Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives

Do you wish to build a better artist habit into your life?Many of you talk about finding time or making time for your art every day. If you want to learn how your personality influences the way you cultivate habits, you are in the right place. I’ve recently read Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin and here are today’s Top Takeaways:You are likely an obliger or questioner.Most people fall into these two tendencies. More rare are rebels and upholders. Want to discover your tendency? Take Rubin’s free quiz to find out.Habits are something we cultivate to forget about.Do you think about brushing your teeth every morning? No, you likely just do it. Why? Because it’s a habit: it’s part of a routine so you don’t have to think about it. Habits give our brains a bit of a break and get us repeating behaviors without a whole lot of work.No one is “bad” at habits.It’s like if you struggle to create a habit that a) the topic just isn’t that important to you or, b) you are NOT using strategies that suit your tendency. For example, I’m an upholder. Calendars and lists work really well for me. They are not so useful for rebels, who do not enjoy following rules or systems.Strategies for habit formation must suit your tendency.Obligers have difficulty meeting internal expectations but do fine meeting outside expectations, thus, it would be useful for an obliger to join our FB Group and announce an art intention. Because we would all know said intention and goal, s/he knows we can ask about the project and see if they are following through on the goal/project/task.I don’t have to think about brushing my teeth every morning, I just know to do it.Let’s apply the tendencies to our creative practice.One of the biggest obstacles you all face is making time for your art. So, how can you utilize your tendency to help you create more time for your art?Obligers need someone to check in on them or someone to make art alongside. Knowing they have to “report in” or that someone else is counting on them to be there with them making art will make it easier to make art!Questioners need to understand how making regular time for their art will yield results. Or, why a certain time of day would best suit their desire for daily art practice. Understanding and buying into the logistics and idea behind a goal will help them create the habit.Upholders love checklists. My accountability calendar is great for this. I know it holds me accountable to a near daily art practice and I love the feeling of ticking off a box saying, “Yes! I did this!”Rebels need to create from a place of freedom. Art needs to be a space to express freedom. If the idea of daily practice empowers them and their art to feel independent and free, this can motivate consistent work.How can habits cultivate your creativity? A review of the Book Better than Before by Gretchen Rubin and apply it's ideas to creative process.Who knew that by developing habits we might set ourselves free to be our unique, valuable, creative self?!How can the tendencies impact the way we share or sell our art?If you wish to get a large social media following, or regularly sell your art, it would be wise to consider the tendencies of your potential audience and buyers.Obligers are not strong at follow through for things just for themselves, unless they have burnt out on saying yes to others. They need to know how purchasing your art, or sharing your art will help others. Can it be a gift for someone? Do you contribute money from each art you sell to a cause? Or, do you have a special message that can spread goodwill? These ideas will likely appeal to an obliger.Questioners will want to know the answers to any potential objections to buying or sharing your work. How does shipping work? Where is it shipped from? How long does it take to arrive? And some other, more big picture questions could include: why is the artwork valuable? Why should people care about your art? Think of every question someone could ask you about your art and have answers at the ready for your questioner audience.Upholders will likely want to know about your accolades and achievements. Where have you exhibited your art? What awards have you won? Is the work part of a larger project or goal? How is that going? How does the way you work on the art show your special dedication and service to the work itself? To progress in the arts? Upholders are driven by achievement and will likely connect if you frame conversations about your work in this way.Rebels operate from a place of freedom. How does your work convey a sense of personal independence, expression and freedom? As soon as their is a “should” or some rule to abide by rebels want to break the rule or ignore the “should.” How does your art break rules or push the boundaries of “the system?”Many tendencies need the support and help of others in their life to develop and keep habits. Be sure to know the tools that will help you succeed. And use them.How you can help each tendency.Obligers need your expectations. Check in with them and ask about their art. It will help them make more of it.Questioners need your reasoning. If you offer feedback about an artwork, don’t just say what you see, explain why you think it’s important.Upholders need your help to slow down and savor the little things. They can be too busy achieving to enjoy their art. Give them homework that involves art PLAY.Rebels need no expectations. Don’t tell them how to do something or what should be done. Instead ask: what will set you free?(From my article on ArtistStrong)

