Better Than Before: How To Change Your Habits, with Gretchen Rubin – Episode 83 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Best-selling author, speaker, and podcast host Gretchen Rubin talks about why habits are superpowers, why rewards are dangerous (but treats are good), and how the easiest habits to change are the ones that are, well…the most habitual.

About Gretchen:

Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature. She’s a highly acclaimed writer, known for her ability to distill and convey complex ideas—from science to literature to stories from her own life—with levity and clarity.

She has an affinity for new tools and platforms, and she has cultivated a vast, passionate audience who actively engages with her and her work across many channels. With millions of copies of her New York Times bestselling books sold, more than 220 million downloads of her Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast, an enthusiastic following on her newsletters and social media, helpful and beautifully designed products, and the award-winning Happier app, she engages her audience wherever they want to be. She is an experienced and sought-after speaker and makes regular appearances across the media landscape. 

As the founder of The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin has helped create an ecosystem of imaginative products and tools to help people become happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. “There’s no one-size-fits-all solution,” she explains, “so there’s no ‘right’ way or ‘best’ way. We have to choose the way that work for us.”

She’s been interviewed by Oprah, eaten dinner with Nobel Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman, walked arm-in-arm with the Dalai Lama, had her work reported on in a medical journal, been written up in the New Yorker, and been an answer on Jeopardy!

After starting her career in law, she realized she wanted to be a writer while she was clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Raised in Kansas City, she lives in New York City with her family.

Learn more at GretchenRubin.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
Gretchen Rubin has books that were both instant New York Times bestsellers, The Happiness Project and Happier at Home. And she truly is one of the world’s leading thinkers and writers on habits and happiness. And Better Than Before is a book all about how we change our habits. So Gretchen, thanks for being here.

Gretchen Rubin
Well, I’m very happy to be talking to you today.

Host
Yeah, so I love the idea of habits and in changing habits.

Gretchen Rubin
Yeah, you know, as you said, I’ve written over two books about habits. And I mean about happiness. And I had been spending a lot of time thinking and researching and talking to people about happiness. And I began to notice a pattern that often when people talk about will a happiness boost that they’d have, but really even more often a happiness challenge that they face. They often were pointing to something that at its core, involves a problem with a habit that somebody would never go, I’m exhausted all the time. They’re really to me that sounded like, you’re not going to bed early enough. Like why aren’t you able to form the habit of turning the light out at 11 instead of 2am? What is what’s going on with your habits. And often people would talk about a habit that they knew that if they needed or broke, it would make them happier. But somehow, they just weren’t able to translate that into action. And then I had a lunch with a friend who made a casual comment that got me obsessed without it. And she said, the thing that I would be happier if I exercise. And when I was in high school, I was on the track team. And I never missed track practice. But I can’t go running now why? This just floored me. I was like, what is it? It’s the same behavior to the same person? What’s different? What meant that at one point to have it was effortless and nasty? Can’t do a try? See might? And so then I was like, Okay, that’s it my next book habits.

Host
I love it. Do you believe that there is kind of a one size fits all solution to changing our habits? Or do you think it’s something different?

Gretchen Rubin
I think that so many people, they start small, or do it for 30 days, or have a cheat day or do it first thing in the morning. And all these strategies work? Well, for some people, sometimes. But they don’t work for everybody all the time where we would all have perfect habits. And I think really, what I found when I really delved into this is that there is no magic wand, because loosen. And what we really need to do is to think about ourselves, understand ourselves the significant elements of our behavior, and then shape our habits to suit us. You know, people are like, well, this is what Steve Jobs did. So well, that doesn’t tell you anything about yourself. I mean, maybe it’ll give you some interesting ideas. But it doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you. And I think a lot of times people get discouraged, because they try and fail to form a habit over and over. But in fact, they haven’t set it up in a way that’s right for them. And so that’s why they’re not succeeding. But if they took a different approach, they might very well have a different outcome and so much better than before, what I’m trying to do is talk about well, what how do we understand ourselves as it comes to kind of our habit nature? What do we understand about ourselves? And then how might we put that into practice, to shape our habits to suit ourselves, some people didn’t a lot of caulk, and some people drink a lot of news, and some people stay up late. And some people get up early, and people work steadily. And some people work all at the end. And some people work a lot every day. And some people read just a little bit every day. I mean, what you see is that the people who are happier, healthier, and more most productive are the people who have figured out themselves and they set up their lives, to suit them. If they are morning people, they do their most important work in the morning. But if they’re nice people, that’s not how they go about it. You know, it’s all about fitting your circumstances to what can allow you to succeed, figuring out what is the combination, so that combination lock that a lot of students, that’s how you’re hardwired. And so everybody might say to you like, oh, you should get up early and work on your PhD thesis. Like if you’re a night person, getting up early is not going to work for you. It might make sense on paper, but it’s not going to work for you.

