Happier at Home

I mentioned recently that, in the midst of my house move, I re-read Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin.  Now, I'm a big fan of Gretchen Rubin's writing and became an even bigger fan when it turned out she is also a super nice lady (more on that later).  This post has taken me ages to write because Happier at Home is packed with, well, so much stuff, and I just couldn't pin down what I wanted to say.  So, in the spirit of "done is better than perfect" (a Gretchen-ism I like to remind myself of regularly), here's a collection of highlights and thoughts about the book.    

So - what's it about? Rubin describes the book as her account of the strategies that she used to feel more at home, at home.  In contrast to the messages in The Architecture of Happiness, which is all about the physical make up of buildings and their contents, Rubin doesn't really focus on this. She talks about what goes on in (and around) the home, and openly admits that she's not really interested in interior design. In fact, she said it had been a relief to her when she realised that her style of apartment didn't have to reflect any deep truths about her, and that it was enough that it be a pleasant, comfortable place to live.

Each month, Rubin picks a theme related to home (in the broadest sense) and sets herself some resolutions. She kicks off with "Possessions".  One of the most unsettling things about moving was being confronted with all our stuff - every single thing needed attention - and it made me just want to chuck it all out.  The usual comeback to a comment like this is that, yes, you should get rid of stuff, strive for simplicity, etc etc. Rubin argues we shouldn't just strive for less for the sake of having less, and assuming that less is better. She says instead we should just make sure we are engaging with our stuff - either by using it or keeping it because it has some special significance.

Next up is Marriage month.  One of the things Rubin talks about here is an attempt to rebalance who does the driving. Her husband basically does all of it, and she avoids it.  This is one of my own weaknesses too, and I read this chapter with hope, but it turns out there are no quick fixes for this.  Her sister offers the most helpful bit of wisdom here - that she'll only stop feeling anxious about driving after she has been driving every day for years.

Parenthood was the next theme, and I decided straight away to copy one of her resolutions to "under react to a problem".  Making a conscious effort to stay calm definitely makes a difference, but it takes practice.

A couple of months later Rubin focuses on Time.  She throws in a quote from Thoreau which inspired her:

"I love a broad margin to my life"

Isn't it such a luxury not to have to rush? In this chapter Rubin talks about planning her time better. She talks about everything from managing always-on technology and relentless emails, to how much she accomplished by doing something 15 minutes a day, to her kids' after school activities.  Her "15 minutes a day" task was sorting out her digital photos.  Some of her zeal for this rubbed off on me and I started tackling mine too. I also made a mental note to read Samuel Johnson, who is glowingly discussed in this chapter.

After the chapters on Body and Family is a chapter on Neighbourhood.  Here Rubin resolves to "be a tourist without leaving home" by making more effort to appreciate and enjoy what her city has to offer.  Another resolution this month was to "practice nonrandom acts of kindness".  Rubin disagrees with the notion that random acts of kindness bring happiness to the giver and the receiver (who she thinks will usually react with suspicion to a random act of kindness directed at them).  The nonrandom acts of kindness that Rubin focuses on include inviting new people to her reading and writing groups, recommending people for work and linking to other people's blogs. I smiled when I read this as this blog has been a lucky recipient of one of Rubin's nonrandom acts of kindness - she posted about this blog on twitter! - and it made my day!

Towards the end of the book, I highlighted this - which sounds so simple but is so insightful:

"...my quest perfectly illustrated one of my Secrets of Adulthood: I do best what comes naturally. When I pursue a goal that's right for me, my progress comes quickly and easily; when I pursue a goal that's wrong for me, my progress feels blocked. Now I try not to fight that sense of paralysis, but rather see it as a helpful clue to self-knowledge."

And, speaking of her Secrets of Adulthood (of which there are many) - this is one of my new favourites:

"It's the task that's never started that's the most wearisome"  

The final chapter, Now, brings it all together as Rubin reflects on her months of resolutions.  I won't spoil the ending except to say that it's happy and quite lovely.

You can find out more about Gretchen Rubin and her books and read her blog at www.gretchenrubin.com

Blown off course

The last month has been completely full of non blogging activities and I have been feeling bad about that. There was something so fulfilling about writing down my thoughts about the books I was reading, having an outlet outside of work and domestic life, and feeling like my mind really was growing.  I have been blown off course by a series of events and the fog this created in my brain has taken a while to clear.

