YouSaid · the spoken record

Gretchen Rubin

lines on the record: 130
first: 2018-01-10
most recent: 2018-01-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, one thing I do is I will say to myself, like, and it's a different time every day, but I will say like now is quitting time. And I was sort of in my mind think, okay, it's quitting time. And so like, sure, I might check my email or I might like read a book that is research, not for fun, but just like a research book after that time. But I'm basically not, I'm not working. And then I also at that time will sort of clean up my office. And that also is kind of a signal, like, okay, this is I'm done for the day. I'm sort of setting up for tomorrow. And so this is kind of, it's coming to an end. You will clean.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, if you need to You can whap them on the head with that too. Don't break into my home office. Yeah, but, you know, I don't have that much in terms of technology support. It's just like the basics. And my laptop, of course, which is like my puppy, practically, I'm so emotionally attached to my laptop.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My monitors are just like Dell basic. They're all different sizes too. It's not very sleek looking. And it's a Plantronics headset, all very basic. One thing I got that I didn't even know it was a pain point that I didn't even realize I experienced until there was a solution for it was I got a, you know, like right now I'm speaking to you on a headset that is plugged into my hard drive and for some reason like the headset wire was just like always under my rolling wheels of my chair and I couldn't figure out where to put my headset so it didn't get in my way and then I found at the container store it's like a hook that you just put on the side of a desk and then you hook your headset to it. I was like this is exactly what I need so I have that I have a book weight This is a very specific thing but for people who do take a lot of notes it's just a strip of leather that has weights on both ends so that if you have like a book that's not staying open enough that you can read to copy it you can put a book weight on it and it will hold it open”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Read an email and look up a map or something, you can just do it so seamlessly. So that's something I love. I have a headset, love a headset.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the one thing that's missing that I desperately want, but my office is too small, is a treadmill desk. I would love a treadmill desk. I gave my sister a treadmill desk. She has a treadmill desk, but my office is too small. One thing that I love that I have is three monitors. And I had for a long time thought, and I think a lot of people think, well, that's just going to be overwhelming. It's going to be too much information coming at me. It's going to be distracting. Like if I need to focus, I can't have three monitors. But then I read a study that said that knowledge workers, of which we are, like their productivity went up substantially when they went from one to two monitors. So I got a second monitor as an experiment and like the next day I bought a third monitor. And I think I would have a fourth monitor if my desks were big enough, but my office is very small. But it just, you just can go so much faster. Like if I'm copying something from the internet into a document, it takes one second. I'm like looking up the definition of a word. I don't have to close out of my document. If I need to look up something in an email.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not very visual at all. I can only get things through words. Felt so inviting and comfortable, and then other spaces just turned me off like, oh, like light on two sides. If you're in a room that has only light on one side, it's not comfortable. You're far more comfortable in a room that has light on two sides. Pay attention. Well, you may, living in New York, this is a huge thing. Where is your light coming from? How much light do you have? Huge difference between having light on one side and light on two sides. And so anyway, so it's a very, it's nonlinear. It's just like organized in bits and pieces. So you could just pick it up and flip through it. It has illustrations. And so you see the common patterns of different architectures. And so it's just, it's very thought-provoking. It makes you see the world in a whole new way, which is my favorite thing. So that's why I love a pattern language.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“half wild garden terrace overlooking life child cave secret place like he says everybody's home should have a secret place that only the people who live there and the people they tell know about and my i'm like when we moved i'm like we are definitely having a secret place in our apartment and we do we have we have a couple secret places um or like sleeping to the east it's like people like to sleep to these or like one thing is um here's one that really showed me why i like certain kind of like restaurants better ceilings at different heights look around when you're in a place that feels comfortable you'll notice the ceilings are at different heights and then if you're in a place where the ceiling is all the same height it doesn't feel as good or like cascade of roofs if you look at roofs from Japanese temples to English manor houses all across the Norwegian farmhouses they have a cascade of roofs and that's very pleasing and so it's just”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So a pattern language is a book by Christopher Alexander who's kind of this wacky architect in California. And I love many books that he's written. But pattern language is interesting because it's nonlinear, so carrying on in our nonlinear theme. What he looks at is what makes the part that's most interesting to me is like what makes spaces most interesting and comfortable for people. And he's not saying things like, oh, you know, your dining