I'm absolutely flabbergasted. In a moment of idle internet surfing, I decided to google "happiness" just to see what the top results were.
Guess what? The happiness project occupies TWO of the TOP TEN results. One for the blog, The Happiness Project, one for the companion website, The Happiness Project Toolbox.
I'm thrilled.
My book, The Happiness Project, comes out in less than a month, and my book tour schedule is final! At last.
Several weeks ago, when I posted a question about my possible book tour, many readers wrote to me to encourage me to come to their home towns – I appreciate that so much. Now, at last, here’s the final schedule. I hope that I get to meet many of you along the way.
New York City – January 7, 2010 [I live in New York City]
Barnes & Noble
86th and Lexington
7:00 pm
Boston – January 13, 2010
Brookline Booksmith
279 Harvard St
Brookline, MA
7:00 pm
Washington, DC – January 18, 2010
Borders
5333 Wisconsin Ave. NW
Washington, DC
7:00 pm
Chicago – January 19, 2010
Bookstall
811 Elm St.
Winnetka, IL
7:00 pm
Kansas City – January 20, 2010 [I grew up in K.C., and my parents still live there]
Kansas City Public Library/Rainy Day Books
Plaza Branch
4801 Main Street
Kansas City, MO
6:00 pm
Denver – January 21, 2010
Tattered Cover Book Store
9315 Dorchester ST
Highlands Ranch, CO
7:30 pm
Los Angeles – January 25, 2010 [my sister lives in L.A.]
Vroman’s Bookstore
695 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA
7:00 pm
San Francisco – January 26, 2010
Books Inc
1760 4th St
Berkeley, CA
7:00 pm
Seattle – January 27, 2010 [especially interested in going to Seattle, because it’s the only city on the list that I’ve never visited before]
Kim Ricketts Books
2030 5th Ave.
Palace Ballroom
Seattle, WA
7:00 pm – “Good Life” Series
New York City -- February 9, 2010
92nd Street Y
1395 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY
7:30 pm
Buy tickets here
If you live in one of the cities, please come! Bring your friends! Spread the word! I really hope I'll get the chance to meet blog readers face to face as part of the book promotion.
* Who knew? Over at the great blog, Marginal Revolution, I see that for Germans, at least, Sunday is the least happy day of the week.* Zoikes, as of today, the publication date of The Happiness Project is just one month away. So close, and yet so far. Pre-order your copy now! If you need some convincing, look here.
I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.
One of my Secrets of Adulthood is "What's fun for other people may not be fun for you -- and vice versa." This sounds simple, but it actually was a huge breakthrough for me. So many things that other people consider “fun” are not fun for me, and it took me an astonishingly long time to realize that. Drinking alcohol, shopping, most games…I just don’t enjoy those activities.
Even now, I have to remind myself that people go skiing because they honestly want to go skiing, not because they are made from a sterner moral fiber than I.
I’ve realized, too, that it’s important to think about this in the context of my family. If I want to have fun with my family, I need to make sure that we’re doing activities that -- at least some of the time -- are honestly fun for me. Otherwise, I just get bored and try to end things – or even sneak away. Was it Jerry Seinfeld who said, "There's no such thing as fun for the whole family?" Well, I'm trying.
For example, my four-year-old is constantly begging us to read to her. I was getting so bored with Frog and Toad and the like that I was making excuses.
Then it occurred to me – why not read something I like, too? I don’t have much appreciation for Little Bear anymore, not after the tenth reading, but I love children’s literature. Surely there’s something we can both enjoy.
She’s not ready for The Golden Compass, of course, and she’s not even ready for Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, but first we read the All-of-a-Kind Family books, and now we’re working our way through Mary Poppins. I love those books, and it has made a huge difference in my willingness to read to my daughter. It’s fun for me to read those books, too!
Obviously, as a parent, I can’t follow this rule all the time. My children enjoy things that aren’t much fun for me, so I get my fun vicariously, by watching their fun. But I’ve decided to try to steer our activities more to things that we all find fun, because then I’m so much more enthusiastic.
