Top 10 Practices for Resetting Your Time, Space, Body, Inner Critic, and Social Life | Laurie Santos and Gretchen Rubin

23:27Gretchen Rubin:And Dan, you're a questioner, right? Yes, but also with an upholder, I'm kind of annoying in that, and I think you might be an upholder too. I don't actually struggle too much to make or break healthy habits, as long as I can be convinced that they're the right habits to make or break. In terms of getting unstuck, though, yeah, I'm pretty good at getting myself out. What I have found, though, given my tendencies and nervous system is like I'm in a state right now where I got some bad news about a creative project I've been working on for a long, long time. And I know myself well enough to know that I need to not try to solve it right away.

24:11I need to like let the bus hit me and and let it roll through my nervous system.

24:17Gretchen Rubin:But that sounds like great self-knowledge and great advice, which is I do that myself. Whenever I get a major edit, I like look at it and then I go into shock and then I read like a children's book for the rest of the day because I know I can't like, yeah, I know exactly how that feeling is. Now we're back to treating yourself like a toddler. Yeah. Laura, I don't want to give you a short shrift here, but in terms of like knowing your tendency or thinking about like how to make the habits that can get you unstuck, anything else pop into your head? I believe in my research packet, which I have right in front of me, you were interested in talking about the fresh start effect.

24:56Yeah, I think, you know, just because we're having this conversation at the start of fall and being a forever academic, you know, the back to school season feels like a real moment when everybody is turning over a new leaf. We have an open blank notebook that we can fill in with whatever habits we want. It just feels like a great moment for a fresh start. And this idea of the fresh start effect comes from the research of Katie Milkman at Wharton Business School. she's found that at these moments that we think of as these interesting temporal changes, like the start of fall, your birthday, the new year, these are moments where our minds are particularly motivated to take on new habits.

25:34It's like a time where we're like, all right, I'm turning over a new leaf. I'm ready to start something new. And so I guess my advice would just be like, don't waste it, right? Like if you're into the back to school season two, like this is a moment, you know, and I think it's a particularly good moment to tackle getting unstuck because it can give you permission to harness the motivation of these temporal boundaries to think of something new, to try something new, to experiment in a way that you haven't before. Gretchen, let me go back to you for item number four in our list here. And this is to some people going to seem superficial, but actually haven't spoken to you about it many times.

26:11I believe it has real depth. And that is if you want to get unstuck, one great way to do that is to clear your physical space.

26:20Gretchen Rubin:Absolutely. For most people, outer order contributes to a sense of inner calm and inner focus and just a sense of energy. I remember a friend of mine said, I finally cleared my fridge and now I know I can switch careers. And I thought, I know exactly how you feel. Now, we all have to be aware of procrastinate clearing. And this is when you're procrastinating on a big project or something that you don't want to do. And you're like, okay, now I have to like vacuum every floor in my apartment, or I have to alphabetize my bookshelf for the first time. And that's just using clutter clearing as a form of procrastination.

26:54Gretchen Rubin:So that's something to watch out for. But I do think that for most people, putting things away, clearing spaces, donating stuff they're not using, putting things in their proper place, even closing down tabs, can contribute to a sense of just energy and focus and more than it should. And I mean, we can all agree that in a happy life or like a focused project mindset, something like an overflowing in-basket or like a crowded coat closet is insignificant. And yet over and over people tell me, and I feel this way myself, that there is something about getting control over the stuff in your life that makes you feel more in control generally and makes it easier to sort of sit down and focus on what is most important to you.

27:44Gretchen Rubin:And so I think this is something that, you know, you can use when you need to get a boost. I will often do it, you know, just to like set myself up for a very difficult task. Laurie, you're the scientist here. Any evidentiary basis for Gretchen's assertions? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think for lots of reasons, our spaces matter, right? There's studies showing just that the clutter in your space can steal your attention away. Kids do worse in classrooms where there's like tons of stuff on the wall instead of stealing their attention. And so if you think about everything that you talk about on this show, right, just having your ability to stay mindful and be present, not be taken up by the clutter on your desk and like the fact that your closet is in disarray.

