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.

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.

Well, I'm very happy to be talking to you

today.

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

habits.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

Well, the book is called Better Than Before: Mastering

the Habits of Our Everyday Lives. Thank you so much for

being here.

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.

GretchenRubin.com. Gretchen, thanks for being here.

Yes.