(Of course, it’s possible to run, then, into the opposite problem: something is so fun for me that being with my children ruins the fun. If I really want to see an exhibit, say, I can’t go with my two children. I just won’t be able to concentrate. But I could go myself, and then return with them.)
One of the great mysteries of happiness is – why is it so hard to “Be Gretchen”? Why is it so hard to know my own likes and dislikes? It seems that nothing should be more obvious than the question of what I find fun, yet I have to think hard about this, all the time. (On the subject of fun, here are the three types of fun.)
This principle doesn't only apply to children; fun with your sweetheart, fun with your family, fun with your friends, fun with your co-workers. Have you found any good ways to have fun with others that's also fun for you?
* I loved Twyla Tharp’s book, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It For Life, and Jesse Kornbluth (also known as Head Butler) is a friend, so I can’t wait to read the book that they worked on together: The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together.
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 28,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format – trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.
Every Wednesday is Tip Day, or List Day.
This Wednesday: 10 reasons why using Twitter will boost your happiness.
I’m a huge fan of Twitter, and last night I was trying to persuade some friends, and later my sister, to give it a try. I think there are many ways in which Twitter can boost your happiness.
As a side note, it’s very appropriate to talk about happiness and Twitter, because the blue bird is the symbol for both. In fact, the blue bird on the cover of my soon-to-be-published book bears some resemblance to a few of the Twitter bird-logos.
1. Twitter allows you to pursue your passion – even if only in your imagination. A key to a happier life is to have fun – people who regularly have fun are twenty times as likely to feel happy. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi noted in Creativity: “When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it.”
But sometimes, you just don’t have time to pursue your passion as much as you’d like. Many of my happiness-project resolutions are aimed at helping me make time for my passion. But if you can’t find the time, or if you’d like to spend even more time on your passion than you do, Twitter is a great source of conversation and ideas. If you love great food, Mad Men, green technology, college football, knitting, kidlit, writing paranormal erotic romance fiction, Apple -- or, like me, Virgina Woolf's The Waves -- you can find other people who are interested in the same thing, day or night. And for that reason, it also makes you happier because…
2. Twitter distracts you if you’re feeling blue. Studies show that distraction is a powerful mood-altering device. (In fact, men’s greater tendency to distract themselves from bad feelings may be one reason they are less prone to depression than women.) If you’re following a bunch of people whose posts interest you, you can always count on finding something that will catch your attention. It can distract you, and also…
3. Twitter can get you laughing. If you follow some people who are very funny, you can count on getting a little mood boost when you need it. Reading 140 characters takes just a few seconds, but it's enough to re-direct your mood. My current favorites: @borowitzreport and – forgive me, my beloved Laura Ingalls Wilder – @HalfPintIngalls.
4. Twitter helps you maintain loose relationships and strengthen strong relationships. One hot debate is whether technology will change Dunbar’s law – can you really handle more than 150 friends? Maybe not. But whether or not you can have more “friends,” technology certainly allows you to keep a better handle on acquaintances and virtual acquaintances. Far more than ever before, I’m vaguely aware of a huge number of people, some of whom I “know” and some I don’t “know,” and although that sounds overwhelming, it makes my life warmer and richer. Twitter, along with Facebook, blogs, Tumblr, and all the rest, allow you to keep a little connection with lots of people without much effort.
5. Twitter lets you help other people. Do good, feel good. If you have friends who own stores or restaurants, who write books or articles, who perform music, who advocate for a cause, or otherwise want to direct attention someplace – or if you want to help strangers who are doing these things -- Twitter lets you shine a spotlight on their activities. Writers often say to me, “I don’t want to use Twitter because I don’t want to promote my work all the time.” Fine – so support the work of people you admire! Tweet about them. Speaking of which…
6. Twitter gives you a bully pulpit. I try to persuade people to commit to being organ donors. Through Twitter, I can repeatedly send this message out to a lot of people – and who knows, maybe I persuade some people to act.
7. Twitter lets you conquer a device. Mastering a new technology – whatever the technology is -- contributes to the atmosphere of growth in your life, and that boosts happiness. Because social connections are a key (perhaps the key to happiness), the fact that Twitter technology connects people makes this effect even more intense.