room chandeliers should be 30 inches off your dining room table or, you know, you should have a curved doorway, not a square doorway, things like that. It's much more poetic. And what he does is he's looking and he and his team looked all across cultures, all across the world in time to see what were the patterns, what's the pattern language of what draws people into feeling good in a space. So for example, it's things like”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, almost always I'm reading a hard copy. A lot of the things that I read are old and they don't exist in digital form because they're like old random books that nobody cares enough to digitize or to have available commercially. But I also, again, I find, and this is what the research shows is true for many people, it's certainly true for me, that I retain things more when I read them in physical form. And then I also feel like if I could just cut and paste something, I would be tempted to do that. But I do think that the actual physical copying, even though I know people say handwriting is even better, but my handwriting's so bad, I would never be able to read it again. For me, typing does, again, it helps me retain information because so much of what I do is like taking a giant subject and then trying to crunch it down. And so I have to have a lot in my mind at one time. So for me, just having a lot of stuff in my working memory is very helpful.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, with one of my books, I use Scrivener, and I really, really like Scrivener, but I'm super untechie. And every once in a while, Scrivener would be like, now it's time to update. And that made me super scared because I felt like my document was sort of, I couldn't get to it. And it was so unnerving to me that I haven't used Scrivener since, even though I had a great experience with it because I was just like, I really didn't like that. Because I think if I were very technically savvy, then I would just do it and I wouldn't worry about it. But for me, it was always very anxiety producing, like, am I going to do it right? Is something going to happen? What if this whole thing goes away and I have to do some week-long customer service nightmare thing to, you know, because this document is everything to me, you know, it's so precious. And so now I just keep it in Word. I'm like, it's like it was a little bit better, but, you know, it's just not worth the anxiety. And so now I do every, I just create a Word document. Yeah.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would dump it into the accountability section, and from there, then I would begin to turn it into my own original writing. And the advantage of this is I never have a blank page because I'm always working from huge amounts of notes. But taking notes is a big part of my workday. It sounds like, oh, it's very perfunctory, but it actually goes into it and then just like the sheer copying things out, then that also helps me remember things because I need to remember a lot. And so I find that physically copying things helps me retain information. So I'll sometimes copy things just so that I can refer back to it easily, but then it also makes it easier for me to remember, you know, like what did that study say or what was the definition of ostensive anyway or whatever? That helps me.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those are separate Word documents by topic. And then there's no internal structure in these notes. I just will put, like, I might tag something. So if let's say it was about, let's say I was going to take a note about some habits research, I might tag it accountability, tracking, health. So then what happens? So I have these giant documents of notes. And then it eventually turns into a book because at a certain point, I have enough notes on a subject that I have started to form my own ideas and started to have my own viewpoint, my own, you know, my own ideas about who I agree with, who I think it's, you know, what people are missing, what needs to be added or explained that isn't already out there. And then I will start moving things from the notes into my own structure. And so I will use those tagging words to find things, like if I'm writing a chapter about accountability, I go through and put everything.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, I love taking notes. So I'm so glad you asked about it because it's a huge part of what I do. So I'll read books and I read like, I always get my ideas. I do everything through reading. Like I'm a very unwell-rounded person and I don't really do interviews with people or anything like that, like in terms of research. I do it all.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just trying to understand it. So, again, it was just like some weird preoccupation that I had turns out this is like this whole rich, crazy examples of people doing this and why they do it and how you would explain it. And then I got into the whole like happiness and habits and sort of what I'm known for now. But it's all because it's all related to human nature. And so for me, they feel very connected and one led very logically to the next. I think from the outside, it doesn't always look like that, but that's definitely how it feels to me. Like I'm always, I always am thinking about I always have things that I'm dying to get to as soon as I can.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know it's hard to explain why it's so obsesses me, but you know, if you think about like the standard idea, and certainly in law school we talked a lot about this, about like the idea of what it means to possess, what makes sense is that people who possess things, owners try to preserve things or control things, why would someone want to burn their house to the ground? And is it legal to burn your own house to the ground? Or like there was a Japanese businessman like mogul who announced that he was going to bury his impressionist masterpieces with him. And there was huge public outcry. Why do we think that it's worse for him to bury it with him in his grave than to like keep in a basement in a bank? Why do people, if you've seen the movie Harold and Maud, there's that moment when Maud throws the ring into the lake and says, now I know I'll always know where it is. And to me, like, that's incredibly powerful and kind of taboo thing to do.