Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

Author: Gretchen Rubin

Rating: ⭐ 4/5

Date Read: 2016/02/20

Pages: 298

In my recent review of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I mentioned that I don’t have much of a rebellious streak. This comment made perfect sense to me: my clothing choices tend towards business casual (if I could wear a suit everyday, I would), my favorite activities are cooking and reading (somewhat domestic choices), and my drug of choice is fine wine. So imagine my surprise when I took Gretchen Rubin’s quiz on the Four Tendencies and found out that I, apparently, am a rebel.

Rubin’s latest book, Better than Before, addresses habit formation. I’ve read a few books on habits, because (like most people) there are some good habits I’d like to acquire and some bad habits I’d like to let go of. Now, I’ve read a lot of advice about habits, and I theoretically know how they should be formed: schedule your habits in your calendar, make a public declaration to provide more accountability, find a way to track your progress, blah, blah, blah. Easier said than done, right? But I could never understand why it was so easy for me to get into the habit of meditating everyday, and so easy for me to make most of our meals from scratch, but so hard to get around to clipping the cats’ claws twice a month (even though I scheduled it in my phone and told my boyfriend that I would do it). Meditating and cooking are difficult and time consuming, but clipping cat claws takes just minutes. Why did I feel so much resentment whenever I saw the reminder on my phone?

What makes Better than Before different from other books about habits is that it explores the individual differences relevant to habit formation. Rubin’s great insight is that our lives consist of many expectations about our behavior. Some of these expectations are internally motivated, some are pushed on us by external sources. Different people react to different sorts of expectations differently. My knee-jerk reaction to my inner expectations about the internal shoulds (e.g., “I should really practice the trumpet” or “I should write as soon as I get home from work”) is my life is to resist them. I resist external shoulds too, which seemed normal: does anyone really like paying bills or finishing up those TPS reports?

Apparently, resistance to expectations makes me a rebel, which was a little mind-blowing. Suddenly, I started to mentally reframe some of my non-rebellious behaviors. I usually wear business casual clothing, even on weekends, which is certainly not the norm in casual Northern California and sometimes gets me called out as “not being a team player.” I cook most of our meals, but I find it almost impossible to follow a recipe to the letter: I can’t help changing it to suit my tastes, and most of the time I don’t use a recipe at all. My reading obsession is partially an explicit rejection of more popular leisure activities: I’m not about to watch the reality television programming that everyone else seems to watch, nor am I going to look at internet memes (I’m not even sure how people find internet memes) or engage in the gender-norm-affirming activities found on Pinterest. Wine is compelling partially because it’s so notoriously difficult to master. Come to think of it, I also find it fun to order my Scotch neat (rocks on the side) and enjoy it with a cigar.

According to this book, I’ve been going about habit formation all wrong. If I tell myself I should do something, odds are that I won’t. But, if I accept something as an important part of my identity (e.g., “I’m a meditator, it keeps me from going crazy”) or as a profound pleasure (e.g., “I love the entire process of cooking, as well as the end result”) or as an affirmation of my values (e.g., “I’d rather read than passively get sucked in the materialistic and shallow activities that are pushed on us by consumer culture”), then I can do whatever I feel like. Game changer!

I’m still not 100% sure how to translate this into clipping the cats’ claws, but the book gave me enough self-awareness to realize that the calendar reminder wasn’t doing me any favors. Perhaps I’ll invest in a really nice clipper that I enjoy using (this strategy worked when I bought a fancy feather duster, which I now occasionally use to dust, which is a 100% improvement over never dusting), perhaps I’ll remind myself that I pride myself on being a responsible pet owner. Regardless, I’ve taken away a number of strategies from this book, and would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in self-improvement.