8. Twitter lets you feel like you’re in on the current thing, and that’s satisfying. Sure, something may replace Twitter, or it may lose popularity and fade away. Right now, though, a lot of people are using it and talking about it. It’s not possible to keep up with everything new – new music, new video-games, new TV shows, new iPhone apps – but Twitter is easy to use, so it's a good place to start if you want to feel current.
9. Twitter lets you share those funny little observations that float through your head. Some people scoff at Twitter, saying “I don’t want to read about what other people eat for breakfast.” Well, it’s true, people post too much about their airport travails – but in fact, it’s very amusing to read people’s comments on their everyday lives. And it’s even more amusing to think of your OWN comments! In the same way that carrying a camera sharpens your eye, knowing that you can communicate your clever aperçus makes you more observant and wittier.
10. Twitter makes gathering information easier. If you follow people who share your passion, they’ll help you keep abreast of everything happening in that area. And if you have a general question, crowd-sourcing it to Twitter is a great way to get an answer. When I wanted to know the PC equivalent for iMovie, and the definition of “steampunk,” I got answers right away. Most of all, Twitter is a super-efficient way to find out what other people find interesting.
These are all ways that Twitter can boost your happiness. Now, Twitter has one major drawback for happiness: it uses up time, and time is in short supply for most of us. It’s true, it’s an efficient way to scan headlines, keep up with passions, and connect with people, but the fact is, it may tempt you to spend too much time using it, or to use it to procrastinate from other, less enticing work.
Like most things, Twitter is a good servant but a bad master, and you have to figure out how to keep it under control. No staying up past your bedtime reading the #twilight stream. That said, it's worth figuring out how to work it into your life.
If I’ve convinced you, but you don’t know how to use Twitter, here are two additional tips:
-- Use Tweetdeck. I never could get the hang of Twitter until I started using Tweetdeck to access it. Go to Twitter, sign up for an account, then go straight to Tweetdeck and enter your account information.
-- Here’s a quick read on the basics of using Twitter. Even better, ask someone to walk you through it in person. Using Twitter isn’t hard, but you need someone to explain the key features (direct message, re-tweet, hashtags, 140 characters). For more great info on using Twitter, try Twitip by ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse.
Once you're on Twitter, follow me at @gretchenrubin.
* Ah, someone has a blog crush on me! I'm thrilled.
* It’s Word-of-mouth day, when I gently encourage (or, you might think, pester) you to spread the word about the Happiness Project. You might:
-- Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
-- Link to a post on Twitter (see above for why you should be using Twitter!)
-- Sign up for my free monthly newsletter (about 30,000 people get it)
-- Pre-order the book for a friend (or yourself)
-- Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks! I really appreciate any help. Word of mouth is the BEST.
From time to time, I post short interviews with interesting people about their insights on happiness. During my study of happiness, I’ve noticed that I often learn more from one person’s highly idiosyncratic experiences than I do from sources that detail universal principles or cite up-to-date studies. I’m much more likely to be convinced to try a piece of advice urged by a specific person who tells me that it worked for him or her, than by any other kind of argument.
I love it when I get to meet blog friends face to face, and I had a great coffee the other day with my friends who run the Drinking Diaries. They told me to check out Mommy Wants Vodka (note: her writing is a bit profane and explicit, just so you know), and I immediately wanted to ask “Aunt Becky,” a/k/a Becky Sherrick Harks, about her views about happiness.
Gretchen: What’s a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?
Becky: Since I'm assuming that I can't fantasize here and say something outlandish like, “a non-addictive form of Vicodin that's magically transported into my medicine cabinet” or “non-fattening cheese fries” I will go with Option Number 2.
Writing. I love to write for my blog (Mommy Wants Vodka) and my audience who are an integral part of it. It's funny. I never realized that I had any sort of interest in writing. It was like waking up one day and realizing that I could speak perfect Persian without ever having taken one of those language courses. And now I find that I can't imagine my life without it. I'm trying to make a career out of it, not because I have to, but because I want to.
What’s something you know now about happiness that you didn’t know when you were 18 years old?
At 18, I was pretty sure that happiness was juuuuuust around the corner. Just waiting for me. The next big thing was going to make me happy. If I could only land the perfect job or the perfect boyfriend or the perfect grades or the perfect whatever. I was waiting for other things and other people to make me happy. It took me years to learn that true happiness comes from within.