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so for me, I was very drawn to how do you tell the story in a succinct, interesting, accessible way. You know, people have written, you know, eight volumes of his life, could I do it in 250 pages in a way that would be honest and be interesting to people. And so, you know, each of my book has sort of led to the next one. So I wrote 40 Ways to Look at Winston Churchill, then I wrote 40 Ways to Look at JFK because I wanted to try this with another character. I wrote this really weird little book called Profane Waste, which was about why owners destroy their own possessions, which is a subject, again, that had obsessed me since law school.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, in retrospect, I didn't realize this at the time. It took me a while, like I was several books in before I realized kind of my own theme. But my theme is human nature. That's every book that I've written, everything that I'm interested in in some way is an examination of human nature from a different perspective. And so PowerMoney Fame Sex, which was actually excellent background for writing about happiness because, you know, there's sort of the opposite of happiness. And then so my next book was 40 Ways Look at Winston Churchill. And I think I know that I was drawn to Winston Churchill because he's such a gigantic character. Everything in him is so huge. He's so studied. He was part of everything in the world for decades. And he was, whether or not you agree with his policies or his statements, it played an extraordinarily important role. And then he was also a brilliant writer. He's an extraordinarily gifted writer. He painted. I mean, he was just sort of a million things.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You showed them. That's indication. You're like right up there with Madeline Langle, right? She had like 32, I think. Oh, man. Something.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You have to, it has to have breath in it. And so that's one thing that I wish that I could go back to her and say I understand now the wisdom of what you said. And I think about it often, even now in my writing, and it's many, many years later. As to the publishing process, I mean, I would just say to anybody who's trying to get published traditionally, you know, obviously now a lot of people can self-publish, which is a whole other route. Getting an agent is hard. That is really, really hard. Don't think that that's just a quick, easy step.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what's funny? I talked to several people before I've ended up with my agent who was like, you know, one of the most important people in my life now, Christy Fletcher, who's like this huge influence on my career. And it's this complete love connection. But I talked to other agents before I met her. And one agent said something at the time I thought was preposterous. But in hindsight, I have learned that what she meant and why she was right. She said, you have too many ideas on each page. And I was like, There's no such thing as too many ideas on a page. Like what we want here is lots and lots of ideas. And I thought she was just like so wrong. But now I realize one problem with my writing, and this is something that I fight all the time is density. I want to just cut, cut, cut, and only have dense, but you can't read a book like that. You have to have humor. You have to have connective tissue. You have to have pacing. You have to have high, you know.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're cutting that out, you know. And so that was like, so it was really made easy for me because this physical move corresponded with everything's different now. We're switching total professions. My whole routine is different. My aim is different. My aim now really at that point was to get an agent, which is really harder probably than getting a book contract. And I had no idea what I was doing. But so that's when it was. It was like, it was like, I'm going to work up until this time, but when I'm in New York, I'm not going to look for a law job in New York. I'm not going to look for any other job this now is my full-time profession, is to try to get published.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was like the catalyst was other changes in my life. So I married my husband who I met in law school. That was one of the benefits of going to law school. And he was working as a lawyer too. And we were living in Washington, D.C. And we were getting ready to move back to New York. And he took a class in financial accounting and he didn't apply for a law job. He applied for a job in finance. And I didn't apply for a law job. I was just like, now I'm in at work full-time on trying to get an agent trying to write this proposal. And so for us, it was like the move from DC was like, okay, we're leaving that behind. And I remember we got to New York and at one point we got a letter from the Bar Association of New York because we were both members of the New York Bar saying you owe us bar fees, which are quite heavy. And I said, Jamie, you know, should we play, should we pay our bar fees and just like keep it up? And he's like, are you kidding? No. And I'm like, yeah, we're.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've come to a point where I'd rather fail as a writer than succeed as a lawyer, and I need to try and fail or try and succeed, but I need to do it. But I think I was lucky because I knew what I wanted. Not only did I want to be a writer, I wanted to write this specific book. And so there was immense clarity about my purpose. Sometimes I think when people, and I bet you've seen this too, where people know they don't want what they have, but they don't know what they want. And so they're kind of in that, what color is my parachute kind of thing. And that's hard. And for me, it was almost like, I can't help but write this book. I feel in a compulsion to write this book. So why don't I see if like this is my next thing? And then that's how I made the switch was from that book on.