I really loved this book by Gretchen Rubin. It is a very fast-paced, well-written book that gives many practical suggestions on how to leverage habits to serve our long-term well-being and happiness.She begins with the importance of self-knowledge. She lays out a simple framework based on how individuals generally respond to internal and external expectations (Upholders, Questioners, Obligers and Rebels) and then makes some distinctions for each of us to think through in order to better understand ourselves. She does not offer a one-size-fits–all solution. Rather, she advocates that we use self-knowledge to understand how we can apply habits in the service of our lives.After self-knowledge, she discusses 4 Pillars of Habits. These are:• Monitoring – self-measurement brings awareness and it prevents us from fooling ourselves.• Foundations – we need to focus on “first things first” and she notes the areas that will most directly strengthen self-control – sleeping, movement, eating and drinking right, unclutter. One of my favorite ideas from this section was the one-minute rule (if you can do a task in less than a minute, do it) – and I have already used it to my benefit• Scheduling – scheduling makes us confront the time limits of the day and realize that we need to make choices. It can even help by making sure we schedule time for leisure. Her is a great quote: “How we schedule our days is how we live our lives.”• Accountability – we must actually follow the habitThe best time to begin is now. She discusses the danger of “tomorrow logic” – the key is to take the first step and then make the temporary permanent. Throughout the book she offers many “secrets of adulthood”, 2 of my favorites are on how to make habits more convenient:• “The biggest waste of time is to do well something that we need not do at all”• “Make it easy to do right, and hard to go wrong”She has a lot of useful ideas on how to make sure we keep habits on track. Here are a few that I found useful:• Anticipate and minimize temptation – plan for failure (a good technique in this regard that is not covered in the book is Gary Klein’s idea of the pre-mortem – he discusses it for projects but the same concept could be applied to habits)• Use If-then planning to stick to good habits• Avoid Loopholes – she notes 10 categories of loopholes including moral licensing (permission to do bad because I was good), the tomorrow loophole, and the one-coin loophole (which is quite fascinating)She also covers the danger of rewards. We can see a reward as a finish line and that marks a stopping point. Continuous progress is the opposite of a finish line. Making the habits we want rewarding in themselves is important if we want them to last a lifetime.We need clarity of values and clarity of action to support habit formation – when we have conflicting goals, we don’t manage ourselves well. This is one of the reasons that self-knowledge is so important. We need to be clear on our values so we can understand how to connect the habit to the value that it serves. We want habits that serve our lives – as she notes early in the book “habit is a good servant but a bad master.”I really enjoyed reading this book and I recommend it highly. I have already starting working some of the ideas into the fabric of my life (such as the one minute rule). I am thinking about a question she posed late in the book: “What change would add more happiness to my life?” – that is an important question for each of us to ask so we can develop that habits we need across a lifetime in order to achieve our own self-fulfillment. My thanks to Gretchen Rubin for writing a valuable work for “mastering the habits of our everyday lives.”Note #1: I took extensive notes while reading the book over the last three days and I was able to begin using ideas right from the start. This is a book I will definitely be coming back to in the future.Note #2: Remember that her framework notes general tendencies, details will vary for each individualNote #3: She provides lots of great personal examples throughout the bookNote #4: I recommend the reader also consider these other books on self-control, habits and mindsets: Willpower by Baumeister and Tierney, The Willpower Habit by McGonigal, Mindset by Dweck, The Power of Habit by Duhigg.Note #5: One’s values are very important but how to think about what one should value is not covered in the book – I think the virtue ethics tradition aligns nicely with this work (for example, Aristotle)Note #6: There are great quotes at the start of each chapter – several from Samuel Johnson and Montaigne have me more interest in their writings as well.

I struggle with this book, it operates in the principles of either/or, you are a starter or a finisher, you love simplicity or abundance, novelty or familiarity. People are more complex than that. It can depend on a whole host of factors (situation, mental state, recent events etc). So it kind of lost me quite quickly. Perhaps it goes in to say not everybody is one thing or another all the time, but for me this was not signposted clearly enough.

Habits are fascinating indeed and this is the first time I have read a serious view of them.Interesting and I guess to many people very helpful.At my advanced years I have already discovered most of the suggestions given.The author’ s own personality is a bit too dominant in my opinion. However an informative book

I bought this book a while ago but still find that bits stick in my mind to help me. I love how Gretchen Rubin writes as she doesn't pretend that she is perfect or that you can/will be perfect too. She realises that we are all human and all different and encourages you to celebrate that and work with it rather than trying to get yourself in a box that might be the wrong shape.An easy read and deifinitely recommended!

I am still reading this. Key for me is her explaining that we all need what works for us, that we're all different. It's not a just a "here's what I did & this is what works". It's an easy, interesting read. I read the 4 tendencies first which I think definitely helps, & I would recommend doing that.

Interesting book, well researched and written, haven't finished reading it all the way through yet but is already making me think differently about why I struggle to break old habits and make new ones