Changing Habits to Change Your Life: A Q and A with Gretchen Rubin

Since authoring her 2009 bestseller, The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin has been leveraging research-based insights from diverse fields, such as history, the social sciences and neuroscience, to provide her audience with practical tools and tips for leading happier, healthier and more productive lives.

In her latest book, Better Than Before—released in paperback late last year—Rubin explores the art and science of habit formation and provides actionable strategies for changing the bad habits that may be holding you back. In this interview, she describes how some of the principles and strategies she outlines can help coaches better understand their clients and themselves.

Coaching World: In Better Than Before, you share your four tendencies framework. Can you tell our readers a bit more about the framework and each of the tendencies?

Gretchen Rubin: When we try to form a new habit, we set an expectation for ourselves. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand how we respond to expectations. We face two kinds of expectations: outer expectations (meet work deadlines, observe traffic regulations) and inner expectations (stop taking naps, keep a New Year’s resolution).

Upholders respond readily to both outer expectations and inner expectations. “I do what others expect of me—and what I expect from myself.”

Questioners question all expectations. They meet an expectation only if they believe it’s reasonable (effectively making it an inner expectation). “I do what I think is best, according to my judgment. I won’t do something that doesn’t make sense.”

Obligers respond readily to outer expectations but struggle to meet inner expectations. “I don’t like to let others down, but I often let myself down.”

Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. “I want to do what I want, in my own way. If you tell me to do it, I’m less likely to do it.”

CW: Why is understanding your dominant tendency so crucial to successfully changing a habit?

GR: Once we know our tendency, we have a better idea of what habit-change strategy will work for us. For instance, Upholders do especially well with the Strategy of Scheduling, Questioners with the Strategy of Clarity, Obligers with the Strategy of Accountability and Rebels with the Strategy of Identity.

CW: What surprised you most during your research and writing process?

GR: I was surprised to realize that I was just about the only habits “expert” who acknowledged what seems to me to be the most crucial step toward habit change. The most important step is to understand ourselves.

There’s no shortage of advice about how to change your habits: Start small! Do it first thing in the morning! Reward yourself! Be moderate!

While it would be terrific to discover some magic answer, the fact is—as we all know from tough experience—there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Each of us has to figure out, for ourselves, what works for us.

When we identify key aspects of our nature, we can tailor a habit to suit our particular idiosyncrasies, and that way, we set ourselves up for success. In Better Than Before, I talk about the many strategies for habit change, and show how various strategies work better or worse for different people, given their diverse natures.

Just because a habit worked for Benjamin Franklin or Taylor Swift doesn’t mean it will work for you. A good example of this? Morning people and night people. Sure, it makes sense on paper to exercise first thing in the morning. But if you’re a night person, you’re at your most energetic much later in the day. If your New Year’s resolution is “Get up an hour early each day to exercise,” you’re not setting yourself up for success. Because you’re a night person.

CW: How can individuals cultivate habit change that lasts?

GR: In Better Than Before, I identify 21 strategies that we can use to make or break our habits. That’s a lot—which is good. Because there are so many strategies, each of us can choose the ones that appeal most to us. One person does better by starting small; someone else, by starting big. One person does better going public with his habit; someone else, by keeping her habit private. We all must figure out what’s true about ourselves, and then use the strategies that will work for us.

CW: How can understanding the science of habits help coaches better serve their clients?

GR: When we understand how people may be different from us, or like us, we can do a better job of tailoring our message to their needs. I think that coaches have a particularly important role to play for Obligers. Obligers need external accountability to meet their inner expectations for themselves—and working with a coach is a terrific way to get outer accountability. The fact is, with external accountability, Obligers do a terrific job of keeping their habits; without it, they struggle. Over and over, people have said to me, “Now that I know I’m an Obliger, I’ve figured out how to give myself external accountability, and for the first time, I’m managing to go to the gym/paint regularly/take my medication/bring lunch from home/start my business.”

By contrast, Questioners need answers to their questions, so the role of a coach would be less about providing accountability and more about laying the groundwork of research and explanation for why it makes sense to follow a particular course of action. Questioners want to know why.

And for Rebels—well, Rebels can do whatever they want to do. A coach can play an important role in reminding them of their identity and of what they want so that they have the desire to follow through.

CW: Our theme for this issue of Coaching World is business development. Every coach wants to grow his or her business, but we know that many struggle to make this happen. How might a coach apply the principles in Better Than Before to business development?

GR: There are 21 strategies, so lots of possibilities:

• They might use the Strategy of Monitoring, to see how much work they’re actually doing to grow their business (we often over-estimate how much we do helpful things).
• They might use the Strategy of Accountability to hold themselves accountable for meeting certain targets or aims.
• They might use the Strategy of Foundation to make sure that their self-command is high. It’s hard to make demands on yourself when you’re exhausted and hungry, and your desk is stacked high with paper!
• They might use the Strategy of Pairing: “I can only shower on a day that I make 3 networking emails.”
• They might use the Strategy of Abstaining: “I will never visit Facebook from my home computer again.”
• They might use the Strategy of the Clean Slate: “I just moved, and my habit in my new home office is that I’m going to start the day by making the phone calls that I need to make.”
• And so on!