Host
Yeah. So you have an opinion on using rewards and incentives and treats. What’s your philosophy on how rewards fit into having good habits?

Gretchen Rubin
Well, we weren’t they’re very, very dangerous when it comes to habit. Oh, they’re very dangerous. And so you have to distinguish between a reward and to treat. Treats are good rewards are very dangerous. So treat is something that you get tough because you want it you don’t earn it. You don’t deserve it. You just want it so you got it. And we should really, really hold ourselves healthy treats. Because when we give ourselves treats, we feel comforted and taken care of, and our battery gets energized. And so that gives us more self command. And we want our self command to be as high as possible, we want to self control we want willpower to be, we want those reserves to be very high. And when you do those little things for yourself, whether it’s doing a crossword puzzle on your iPad, or buying yourself new music on iTunes, or, you know, whatever it might be people of all different treats, then that’s good. Now, there are unhealthy treats, which are like food and drink, you don’t want to do something to make yourself feel better, that’s gonna end up making you feel worse, the tweets are good to good, they they boost our self mastery, and they keep us from getting into that dangerous land of feeling deprived, I need it, I’ve earned it, I should get the that’s when we start giving ourselves unhealthy treats I need, the rewards are bad, because the reason that habits are superpowers is that they get us out of the dangerous draining difficult job of using decision making and using willpower. If it’s a habit, it just happens automatically. You don’t have to think about it, you don’t have to judge it, you just do it automatically. I do not decide to wake up at 6am, I do not decide whether to take dessert. I just know. And that happens automatically. It doesn’t pick anything for me. And so that frees up my mind. And it frees me from having to use my self control. Because it’s undertaking self control. I know exactly what I’m going to do. And I do it. A reward though, always requires the decision. Have you earned your reward. And that interferes with a habit? Because I’m saying well, I, if I run, I get to have a beer. Well, around half today, do I get a beer, but I hurt my foot. So I really couldn’t run but I still want the beer do I get the beer, I’m on vacation. So good one, I should get the beer. And then sometimes what happens is you make a habit of reward and the habit. It’s awful boy, if you have a beer every night, you get used to that, but you’re not even running. But they’re also bad. Because when you give yourself a reward, you’re telling yourself that you’re only doing something for them in order to get the reward. So you’re undermining intrinsic motivation. And you’re giving yourself an extrinsic motivation. So you’re saying like, well, this is why I’m doing it. And with a habit, you want it to just happen automatically, you don’t want to be judging it. And you don’t want to you don’t want to give it a negative association, like you want to do it because you want to do it. And if you’re rewarding it, then you’re just teaching yourself that it’s not something that you wouldn’t otherwise do. When also often we give ourselves perverse rewards. So give ourselves rewards. Exactly countered contradicts, whatever we want, like my friend who admitted I was 10 pounds, I’m gonna have a big piece of chocolate cake. The one kind of reward that is good is the reward that takes you deeper into the habit. So let’s say you’re doing a lot of yoga, you would buy yourself a new yoga mat, because a person who does a lot of gilgen needs a yoga mat. Or let’s say you’re doing a lot of work on a side project. And when you buy a new fancy laptop, because a person who’s doing all this extra work needs technological support. That makes sense. I talked to one company that had a really smart reward, which was that if you exercise 75 times in a year, you got the next year very another reward for exercise was more exercise. So that the reward is picking deeper into the habit, it’s not irrelevant to the habit or actually undermining the habit it’s taking just give it making it easier for you to do the habit and more pleasant. And that’s good, because the easier and more pleasant more convenient it is to do a habit, the more likely we are to stick to it. That’s my strategy of convenience. But you don’t want to reward that’s not related to it, or that actually puts you in the opposite direction that we work. They’re dangerous. They’re tempting their ticket tempting solution. But I think it’s often counterproductive when it comes to habits.

