Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

by Gretchen Rubin

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Happiness Project and “a force for real change” (Brené Brown) examines how changing our habits can change our lives.
 
“If anyone can help us stop procrastinating, start exercising, or get organized, it’s Gretchen Rubin. The happiness guru takes a sledgehammer to old-fashioned notions about change.”—Parade
 
Most of us have a habit we’d like to change, and there’s no shortage of expert advice. But as we all know from tough experience, no magic, one-size-fits-all solution exists. It takes work to make a habit, but once that habit is set, we can harness the energy of habits to build happier, stronger, more productive lives.
 
In Better Than Before, acclaimed writer Gretchen Rubin identifies every approach that actually works. She presents a practical, concrete framework to allow readers to understand their habits—and to change them for good. 
 
Infused with Rubin’s compelling voice, rigorous research, and easy humor, and packed with vivid stories of lives transformed, Better Than Before explains the (sometimes counterintuitive) core principles of habit formation and answers the most perplexing questions about habits: 
 
• 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385348614
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/17/2015
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	544,266
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature. She’s the author of many books, including the blockbuster New York Times bestsellersOuter Order, Inner Calm; The Four Tendencies; Better Than Before; and The Happiness Project. She has an enormous readership, both in print and online, and her books have sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide, in more than thirty languages. On her top-ranking, award-winning podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, she explores happiness and good habits. She is also a CBS News contributor, providing weekly solutions for living a happier life. Gretchen Rubin started her career in law and was clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when she realized that she wanted to be a writer. Raised in Kansas City, she lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters.

Read an Excerpt

The Fateful Tendencies We Bring into the World
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Better Than Before"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Gretchen Rubin.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
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Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

A Note to the Reader xi

Decide Not to Decide: Introduction 1

Self-Knowledge

The Fateful Tendencies We Bring into the World the Four Tendencies 15

Different Solutions for Different People: Distinctions 31

Pillars of Habits

We Manage What We Monitor: Monitoring 45

First Things First: Foundation 58

If It's On The Calendar, It Happens: Scheduling 74

Someone's Watching: Accountability 91

The Best Time to Begin

It's Enough to Begin: First Steps 103

Temporary Becomes Permanent: Clean Slate 115

Data Point of One: Lightning Bolt 122

Desire, Ease, and Excuses

Free From French Fries: Abstaining 135

It's Hard To Make Things Easier: Convenience 144

Change My Surroundings, Not Myself: Inconvenience 154

A Stumble May Prevent a Fall: Safeguards 160

Nothing Stays In Vegas: Loophole-Spotting 170

Wait Fifteen Minutes: Distraction 183

No Finish Line: Reward 191

Just Because: Treats 201

Sitting Is The New Smoking: Pairing 211

Unique, Just Like Everyone Else

Choose My Bale of Hay: Clarity 223

I'm The Fussy One: Identity 236

Not Everyone Is Like Me: Other People 245

Everyday Life in Utopia: Conclusion 257

Acknowledgments 265

Quiz: The Four Tendencies 267

Resources to Request 271

Start a Better than Before Habits Group 273

Suggestions for Further Reading 275

Notes 279

Editorial Reviews

12/22/2014
Bestseller Rubin (The Happiness Project) returns with this fun and informative self-help tome on the ways we unthinkingly shape our lives with habits. As she shows, habits affect our lives in both positive and negative ways. By acquiring positive habits and eliminating negative ones, we can increase our overall happiness. “How we schedule our days is how we spend our lives,” Rubin asserts. The subtitle calls to mind Julia Child’s cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, suggesting a goal similar to Child’s: to collect all the available information on the subject and break it down into components for readers to apply to their own lives. Writing that “we can build our habits only on the foundation of our own nature,” Rubin goes on to identify four tendencies, or personality types, in relation to habit-formation: upholder, questioner, obliger, and rebel. Her style is clear, and her voice is accessible yet mildly egg-headed. Using quotations from William James and Samuel Johnson, citations of current research, and personal anecdotes, Rubin comes across as a quirky, know-it-all friend who really, really wants to help you improve your life. Agent: Christy Fletcher, Fletcher and Co. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

We are totally comfortable calling Gretchen Rubin’s new book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, life-changing.” 
—Better Homes & Gardens 
 
“If anyone can help us stop procrastinating, start exercising or get organized, it’s Gretchen Rubin. The happiness guru takes a sledgehammer to old-fashioned notions about change.” 
—Parade
 
“It’s exciting to find a self-help book that’s not only full of eye-opening insight but also provides practical tips to help you procrastinate and stress less, exercise and eat more healthfully, and spend time on activities that matter. We’re really glad that Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, decided to investigate her affinity for habits, because in the process she’s come up with a great guide to help us lay the foundation of a more satisfying life. Best of all, Better Than Before is a really fun read—Rubin’s friendliness, candor, and humor mirror a lively conversation with a best friend.” —Apple iBooks
 
“The Happiness Project lays out life’s essential goals…Her new book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, serves as a kind of detailed instruction manual on how to achieve them.” —New York Times Sunday Book Review

“In Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, Gretchen Rubin picks up where [William] James left off, integrating a wealth of insight from psychology, sociology, and anthropology in an illuminating field guide to harnessing the transformative power of habit in modern life.” 
—Brain Pickings
 