I will never be in control of what happens to me or around me, but I am in control of what happens within me and how I react to situations. Now I know that I alone can make me happy.
Is there a happiness mantra or motto that you’ve found very helpful?For some reason, that image of someone evokes a fanciful happy blue carefree blue sky and reminds me that in the immortal words of the God (Mick) Jagger, “You got to scrape that shit right off your shoes.”
Dwelling does little good, after all. And somewhere someone IS flying.
If you’re feeling blue, how do you give yourself a happiness boost?
I try to talk myself through it, kind of like the way they teach smokers to get through a craving, by focusing on something else completely. If I can distract myself from the sadness, or talk myself through it by reminding myself that I'm either being a) rational or b) irrational (depending, of course, on the situation) I end up feeling better.
Then, I focus the all of that energy on doing something productive with my hands. I tend to my massive rose garden or my orchids, I plant, I create something where there was nothing. Or I nurture something and revel in what I am growing. By filling the empty space with something, I feel whole again.
Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?
We've all been dealt some pretty crappy cards in life at one point or another. I am the product of two alcoholics, and my childhood was not exactly a Norman Rockwell painting, if you can imagine it. But we can all walk around with a big red VICTIM painted on our forehead, expecting people to tiptoe around our feelings and give us special dispensation for our VICTIM status, or we can dust ourselves off, accept that it sucked pretty hard and move on.
We all have skeletons in our closets. We might as well pull them out and make 'em dance.
* I always enjoy a visit to Zen Habits -- great material on "simple productivity."
** If you're interested in launching a group for people who meet to do their happiness projects together, sign up for the starter-kit. More than 3,300 people have requested it. You might also like to check out the Facebook conversation for group leaders -- that's a good resource if you're getting started.
There’s a very common occupational hazard that affects writers, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about it: the desire to write outside your main field.
I know a journalist who took a sabbatical to write a novel, which turned into a short story. I know a science writer who is writing a play. I know a novelist who is writing a memoir.
This change can be exhilarating and fun, because it’s a new creative challenge – and that contributes to a happy life.
It can also be a bit of a pain, because these projects can feel…oppressive. With writing, often, there’s a strange feeling of compulsion. You just have to write about something. I remember hearing Kathryn Harrison remark on a panel, when asked how she chose her topics, “You really have surprisingly little control about what you want to write about.” I knew exactly what she meant. I had to write a book about power, money, fame and sex -- when I was clerking for Justice O’Connor, I was writing that book on the weekends. A few years later, I felt I couldn’t go another day without working on a biography of Churchill.
Of course, you can choose what you write about. You just can’t choose what you want to write about.
For the last few years, for example, I’ve been desperately fighting the urge to write a book about St. Therese of Lisieux. I have a lot to say, and I think most of her biographers seriously mis-read her writing, and I’d love to set everyone straight. But I resist because I’m not Catholic, I have no doctrinal expertise, I don’t even speak French! No one would read my book – but how I would love to lay roses at the feet of my spiritual master, St. Therese.Although I write non-fiction, three times in my life, I’ve had an uncontrollable urge to write a novel. My problem is that I’m not much of a storyteller, and these were “novels of ideas.” Which, I know quite well, is not a good way to write a novel. One novel was about the apocalypse, one was about why people destroy their own possessions (I later wrote a non-fiction book, Profane Waste, on this subject, in collaboration with artist Dana Hoey, and it worked much better in that form), and most recently, I wrote a novel-in-a-month about the happiness consequences of two people having an affair. (I describe this experience in The Happiness Project book.)
One of the reason I love Chris Baty’s novel-in-a-month approach is that for a writer, it can be a gigantic distraction, and therefore a work liability, to have these projects press on you. They get in the way of the work you really need to get done. It’s fun, it’s creative, it’s satisfying, yes, but writers, like everyone, need to be productive in the work for which they’re paid.
