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I feel too anxious to tackle my bad habits, but my bad habits are what make me anxious.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Physical activity is the magical elixir of practically everything.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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The habit of the habit is more important than the habit itself. For this reason, it can be helpful to keep a habit symbolically, even if we can't keep it literally, to keep a habit in place. Someone who can't go for a run because his wife is sick can go for a short walk. Someone who can't write for an hour because the kids are home from school can write for ten minutes.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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It's hard to do even simple things well, and most things aren't simple. As
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Gretchen Rubin |
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It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Habit makes it dangerously easy to become numb to our own existence. For
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Gretchen Rubin |
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For people who want to eat and drink more healthfully, keeping a food journal can be extremely effective. For instance, one study showed that dieters who kept a food journal six or seven days a week lost twice as much weight as people who did so once a week or not at all. Although keeping a food journal sounds straightforward, I braced myself for a challenge when I decided to try it. No one ever mentions how hard it is to keep a food journa..
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Associate with people who are likely to improve you.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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It's a Secret of Adulthood: If I give more to myself, I can ask more from myself. Self-regard isn't selfish.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth. I
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Gretchen Rubin |
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For an extensive and fascinating discussion of the use and pitfalls of rewards, see Edward Deci, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation (New York: Penguin, 1996); Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999); Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead, 2009).
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Gretchen Rubin |
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a Secret of Adulthood: things often get harder before they get easier--but
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Gretchen Rubin |
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I later changed my passwords to a goal I've been working on, or an achievement I want.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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The conduct of our lives is the true reflection of our thoughts. --Michel de Montaigne, "Of the Education of Children"
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Gretchen Rubin |
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getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person's daily happiness than getting a $60,000 raise.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Happiness," wrote Yeats, "is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing." Contemporary researchers make the same argument: that it isn't goal attainment but the process of striving after goals--that is, growth--that brings happiness."
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Money. It's a good servant but a bad master.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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The Strategy of Scheduling is a powerful weapon against procrastination. Because of tomorrow logic, we tend to feel confident that we'll be productive and virtuous--tomorrow. (The word "procrastinate" comes from cras, the Latin word for "tomorrow.") In one study, when subjects made a shopping list15 for what they'd eat in a week, more chose a healthy snack instead of an unhealthy snack; when asked what they'd choose now, more people chose t..
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Gretchen Rubin |
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For this reason, we should pay close attention to the convenience of any activity we want to make into a habit.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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When the Schiphol Airport put the image of a housefly above the drains of urinals, men began to aim at it--a change that reduced spillage rates by 80 percent. "Gamification" is used in the design of devices and apps to help people improve their habits."
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Gretchen Rubin |
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It's a Secret of Adulthood: The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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They're perceived to be more friendly, warmer, and even more physically attractive. A study showed that students who were happy as college freshmen were earning more money in their midthirties--without any wealth advantage to start. Being happy can make a big difference in your work life.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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In other words, even though one coin certainly isn't sufficient to make a man rich, a man only becomes rich by adding one coin after another.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Waiting fifteen minutes proved effective against my growing "checking habit."
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Gretchen Rubin |
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eliminating clutter would cut down the amount of housework in the average home by 40 percent.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Researchers were surprised to find," write Roy Baumeister and John Tierney in their fascinating book Willpower, "that people with strong self-control spent less time resisting desires than other people did.... people with good self-control mainly use it not for rescue in emergencies but rather to develop effective habits and routines in school and at work." In other words, habits eliminate the need for self-control."
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Gretchen Rubin |
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making. A habit requires no decision from me, because I've already decided.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Habit makes it dangerously easy to become numb to our own existence.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Upholders may struggle in situations where expectations aren't clear or the rules aren't established. They may feel compelled to meet expectations, even ones that seem pointless. They may feel uneasy when they know they're breaking the rules, even unnecessary rules, unless they work out a powerful justification to do so.
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habits
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Finally, it became perfectly obvious. A finish line marks a stopping point. Once we stop, we must start over, and starting over is harder than continuing.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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there is no Future-Gretchen, only Now-Gretchen.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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a stumble may be helpful, because it shows me where I need to concentrate my efforts in order to do better next time.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Audiences = expectations. If he thinks you're not watching, he won't need to rebel against your expectations.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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These tasks weren't urgent (which was the reason they didn't get done), but because they weighed on my mind, they sapped my energy.
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tasks
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Read the news every morning" or "Call one client each day" are easy to monitor, while vague resolutions such as "Be more informed" or "Cultivate better client relationships" are hard to monitor....Accurate monitoring helps determine whether a habit is worth the time, money, or energy it consumes."
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resolutions
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Gretchen Rubin |
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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. For them, the key is external accountability.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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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.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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novelty. I'm definitely in the familiarity camp. I love to reread my favorite books and to watch movies over and over. I eat the same foods, more or less, every day. I like returning to places I've visited before. Other people thrive on doing new things. For familiarity lovers, a habit becomes easier as it becomes familiar. When I felt intimidated by the library when I started law school, I made myself walk through it a few times each day u..
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Gretchen Rubin |
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In their thought-provoking book Focus, researchers Tory Higgins and Heidi Grant Halvorson argue that people lean toward being "promotion-focused" or "prevention-focused" in their aims."
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Like Dr. Johnson, I'm an Abstainer: I find it far easier to give up something altogether than to indulge moderately. And this distinction has profound implications for habits.
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Gretchen Rubin |
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One study showed that children who got a reward for coloring with magic markers--an activity that children love--didn't spend as much time with markers, later, as children who didn't expect a reward. The children began to think, "Why would I color if I don't get a reward?"
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Gretchen Rubin |
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An unmade bed is a common broken window, which is why "Make the bed" is one of the most popular happiness-project resolutions, and in fact, as Charles Duhigg points out in his fascinating book The Power of Habit, the habit of bed making is correlated with a sense of greater well-being and higher productivity."
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Gretchen Rubin |
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When scheduling a new habit, it helps to tie it to an existing habit, such as "after breakfast," or to an external cue, such as "when my alarm rings,"
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Gretchen Rubin |
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Arranging to Fail Loophole:
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Gretchen Rubin |