Host
So how do I get myself to quickly change a habit?

Gretchen Rubin
I think we often think of habit forming very gradually. And it’s the price when I really started looking at the pattern of my habits and how often have they change very quickly. People said to me all the time, like I want to go through my day making healthy choices. And I’m like, No, you don’t you don’t want to spend your day making healthy choices, because you’ll probably choose the wrong a lot of times you want to choose one than no more choosing. Are you going to bring lunch today? Yes, you are. Are you going to eat fast food today? No, you’re not. Are you choosing? No, you’re not that already happened that happened months ago. You don’t revisit that choice. There’s no emotion. There’s no debate. There’s none of that inner struggle. Because tomorrow you’re slam and born today tomorrow’s workout, you know, it’s done.

Host
I love that. So there are some habits that are really simple, right like to use one of your examples is wearing a seatbelt. And then some are a little bit they seem more involved or complex like I’m trying to stop smoking or I’m trying to drink glass or workout more. Do you feel like the same strategic plan works in both cases? Or is it different depending on the complexity of the habit?

Gretchen Rubin
Well, the easiest kind of habit in life happens in exactly the same way every day. So like if you get up and the first thing you do is you brush your teeth like that’s what I would call a stick of Cabot like it happens exactly the same way and so that’s easier you use the same strategies. So I have identified 21 strategies Can people use to save their habits, you use the same strategy to make a habit or break a habit. It’s the same strategy. And so with a simpler habit it might take, it may take less to cement it in. But where if there’s a more complex habit, then there has to be more thought put into, like, how do you get them into your life and keep it in here? How do you safeguarded to? I feel like some even have it is it’s completely automatic. And that’s really what we strive for. But I think for a lot of habits are never 100% automatic, like, you know, every day is a little bit different. And you have to kind of think about your exercise every day, you might be in the habit of exercising, but it takes a little bit of work every time like what am I gonna go? What am I, you know, right. And so you need to enter one of the strategies, the strategy of safeguards, which is, what are the things that you do to protect a habit once it’s once you’ve got it going, if you do this, then do that, which I would call the if the strategy of, you know, if then planning, which is, if this happens, then I do this, you go ahead and figure that out in advance. So it’s as simple as that it might take less, and then more complex habit, might take a little more thought to figure out how to get that into place. You know, I started a podcast myself. It’s called happier with Gretchen Rubin and I talked about all this stuff. It’s so much fun. So I’m one of the first things that we talked about was the habit of making your bed. Because whenever I talk to people about what habits do you feel like make you happier and more productive and feel healthier? And so often people mentioned is the habit of making your bed. And as you say, it’s a very simple habit to get. You can do it first thing in the morning and like then the rest of the day, you’re like, oh, look, if I did nothing else, I made my bed. And it’s funny how much I love debates with people.

Host
Well, the book is called Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives. Thank you so much for being here.

Gretchen Rubin
Thank you so much. It was great. I feel like we could talk for hours on my website, which is this GretchenRubin.com. There’s a bunch of info either blog talks about habits and also a lot of downloads. I have the change checklist and one pagers about working better than before eating better than before exercising better than before like to get you started because those are some of the habits people most want to form a starter kit for people who want to start habits groups for people who are going to help each other change their habits. And I have this one cat called happier with Gretchen Rubin, where we talk about a lot of these kinds of issues, science from ancient wisdom and also our own experiences.

Host
GretchenRubin.com. Gretchen, thanks for being here.

Gretchen Rubin
Yes.