This has happened to me, yet again. I have this idea for a novel – but for once, in a nice change, it’s not a novel of ideas. Well, it is a little bit. But it has more plot than usual. And it actually has some real characters in it. It’s also a young-adult novel, which I’ve never tackled before, although I’m a huge fan of children’s and young-adult literature.
But what’s the point of view? I imagine it like a movie, distant third-person narrator, but I need to locate it in my main character’s point of view…but then how to handle the gradual reveal of the secrets I want to emerge slowly?
And how do you kill someone without killing him? I need one of my likable main characters to kill another of my characters, but not really kill him. Any ideas? For example, in Harry Potter, one character dies but doesn’t really die; another character is killed, but isn’t really killed, because he was already mortally injured. In Star Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Darth Vader, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” He gets killed, but not really killed. I think I need to re-read Plutarch’s Lives and Polti’s The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations…maybe there are some ideas there. (Speaking of Polti, has anyone ever updated his scheme, to provide more modern titles to illustrate his thirty-six situations?)
I can’t say describe the plot, because it would sound utterly ridiculous, as is always true of fantasy novels. Let’s just say there are no dragons, but there could be dragons. People have super-powers. It has a lot to do with honor and vows, and it would let me write about “symbols beyond words,” one of my untapped major interests. Tree. Horse. Blood.
But I really don’t have time to be fussing with this right now!
I mentioned this dilemma to a friend while we were waiting in line to see New Moon on Friday night (yes, I went the first day, I love the Twilight saga). She’s an editor and a YA writer herself, and she said, “You should just write it! That’s the happiness project thing to do!”
She’s absolutely right. It would make me very happy to write that novel, and I could again follow the scheme in No Plot! No Problem to get it done. But while it would be fun, it would also be draining and difficult and distracting. Plus, I would really try to make it good, but it probably wouldn’t end up being good – and if I go to the trouble to write a book, I really want it to be good. It would be “play,” in that I’d be doing it for fun, but it would use up precisely the same energy that I use for “work.” More time at the keyboard, can I stand it? Of course, it might energize me as well.
Two additional factors loom in the background: first, I’m extraordinarily lucky to be a working writer, debating whether to do this extra project for fun. I never forget that. Second, the writing world as we know it is collapsing. I’m not sure how to factor that fact in.
So what to do? I can’t see past the publication date for The Happiness Project, looming so close and yet so far on December 29, so I think I’ll hold on to my idea, try to come up with a way to kill my character without killing him, and promise myself that I’ll make a start on this novel this summer, if I still feel the urge.
* So much fun to read through 1000 Awesome Things -- and the book is coming out soon, too.
* Interested in starting your own happiness project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (Sorry about writing it in that roundabout way; I’m trying to thwart spammers.) Just write “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.
"The truest mark of being born with great qualities is to be born without envy."
--François de La Rochefoucauld
* I spent a lot of time cruising around the great site Parenthacks this morning. Good stuff!
* Check out the Happiness Project Toolbox -- it lets you track your own happiness project, online. And you can see what other people are doing, which is fascinating.
I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.
One of my favorite resolutions, because it’s so much fun to keep, is Read at whim. Instead of trying to be very targeted about my reading, as I once tried to be, I let myself read whatever I want to read.
The other day, at coffee with my blogpals Caren and Leah from the great site, Drinking Diaries, Leah highly recommended Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting That You’ll Ever Need. She wasn’t writing a screenplay, but she said that the book was extremely helpful for writing any kind of story.
I’m not writing a screenplay, or a novel either, but it sounded intriguing, so I picked up a copy. And she’s right, it’s a fascinating look at storytelling.
Save the Cat also included a terrific exercise to foster creative thinking. Doing these types of games can boost happiness -- even for people who don’t consider themselves to be particularly “creative.”
This kind of playful thinking is – fun! It’s fun to mess around with ideas, to have new thoughts, to come up with a great idea. It’s stimulating. It might even inspire you to write a screenplay or start a novel. (Shameless teaser: in my forthcoming book, I talk about my experience of writing a novel in a month, inspired by the book, No Plot? No Problem!, written by Chris Batyk, also the founder of National Novel Writing Month. Yes, I wrote a novel as long as The Great Gatsby in thirty days.)