In the last month, we've sold our apartment and moved to a new house. We've bought a new car and soon afterwards crashed it, then got it fixed...we've had a health issue with my son, subsequently confirmed to be not actually a real concern.  My husband has stopped working to take on the kids, and I have been very very busy at work.  I had 3 days off work during all of this and, on the first day back in the office, I burst into tears at my desk.  I know this was down to a build up of stress, but it was so disappointing to be feeling that way. Despite feeling so clear headed and rational before all this, it didn't take much to tip the balance.

Anyway...in the midst of this I have been reading and thinking.  I've read The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton to try to understand my thoughts about moving house, and adjusting to a completely different type of home. I've been re-reading Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin and How to Change the World by John Paul Flintoff.  I also loved the Russell Brand interview with Jeremy Paxman and an inspirational article by the late wife of my friend Omar.

I will be writing about all of this stuff soon. It even feels good to be writing this. I'm relieved things have finally settled down.

Stop feeling bad...about email and disappointment

I am taking a break from writing about Walden Pond (which could give me enough material to write about for weeks) to talk about two things I saw on the internet last week.  They are both kind of related because they are about things that make people "feel bad" which is one of the pillars in the First Splendid Truth about happiness that Gretchen Rubin writes about in The Happiness Project. 

One thing that makes me feel bad is email. An out of control inbox and an overly complicated email filing system that makes it take forever to file things, then almost impossible to remember which folder I put things in once I've filed them.  My salvation came from an article on the Financial Times website last week called Ten Email Commandments written by Tim Harford.  In a very funny, well observed article, one of the commandments is to stop filing emails!  Just dump them all in an archive folder. He even cites academic research supporting the efficiency of this! So I have stopped filing emails this week for the first time ever and it's made such a difference already. No more procrastination about where to put things. No more time wasted!

The other was an article from the Huffington post: Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy. The article argues (via some funny drawings) that happiness (or unhappiness) results from reality being better (or worse) than your expectations and looks at this in the context of work.  It also talks about the role of Facebook in warping people's expectations, which is pretty fascinating really. It's worth a read (thanks Sarah for sending it to me!).

On flow

I promised I would come back to the subject of "flow", which was one of the key elements in fulfilling work that Roman Krznaric wrote about in "How to Find Fulfilling Work".  Just as the idea of "being yourself" kept coming up in various books, so did the the concept of flow. 

Krznaric explained that a flow experience is one in which we are completely and unselfconsciously absorbed in whatever we are doing.  We are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.  Usually this activity is challenging enough to require our focus, but no so challenging that we fear failing.  It has been described as being almost like Buddhist meditation - we are totally engaged and present and the future and past fade away.  For athletes this is being "in the zone".  It's important in the context of work because doing these "flow" activities gives us a sense of fulfilment.

The pioneer of the theory of flow is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and it feels like his name is referenced all over the place now I know what flow is.  He talks about it in a TED video here, and you can read a review of his book, Finding Flow here.  

Susan Cain talks about flow in her book, Quiet.  She says:

"The key to flow is to pursue an activity for its own sake, not for the rewards it brings."

She argues that typical "flow" experiences tend to be solitary pursuits that have nothing to do with reward-seeking (which is why it's relevant to her book about introverts).  Flow also get a mention in Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project (she covers a lot of ground!). 

I realised when I was reading about flow in Krznaric's book that I had been experiencing it myself in the process. I had barely noticed the hours passing by.  If I'm enjoying a book and it's not too hard going I definitely get into a flow state.  But what about other people? My husband, who loves surfing, says for him it's in the moments when he's riding a wave.

What about you?

On being yourself

The importance of "being yourself" to sanity and happiness has come up in various ways in the books I've been reading lately.  The "feeling right" bit in Gretchen Rubin's First Splendid Truth in her book, The Happiness Project, wasn't something I focused on very much while I was reading it, but I've been thinking about it more since I read two other books:

I recently finished Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain, which I picked up, partly because it was endorsed on the cover by Gretchen Rubin, whose writing I love.  It took reading this book for me to realise (at age 33) that actually, I am a bit of an introvert, and - because Cain presents a wide range of reasons why this can be a positive, despite popular opinion - that's OK. It explained a lot.  It was also fascinating to read about the studies on the behaviours of babies and how they were effective predictors of whether they grew up to be an introvert or an extrovert.  I think we've got a 3 year old extrovert and a 1 year old introvert in the making in our family and now I feel like I understand them even better.  The book also explained why arguments between my (extrovert) husband and I are so ineffective, because we argue in different ways that don't really work together.  It gave me a real insight into myself and how I interact with other people, both at home and at work.

