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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 4d4a35b | My Current Habits Am I more likely to indulge in a bad habit in a group, or when I'm alone? If I could magically, effortlessly change one habit in my life, what would it be? If the people around me could change one of my habits, what would they choose? Of my existing habits, which would I like to see my children adopt? Or not? | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| b9038ee | People have an inborn disposition that's set within a certain range, but they can boost themselves to the top of their happiness range or push themselves down to the bottom of their happiness range by their actions. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 20fcd59 | We all know the secret of dieting - eat better, eat less, exercise more - it's the application that's challenging. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 8b158dc | impunity. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 636b524 | Sprinters call Marathoners "plodding," and Marathoners call Sprinters "irresponsible," but there's no right way. Procrastinators, however, are happier when they change their work habits to work more steadily." | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 7a826da | Overbuyers, by contrast, find excuses to buy. They accumulate large quantities of office supplies or kitchen gadgets or travel paraphernalia with the thought "This will probably come in handy someday." When trying to shape a habit, overbuyers tend to load up on equipment or services that they imagine will help them keep their good habits." | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 64156c6 | A promotion-focused person recycles in order to make the environment cleaner; a prevention-focused person recycles in order to avoid getting a fine. Different arguments resonate with different people, and it's helpful to frame a habit in the way that suits each individual. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| c81faaa | But perhaps the most acute sense of happiness from writing was the happiness of expressing a very complicated idea - the kind of idea that takes hundreds of pages to capture. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| d4885ef | Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| b263293 | There's no evidence for the belief that "letting off steam" is healthy or constructive. In fact, studies show that aggressively expressing anger doesn't relieve anger but amplifies it. On the other hand, not expressing anger often allows it to disappear without leaving ugly traces." | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| fcc3688 | So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do. --BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Autobiography | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 2e33cd8 | My research had revealed that challenge and novelty are key elements to happiness. The brain is stimulated by surprise, and successfully dealing with an unexpected situation gives a powerful sense of satisfaction. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| a15fe1e | There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need do only inner work . . . that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself. . . . The fact is, a person is so formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings. --Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 8c5b85f | My home is a place of unconditional belonging, which is part of its pleasure, part of its pain--as Robert Frost wrote, home is "Something you somehow haven't to deserve." | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 38e89b7 | Then I wonder if some people need a coach more than a therapist," I said, thinking of Obligers." | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 508e243 | He gave his assistant a stamped, addressed envelope with a check he'd written to an "anti-charity," an organization whose policies he passionately opposes, with the instruction to mail the check if he had a drink before the time was up." | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 9880be0 | Jamie has a transition habit when he comes home from work. He gives everyone a hello kiss, then disappears for twenty minutes or so. He changes out of his suit, sends one last round of emails, glances at a magazine, and then he's ready to join the family. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 9839fcd | A happy home wasn't a place that I could furnish, but an attitude of mind I must develop. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| c18e614 | Gary Taubes, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It (New York: Anchor Books, 2010). For an expanded discussion of Taubes's arguments, see Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health (New York: Anchor Books, 2008). It includes a helpful summary of Taubes's conclusions (p. 454): 1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of ci.. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 6fcfd36 | I've been haunted for years by a public service poster I saw just one time, in the subway. It was a photo of a Chinese food take-out container sitting on top of two videos. The caption read, "If this is how you spend your time, why are you living in New York?" | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 986c8a5 | Technology is a good servant but a bad master. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| a4ea37d | Erasmus's The Praise of Folly. According to a footnote, the argument of the growing heap is: If ten coins are not enough to make a man rich, what if you add one coin? What if you add another? Finally, you will have to say that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him so. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 46670e5 | I feel too anxious to tackle my bad habits, but my bad habits are what make me anxious. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| a646177 | Physical activity is the magical elixir of practically everything. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 3388759 | 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. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| a56f59d | It's hard to do even simple things well, and most things aren't simple. As | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 05ed628 | It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 4508c8d | Habit makes it dangerously easy to become numb to our own existence. For | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 233527b | 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.. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| e84efa5 | A recent study showed that 25 percent of Americans don't get any exercise at all. Just by exercising twenty minutes a day three days a week for six weeks, persistently tired people boosted their energy. | Gretchen Craft Rubin | ||
| 6bccb8f | Associate with people who are likely to improve you. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 9aa71a8 | It's a Secret of Adulthood: If I give more to myself, I can ask more from myself. Self-regard isn't selfish. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 652998c | To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth. I | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 59bc672 | 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). | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| e7f270f | a Secret of Adulthood: things often get harder before they get easier--but | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| b72ae12 | I later changed my passwords to a goal I've been working on, or an achievement I want. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 2f06a8b | The conduct of our lives is the true reflection of our thoughts. --Michel de Montaigne, "Of the Education of Children" | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 1b29c84 | getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person's daily happiness than getting a $60,000 raise. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| ce5e86f | 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." | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| b456a97 | Money. It's a good servant but a bad master. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 51acd22 | 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.. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 87ab7df | For this reason, we should pay close attention to the convenience of any activity we want to make into a habit. | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| 5e82e3c | 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." | Gretchen Rubin | ||
| c4fc798 | It's a Secret of Adulthood: The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all. | Gretchen Rubin |