Sometimes creativity exercises are a bit boring – what’s the one with the candle, the cup, the matches? – but these exercises by Snyder, meant to jump-start ideas for movies, are very amusing:
1. Funny _____
Pick a drama, thriller, or horror film and turn it into a comedy.
2. Serious _____
Likewise, pick a comedy and make it into a drama. Serious Animal House – Drama about cheating scandal at a small university ends in A Few Good Men-like showdown.
3. FBI out of water.
This works for comedy or drama. Name five places that a FBI agent in the movies has never been sent to solve a crime. Example: “Stop or I’ll Baste!”: Slob FI agent is sent undercover to a Provence Cooking School.
5. Versus!!
Drama or comedy. Name several pairs of people to be on opposite sides of a burning issue. Example: A hooker and a preacher fall in love when a new massage parlor divides the resident of a small town.
6. My ______ Is a Serial Killer
Drama or comedy. Name an unusual person, animal, or thing that a paranoid can suspect of being a murderer.
Feeling creative helps boost happiness, and it’s also true that while people often associate brooding melancholy as the spirit most appropriate to creative outpourings, research shows that people are more creative when they’re feeling happy. If this sort of thing appeals to you, check out Blake Snyder’s website. It has great information and exercises for screenwriters.
* I love this video of a pebble frog. Ah, nature! It looks like CGI, but it's real.
* Ah, that teaser caught your interest, and you want to pre-order The Happiness Project! Great! Here's the link to all your favorite bookstores.
This week, I finished the audiobook for The Happiness Project. As I’d expected, it made me very happy to learn to do something new and to get a glimpse into the unfamiliar world of sound recording.
It was also thrilling to learn that none other than Jim Dale had sat in the very same seat that I was using, when he was recording Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It took him three weeks! And they had top, top security.
What surprised me most about the recording process was how emotional I became while reading certain parts of the book. I literally choked up and had to take a drink of water and a deep breath before I could continue (quite embarrassing).
At first, it surprised me that I could go so worked up about something I myself wrote, but then I realized why this made sense. It's not that the book is sad, but rather that it touches to my heart so closely.
For example, as I was reading the very first page, I got a catch in my voice when I read the concluding paragraphs in the “Note to the Reader”:
I would never have supposed that a witty lexicographer with Tourette syndrome, a twenty-something tubercular saint, a hypocritical Russian novelist, and one of the Founding Fathers would be my most helpful guides—but so it happened.
I hope that reading the account of my happiness project will encourage you to start your own. Whenever you read this, and wherever you are, you are in the right place to begin.
Also, I got teary when I read this part:
I said to him, “Someday, we’ll look back, and it will be hard to remember that we ever had such little kids. We’ll say, ‘Remember when Eleanor still used her purple sippy cup, or when Eliza wore ruby slippers all the time?’”
He squeezed my hand. “We’ll say, ‘That was such a happy time.’”
The days are long, but the years are short.
I really lost it when I read the book's final paragraph:
The year is over, and I really am happier. After all my research, I found out what I knew all along: I could change my life without changing my life. When I made the effort to reach out for them, I found that the ruby slippers had been on my feet all along; the blue bird was singing outside my kitchen window.
These passages may not be moving, taken out of context, but in the book they are -- well, at least to me! That’s one of the many ways that the book and blog differ – it’s harder to tell an affecting story on a blog. The format is just different. Also, on the blog I need to keep discussion very short, but in the book, I can expand stories and analysis. (I think I did manage to convey emotion in the little video, The Years Are Short, but that has music, photos, the works.)
* I always find a lot of interesting material to read when I visit Daniel Pink. I cannot WAIT to read his new book, Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Just my kind of thing.
* I send out short monthly newsletters that highlight the best of the previous month’s posts to about 28,000 subscribers. If you’d like to sign up, click here or email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. (sorry about that weird format – trying to to thwart spammers.) Just write “newsletter” in the subject line. It’s free.
Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Back by popular demand...fifteen tips to avoid nagging.
I've posted this list before, but I'm posting it again, because the issue of nagging is something that people raise with me frequently in discussions of happiness. It turns out that being a nag is just as unpleasant as being nagged -- so figuring out how to end nagging brings a real happiness boost to a relationship.
But even though no one enjoys an atmosphere of nagging, in marriage, or any partnership, chores are a huge source of conflict. How do you get your sweetheart to hold up his or her end, without nagging?
One of my best friends from college has a very radical solution: she and her husband don’t assign. That’s right. They never say, “Get me a diaper,” “The trash needs to go out,” etc. This only works because neither one of them is a slacker, but still — what a tactic! And they have three children!
That's something to strive for. But even if we can’t reach that point, most of us could cut back on the nagging. Here are some strategies that have worked for me:
1. It’s annoying to hear a hectoring voice, so suggest tasks without words. When my husband needs a prescription filled, he puts his empty medicine bottle on the bathroom counter. Then I know to get it re-filled.
2. If you need to voice a reminder, limit yourself to one word. Instead of barking out, “Now remember, I’ve told you a dozen times, stop off at the grocery store, we need milk, if you forget, you’re going right back out!” Instead, I call out, “Grocery store!” or “Milk!”
3. Don’t insist that a task be done on your schedule. “You’ve got to trim those hedges today!” Says who? Try, “When are you planning to trim the hedges?” If possible, show why something needs to be done by a certain time. “Will you be able to trim the hedges before our party next week?”
4. Remind your partner that it’s better to decline a task than to break a promise. My husband told me that he’d emailed some friends to tell them we had to miss their dinner party to go to a family dinner—but he hadn’t. Then I had to cancel at the last minute, it was incredibly rude, and I was enraged. Now I tell him, “You don’t have to do it. But tell me, so I can it.”
5. Have clear assignments.
6. Every once in a while, do your sweetheart’s task, for a treat. This kind of pitching-in wins enormous goodwill.
7. Assign chores based on personal priorities. I hate a messy bedroom more than my husband, but he hates a messy kitchen more than I. So I do more tidying in the bedroom, and he does more in the kitchen.
8. Do it yourself. I used to be annoyed with my husband because we never had cash in the house. Then I realized: why did I get to assign that job? Now I do it, and we always have cash, and I’m not annoyed.
9. Settle for a partial victory. Maybe your partner won’t put dishes in the dishwasher, but getting them from the family room into the sink is a big improvement.
10. Re-frame: decide that you don’t mind doing a chore — like putting clothes in the hamper or hanging up wet towels. Surprisingly, this is easier than you’d think.
11. Don’t push for the impossible. There’s no way I’ll do anything relating to our car, so my husband doesn’t even ask.
12. No carping from the sidelines. If your partner got the kids dressed, don’t mock the outfits. If you want something done your way, do it yourself.
13. Think about how money might be able to buy some happiness. Could you find a teenager to mow the lawn? Could you hire a weekly cleaning service? Could you buy prepared foods a few nights a week? These days, money is very tight, but eliminating conflict in a relationship is a high happiness priority, so this is a place to spend money if it can help.
14. Remember that messy areas tend to stay messy, and tidy areas tend to stay tidy. If you want your partner to be neat, be neat yourself!
15. Remind yourself -- generally, nagging doesn't work.
Any other ideas about how to avoid nagging? What have I missed?
Also, sometimes one person is absolutely oblivious for the need for chores to be done. That person just doesn't notice, and doesn't care. In that case, it's hard to know what to do. I have it easy, because if anything, my husband is more chore-oriented than I am. I'm a naggee as well as a nagger. If that's your situation -- what do you do? What advice to do you offer?
* Take a Walk on the Happy Side is an absolutely extraordinary blog. Maggie says she was inspired by me, but I'm far more inspired by her. She has identical twin boys, now 4 1/2, with Down syndrome, and she's been posting recently about their surgery and their difficult recovery. I'm awed by Maggie's determination and sweetness of spirit. Check it out.
* Word-of-mouth Day! Today, I gently encourage (or, you might think, pester) you to spread the word about the Happiness Project. You might:
-- Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
-- Link to a post on Twitter (and follow me @gretchenrubin)
-- Pre-order the book for a friend
-- Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks! I really appreciate any help. Word of mouth is the BEST.
Gretchen Rubin is the best-selling writer whose book, The Happiness Project, is the account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. Here, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.
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