How to Stay Sane is a book in the School of Life series, written by psychotherapist, Philippa Perry.  She makes the case for taking the time to look after our mental health, just like we do our physical health.  In her view, to stay sane - which means to avoid the extremes of living in either an overly rigid way or in chaos - we need to practice self observation, cultivate good relationships, expose ourselves to positive stress (like learning and exercise) and think about our personal narratives.  Perry has this advice about relationships, which highlights (for me, anyway) the importance of being with people we feel comfortable with so we can be ourselves:

"...in order to meaningfully connect with another person, one has to be open. This means not being who we think we should be, but allowing ourselves to be who we really are.  This usually involves risking feeling vulnerable."

Reading these books has been an exercise in self observation of sorts as it's impossible to read them in a detached way - they automatically make me think of my own behaviour and thought processes and help me understand them better.  Some things I've tried to change and others I have simply learnt to accept.  I feel like I'm being myself.  

The Happiness Project made me happier

I stumbled upon the The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin when I was on maternity leave with my second baby. The cocktail of a challenging baby, scrambled hormones and months on end of broken sleep made me look twice at the title. It’s fair to say I wasn’t feeling particularly happy at the time. I thought it would be a light, fun, American book about self-helpy stuff and positive thoughts. I wasn’t expecting to love it, but love it I did.  

The book is about the author’s year long project to make changes to her life to make her feel happier.  Some people are put off by this premise and wonder how an educated, comfortably off woman living in New York City can have any relevance to their lives. I don’t take that view. This is really a book about how your actions and attitudes affect your overall enjoyment of life, and surely that’s relevant to everyone.

Some of my favourite things from the book are stuck on post-its on my fridge.

Her opening theory boils down to this, her "First Splendid Truth":

"To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth"

Which means – do more things you like, sort out the things that make you feel bad (bogged down, short of time, under pressure), live an authentic life that feels right for you (e.g. change your job if you think your calling is to do something else) and grow as a person (by learning something new, or trying new things).  Rubin believes if you tackle all of those elements you’ll feel happier. As she goes through the book she works through what these things are for her and what she does about them.

"Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

Or, in other words, "done is better than perfect". This was a big one for me. I am a perfectionist in a bad way. I realised that we were continually missing out on going on holiday because we couldn’t find the perfect thing (too far away, too expensive, not enough there for the kids…). After reading this book and realising what was happening I thought how crazy that was so just went ahead and booked the best thing we could come up with. It wasn’t the greatest holiday but we felt good about the fact that we were going on holiday at all.

This is closely related to:

“Most decisions don’t require extensive research”

Again, something I still find myself defaulting to no matter how seemingly insignificant the decision may be.  I think it’s my perfectionist streak that makes me a “maximiser” rather than a “satisficer”. I knew about these descriptors from my economics degree and rationality of economic agents, but hadn’t thought before about what category I fit into. Too often I find myself acting like a maximiser in pursuit of the “best” particular thing, rather than being a satisficer, happy with something being “good enough”.  It’s fine to be a maximiser when something really matters, but when it’s not that important it’s time wasting and exhausting.  Big note to self there.

“Tackle a nagging task” and “By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished”

A source of “feeling bad” for many of us is the list we keep in our heads of all the things we’ve been meaning to do but haven’t got round to yet.  Make a list and work through them all. Throw some money at the problem, just get them done. The other classic avoidance strategy stems from tasks that look overwhelming – like filing the enormous accumulated pile of paperwork on the shelf - so you don’t do it at all. If you spend 10 minutes a day tackling it, it’ll get done and you won’t have to spend a whole afternoon doing it all at once.

Another source of feeling bad is how we affect those around us. Very few of us wake up smiling and cheerful every single day, and on the days we’re in a bad mood the people we live with or sit with at work cop the brunt of it.  Not something I’ve ever really thought about to be honest – but Rubin points out how selfish it is to dump your small worries and grumpiness on your family or friends… something exists called "emotional contagion" and it means that bad moods and miserable faces are catching! 

I could go on…but I want you to read the book for yourself. Finally, I also need to credit The Happiness Project with being a big influence on the direction of my reading, and the inspiration for starting this blog. I always used to reach for a good novel to escape and unwind but since reading this book it’s made me think much more about my life, how I approach it, how I think, and how much we can learn from the lives and experiences of others.  This has led me to lots of interesting non fiction books and memoirs, which I'll talk about more on this blog.

In the meantime I recommend checking out the Happiness Project blog. Enjoy!