity of the habit?
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  Gretchen Rubin: Well, the easiest kind of habit in life
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  happens in exactly the same way every day. So like if you get up
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  and the first thing you do is you brush your teeth like that's
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  what I would call a stick of Cabot like it happens exactly
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  the same way and so that's easier you use the same
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  strategies. So I have identified 21 strategies Can people use to
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  save their habits, you use the same strategy to make a habit or
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  break a habit. It's the same strategy. And so with a simpler
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  habit it might take, it may take less to cement it in. But where
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  if there's a more complex habit, then there has to be more
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  thought put into, like, how do you get them into your life and
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  keep it in here? How do you safeguarded to? I feel like some
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  even have it is it's completely automatic. And that's really
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  what we strive for. But I think for a lot of habits are never
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  100% automatic, like, you know, every day is a little bit
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  different. And you have to kind of think about your exercise
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  every day, you might be in the habit of exercising, but it
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  takes a little bit of work every time like what am I gonna go?
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  What am I, you know, right. And so you need to enter one of the
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  strategies, the strategy of safeguards, which is, what are
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  the things that you do to protect a habit once it's once
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  you've got it going, if you do this, then do that, which I
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  would call the if the strategy of, you know, if then planning,
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  which is, if this happens, then I do this, you go ahead and
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  figure that out in advance. So it's as simple as that it might
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  take less, and then more complex habit, might take a little more
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  thought to figure out how to get that into place. You know, I
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  started a podcast myself. It's called happier with Gretchen
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  Rubin and I talked about all this stuff. It's so much fun. So
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  I'm one of the first things that we talked about was the habit of
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  making your bed. Because whenever I talk to people about
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  what habits do you feel like make you happier and more
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  productive and feel healthier? And so often people mentioned is
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  the habit of making your bed. And as you say, it's a very
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  simple habit to get. You can do it first thing in the morning
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  and like then the rest of the day, you're like, oh, look, if I
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  did nothing else, I made my bed. And it's funny how much I love
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  debates with people.
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  Host: Well, the book is called Better Than Before: Mastering
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  the Habits of Our Everyday Lives. Thank you so much for
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  being here.
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  Gretchen Rubin: Thank you so much. It was great. I feel like
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  we could talk for hours on my website, which is this
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  GretchenRubin.com. There's a bunch of info either blog talks
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  about habits and also a lot of downloads. I have the change
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  checklist and one pagers about working better than before
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  eating better than before exercising better than before
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  like to get you started because those are some of the habits
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  people most want to form a starter kit for people who want
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  to start habits groups for people who are going to help
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  each other change their habits. And I have this one cat called
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  happier with Gretchen Rubin, where we talk about a lot of
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  these kinds of issues, science from ancient wisdom and also our
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  own experiences.
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  Host: GretchenRubin.com. Gretchen, thanks for being here.
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  Gretchen Rubin: Yes.