“Change can be good. Particularly if it helps us live longer, healthier, indeed, happier lives — the objective of Rubin’s latest project.” 
—Chicago Tribune

“Author Gretchen Rubin says most people fall into one of four motivation types. Knowing yours is key to taking on new habits.” 
—Lifehacker
 
“Gretchen Rubin… [is] lighthearted and inviting—full of insights that sound familiar and advice that sounds less like what you should do and more like what you want to do.... With her focus on taking first steps and creating early successes, this is a refreshing take on how to change stubborn patterns that limit what we can enjoy about our lives.” —Audiofile Magazine 

“Do you have a bad habit you’re trying to shake, or a good one you wish you could cultivate? Gretchen Rubin is one of the most charming and erudite authors of her generation. Here, she uses her gifts to help you eat right, sleep well, stop procrastinating, and start enjoying all that life has to offer.” 
—Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Quiet
 
 “Gretchen Rubin combines deep research and observations from her own life to explain how habits emerge and—more important—how they can change. It’s indispensable for anyone hoping to overhaul how they (almost unthinkingly) behave.”
—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit
 
“Filled with insights about our patterns of behavior, Better Than Before addresses one of life’s big and timeless questions: how can we transform ourselves? In a way that’s thought-provoking, surprising, and often funny, Gretchen Rubin provides us with the tools to build a life that truly reflects our goals and values.” 
—Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post and New York Times bestselling author of Thrive
 
“Is there a habit in your life you’d like to change? If so, here’s your first step: Read this book. It’s loaded with practical, everyday tips and techniques that will guide you to success.”
—Dan Heath, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Made to Stick, Switch, and Decisive
 
“Almost everyone wants to be ‘better’—slimmer, smarter, better looking, more interesting, more productive—and we want to know we’re improving, we want the reinforcing evidence. Gretchen Rubin’s new masterpiece, Better Than Before, shows us how.  Unlike other books on habits, Rubin’s book gives us the specific tools and a blueprint for getting back on track—the fast track.”
 —Brian Wansink, Ph.D., New York Times bestselling author of Slim by Design and Mindless Eating
 
“With bold and original insights, Gretchen Rubin reveals the hidden truths about how to change our habits—from resisting junk food and hitting the gym to ending procrastination and saving money. Better Than Before is a gem, and the first habit you should form is reading a chapter every night.”
—Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take
 
“Gretchen Rubin’s superpower is curiosity. Luckily for us, she’s turned her passionate inquiry to the topic of making and mastering habits. Weaving together research, unforgettable examples, and her brilliant insight, Better Than Before is a force for real change. It rearranged what I thought I knew about my habits, and I’m better for it.”
—Brené Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Daring Greatly andThe Gifts of Imperfection

From the Publisher

★ 02/01/2015
Author Rubin (The Happiness Project) believes that through altering habits people change their lives and that there is no one-size-fits-all method to making desired alterations. Habit change is more successful, says Rubin, if individuals choose strategies that coincide with their tendencies to respond negatively or positively to outer and inner expectations. The author then explains approaches for the upholder, the rebel, the questioner, and the obliger, by which each type can best tackle foundation habits (e.g., sleeping, moving, uncluttering, and eating/drinking healthfully). VERDICT This is a fascinating study of the human mind and the process of change, interspersed with psychological facts and real-life examples. One of the best books available on the subject.

Library Journal

2014-11-29
A slight twist on the happiness message that made Rubin (Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life, 2009, etc.) famous, with few new insights.Like she did in her best-selling book The Happiness Project (2009), the author uses herself as her own best example. This time, she considers the concept of habits: how we form them, why we break them and how to get better at them. While she cursorily mentions habit research conducted by the likes of Daniel Pink, Charles Duhigg, and Chip and Dan Heath, Rubin doesn't dig very deeply into their work. Instead, she writes mostly about her own investigations, which often amount to stories from her sister's struggle with finding a diabetic diet or her own efforts to declutter a messy friend's apartment. Rubin emphatically refers to these events as experiments, and her findings as research, but there's scant evidence of the scientific method in her scattered anecdotes. She gives a nod to the field of psychology, offering many personality types and labels that can help you figure out what type of person you are and, thus, the types of interventions that might help you develop better habits. It's no Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, but the author provides a brief quiz to help readers determine if they are Obligers, Upholders, Questioners or Rebels. It makes sense that self-knowledge should help guide your decisions, and this could be a useful breakdown if Rubin's default descriptions didn't skew so heavily toward her own personality type. As an Upholder, she is drawn toward developing, scheduling and carrying out habits, after all. Readers looking to keep those New Year's resolutions should consider consulting Rubin's suggested reading section for more robust data. The airy, conversational writing style makes this a quick but not terribly substantial read.

Kirkus Reviews

The likable Gretchen Rubin, who wrote THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, makes personal observations about herself as she delivers this immensely helpful audio guide to improving our lives through building good habits. These personal references and her conversational phrasing make her audiobook sound lighthearted and inviting—full of insights that sound familiar and advice that sounds less like what you should do and more like what you want to do. Four key strategies she offers are monitoring, paying attention to foundations (sleeping, moving, eating right, and scheduling), committing to beginnings, and arranging for accountability. With her focus on taking first steps and creating early successes, this is a refreshing take on how to change stubborn patterns that limit what we can enjoy about our lives. T.W. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2015 - AudioFile