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Obsessed with trying to research and understand and analyze and write about Power Money Fame sex. And this is something that happens to me often. I will often become obsessed with subjects and do tons of research. So this is not, that was not something unusual that has happened to me my whole life. It's like my favorite thing about myself, actually. But this was like unstoppable. I was spending all my free time working on this. And at some point, I was like, this is the kind of thing that a person would do if they were writing a book. I'm just doing this in my free time, but this is the kind of thing somebody would do to write a book about it. And slowly I began to think, well, maybe I should write a book about it. And I literally went to the bookstore and got a book called something like How to Write and Sell Your Nonfiction Book Proposal. I got the book and just followed the directions. And part of my thinking was, you know,”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, I'm really lucky because, and I think this is true for a lot of writers, but actually for many people in many different kinds of professions, something started pulling me very, very hard. And writing began to pull me. And what happened to me was I had the idea, this was probably the most critical thing that happened. I had the idea that eventually it did turn into the first book that I ever published. So I was taking a walk under my lunch hour and I was looking up at the Capitol Dome, you know, all white against the blue sky. And I thought, well, and just sort of as kind of a mental, just kind of fun game to play with myself, I said, what am I interested in that everybody in the world is interested? And I thought, well, power, money, fame, sex, and all of a sudden it was like power, money, fame, sex. And to me, this like locked into my mind as this kind of unified idea.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's interesting because, yeah, saying that I drifted into law school kind of sounds like it's the lazy kind of easy going way. And one of the things I found about when people drift is it doesn't mean that it's easy or that you're not working hard. So I worked really hard. And like you said, I was editor-in-chief of the law journal. I went on to clerk for Justice Sander Day O'Connor. I worked really, really hard at it. At a certain point, I sort of did the obvious next thing, you know, like, oh, oh, I'm graduating from law school. I'll apply for a clerkship. Oh, I got one clerkship. I'll apply to the Supreme Court. And then I got to a point where it's like, well, now what are you going to do? And I thought, I don't really know. There's all these law jobs that I could try for, but none of them really appealed to me. And that's when I started thinking about the fact that, and maybe I needed to think about going in a different direction.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Certainly just drifted into it because of a lack of any other aim. And it just seemed like something safe a safe thing to do that would maybe help me get more clarity.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wish that there had been that moment. Yeah, you're right. My father's a lawyer, very happy lawyer. So I had a model in my life of someone who was very happy as a lawyer. But really, I just drifted into law. You know, I was good at research and writing. I was good at taking tests. And, you know, I thought about law school. Well, you know, I'll just take the LSAT and see how I do. I'll just apply to law school and see where I get in. And I can always change my mind later. And it's a great preparation for a lot of different things. And I'll keep my options open. And I never really sat down and thought, you know, I would really like to be a lawyer. And the fact is, law school is really great if you're a person who really wants to be a lawyer. And the people I know who are happy lawyers and they wanted to be lawyers. But I went to law school just because I sort of didn't know what else to do with myself. And I had a great experience in law school. I'm glad that I went.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, you know, I'm sort of deeply within the romantic tradition. So I'm a big believer in desire and attachment as part of life. So I don't, I'm not a person who really wants to disengage from desire. But certainly I have times where my wish I couldn't wish. I wish I wasn't wishing. But for me, it was really more of a thought exercise than something that passionately rang true for me personally. I feel like I wish that I wish sometimes I wish that I had more wishes, that I felt more strongly towards things because I think there's a lot of power and beauty that comes from that.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I love Cohen's, you know, which are these statements that Zen Buddhist monks will meditate on in order to free themselves from the bounds of kind of rational thought. So this is what is the sound of one hand clapping and things like that. And so I'm always looking for things like that, kind of paradoxical statements that get you thinking. And that was one. I wish I could not wish was one that really was an idea that occurred to me that I was like, yeah, I do. Sometimes I wish that I could not wish. And it's an interesting, it's like one of these things that the more you think about it, your thoughts kind of twist and turn. And that's what I like about Cohen's.”
2018-01-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #290: Gretchen Rubin — Experiments in Happiness and Creativity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT