Gretchen Rubin: Blogger to Author – Part 2

Introduction to Gretchen Rubin

Here is Gretchen Rubin in her own words about her project on her blog,  “The Happiness Project”

My happiness project has convinced me that it’s possible to be happier by taking small, concrete steps in your daily life. In my book and on this daily blog, I write about what I’ve learned as I’ve test-driven the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from popular culture. Plutarch, Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, St. Thérèse, the Dalai Lama, Oprah, Martin Seligman…I cover it all.

Me and the Happiness Project

Its has been more than a year since I came across a blog post of Gretchen Rubin. I think it was right around the time when the book, “The Happiness Project” was getting published. The book was on my wish list for quite some time. One day I picked it up from the library and went through it in a week. I liked the book and it gave me a few insights. After reading the book, I subscribed to the e-mail newsletter and also to YouTube videos from Gretchen.

Insights I gained from Gretchen’s book, blog and videos.

The Days are Long but the Years are Short: This is a video from Gretchen Rubin on this topic that I have shared with many folks. This sentence has also become one of my oft-repeated sayings. I try to use this whenever I hear someone mentioning how time is flying by. Instead of adding my own sound-track or blog-track, check it out for yourself and derive your own insight.

The Process: Gretchen has shared the process that she followed and her experiments before figuring out what works. So, her learnings are not based on theories only and also not limited to same old subjects. Her habit of pushing herself to read on some novel subject that sometimes has no relevance to her interests has come in handy for her more than once. I have not tried this yet because there is so much to read in the subjects that I am interested in. Maybe someday.

The idea is that by reading something outside of your comfort zone, your creativity may increase and you learn something new. This idea has also been corroborated by Steve Jobs when he talked about how some of the random subjects he dabbled in helped shaped Apple and eventually the computer industry.

The One-Minute Rule: This is a tip that I am practicing to tidy up. Anything that takes a minute or less to clean, I am making the effort to do it. Not successful every time but trying to get there. Read more on it here

If you found this post interesting and checked out Gretchen Rubin’s blog, videos or book then please drop a note here on whether you liked it.

Thanks for reading.