Friday, June 7, 2013

Gretchen Rubin thanks for these blog posts


Secret of Adulthood: What’s Fun for Other People May Not Be Fun for You–and Vice Versa.



Further Secrets of Adulthood:
WhatsFunForOtherPeople_124759

This sounds so obvious, but it was a huge revelation for me. 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 am.
I explore this at some length in Happier at Home. Be Gretchen! It sounds so easy, but I find it very challenging. How about you? (Feel free to substitute your own name, of course.)

Who Are Your Patron Saints? Here Are Mine.

winston_churchillEvery Wednesday is Tip Day, or List Day.
This Wednesday: Six patron saints.
People often ask me, “Come on, what’s the key to happiness? If you had to pick one thing, what would you say?”
I think that question can be answered in several ways, depending on what framework you use.
But one answer would certainly be–self-knowledge. It’s the Fifth Splendid Truth: We can build a happy life only on the foundation of our own nature.
But it’s surprisingly hard to know yourself! So how can you sneak a glimpse into your own nature?
You can ask yourself: Whom do I envy? What do I lie about? The answers to these questions reveal the way in which your life doesn’t reflect your values.
You can ask yourself: What did I do for fun when I was ten years old? You’d probably enjoy as an adult a version of what you enjoyed as a ten-year-old.
You can ask yourself: What do I actually DO?
You can ask yourself: Who are my patron saints? (A “patron saint” is a saint who has a special connection to a person, place, profession, or activity, or in more casual terms, a person who serves as a particular leader or example.)
I have many patron saints, but here are six of them:
Benjamin Franklin: practical, curious, inventive.
St. Therese of Lisieux: showing great love through small, ordinary actions. St. Therese is also my spiritual master.
Samuel Johnson: wildly eccentric, with a deep understanding of human nature. This patron saint made it into the subtitle of Happier at Home!
Julia Child: goofy yet masterly; light-hearted yet authoritative. For some reason, she’s been on my mind lately.
Winston Churchill: indefatigable, indomitable. I wrote a biography of Churchill, Forty Ways To Look at Winston Churchill, so I have a special attachment to him.
Virginia Woolf: intensely attuned to the power of the passing moment.
When I look back on the pieces I’ve written about my patron saints, I see that they’re among my favorite posts.
How about you? Who are your patron saints, and why?

Story: I Want To Do the Same Thing on the Weekend That I Do During the Week.

For the weekly videos, I now tell a story. I’ve realized that for me, and I think for many people, a story is what holds my attention and makes a point most powerfully.
This week’s story: I want to do the same thing on the weekend that I do during the week.

Can’t see the video? Click here.
The episode that I describe in this story was very helpful when I was trying to pull myself out of “drift.”
To read more about drift, go here, and to take a quiz to learn if you’re drifting, go here.
If you want to watch more about why and how I left law for writing, and also a discussion about drift, you might enjoy the talk I gave at 5×15.
You can also read more about this in Happier at Home, chapter six.
Find the archives of videos here. More than 1.3 MILLION views. Don’t forget to subscribe!

Are You a Marathoner, a Sprinter, a Procrastinator? Weigh In.

runningfeetA few weeks ago, I wrote a post, Are you a tortoise or a hare about work?
It was about the question of whether you’d prefer to work fewer hours over more days, or more hours over fewer days.
I’ve been thinking more about this distinction. First point: I’m re-naming these categories “marathoners and sprinters.”
A larger point: one reason that I’m a marathoner is that I really dislike deadlines. I really, really, really don’t like to have work hanging over me. For instance, when I was in law school, I had two major writing requirements to fulfill by the end of my third year, and I completed them both by the end of my first year. (Sidenote: perhaps my eagerness to write big papers could have been perceived as a sign that I would rather be a writer than a lawyer, but that’s another story.) I know I could never be a journalist, because I wouldn’t be able to take the deadlines.
Having a big deadline at the end of a very long period–as with a book–is fine, because it gives marathon-me plenty of time. I like to do a little work over a long period of time, with a lot of opportunity to reflect and research and refine, and ample margin in case some emergency prevents me from working.
However, I know that many people need deadlines to work. Sprinters, am I right in assuming that deadlines are important to your process? Is it too much of a stretch to call you deadline-dependent–that is, you won’t start your sprint until the deadline looms?
Also, it seems to me that there’s a difference between sprinters and procrastinators. Agree, disagree?
From my observation, sprinters deliberately wait for the pressure of a deadline to help clarify their thinking. For instance, a friend told me, “I never prepare a talk until right before I have to give it–I mean, people are in their seats and I’m standing waiting to go out to a podium. It drives my staff crazy, but that’s when I get all my ideas.” Another friend has a book to write, but she won’t start until a few months before it’s due. She likes to sprint, and she knows how long it will take her to write the book, so she doesn’t want to start until she’ll feel the deadline pressure.
This approach seems different from procrastination. With procrastination, people feel as though they should be working, and they wish they could work, but somehow they can’t make themselves. They aren’t choosing to hold back; they can’t force themselves forward until the deadline is so urgent that they must act. (Want tips to stop procrastinating? Look here.) How do procrastinators feel about the marathoners and sprinters? Many procrastinators seem to wish they could be marathoners, but maybe that’s not a good fit for their natures.
I’ve just started to consider these distinctions, however. What do you think? Marathoners, sprinters, procrastinators, or any combinations of the three, please weigh in.

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