28:26I think that that can be huge. But I think a bigger reason why clearing our stuff when we're feeling stuck works is that we get a little piece of evidence that we are agentive, that we can make a change. Right. We get evidence that like, oh, I can do something. And that kind of convinces us that's a little foot in the door to get our behavior ramped up to take on the big thing. And I think those little mini steps, seeing those tiny wins can be super effective. I'll also just share one of my favorite recent, like, hack your space tips that I heard from the psychologist Leidy Klotz on my podcast a few weeks ago.

28:59He had this wonderful tip of surroundings before screens, which is different than clearing your space. It's like noticing the thing that's in your space that might be bringing you down, which is your screen. And his hack is like whenever you, like, wake up, whenever you kind of register, you know, coming up from your laptop and working or reading a book, notice your surroundings before pulling up a screen. Just commit to that. And it's powerful what that can do to just like broaden your horizons, to not let you like in that loop of screen, screen, screen, bad news and all this stuff we normally pay attention to.

29:30It's been a hack that I've used and it's been tremendously helpful for getting me unstuck in those little workday moments where you're just caught up in the grind.

29:38Gretchen Rubin:And here's another hack I'd throw in, which is the one minute rule, which is anything that you can do in less than a minute, go ahead and do without delay. If you can put a dish in the dishwasher or print out a document and file it or hang up your coat instead of throwing it on the chair. And this just gets rid of sort of that scum of clutter that's on the surface of life. But you're not like taking an hour to clear things up or an afternoon. You're just doing it just as you go about your day. and getting rid of this, these little things often makes you feel more able to do big things. It's back to this idea, Laurie, that you were saying about like feeling like you're in control and that you can make a difference.

30:14Gretchen Rubin:There's something about clearing this stuff away of all the things that I talk about so many things about happiness. And so often this is the one that people are like, this really changed my life. I'm thinking this changed the one minute rule changed your life. But sometimes, you know, we get to the big things through the little things. And and this is something that you really can do without much effort during your day. Just to say here, just as a little plug for you, Gretchen, she wrote a whole book about this outer order intercom. I will drop a link in the show notes to the interview with Gretchen on that book.

30:43OK, Lori, tip number five, reclaim your time. What does that even mean and how does it help you get unstuck? Yeah, this is getting at this very recent social scientist notion of time affluence, the feeling that we have a lot of time. We feel wealthy in time. This is the opposite of what many of us experience, which we might better call time famine, where you literally feel like you're starving for time. And studies by researchers like Ashley Willans at Harvard Business School show that if you self-report being time famish, that's as big a hit on your well-being as if you self-report being unemployed.

31:15Right. We all if your listeners are working right now and they lost their job suddenly tomorrow, that would suck for their overall happiness. Just not having any time is just as bad. And so the tip that we need to do is to really promote our time affluence to find some. And the good news about time affluence is it's not the objective amount of time that you have. It's the subjective sense that you have some time. And that means you can hack it without really opening up huge parts of your schedule. And one neat empirical way to hack your time affluence is to use money to buy back time. Studies show that any level of discretionary income you have, if you spend some of that discretionary income to get back more time, you know, you hire the neighbor's kid to mow the lawn, you buy the pre-chopped veggies, whatever it is, that actually can lead to an interesting boost in your happiness.

32:00So that's one to take is like spend your money to get back time. Another big hack that really seems to work is to make good use of the free time you do have. The journalist Bridget Schultz coined this term that I love called time confetti. These are the little pieces of time that we have floating around that are like little pieces of confetti. You know, the five minutes when the meeting ends earlier, the 10 minutes when your kid falls asleep, you know, unexpectedly soon. We tend not to realize those are decent amounts of time. So we tend to just blow them. You know, we check our phone or scroll through something on social media.

32:32But those kinds of moments add up. And so one of the suggestions I love is, again, by Ashley Willans, whose work I mentioned, she recommends making a time confetti wish list, right, which is not a to-do list. It's like when I have that five minutes, maybe that's when I do a little self-compassion check or I get in a quick 10-minute meditation or I text a friend, right? Just do something that will really promote your happiness in those windows. That's what you can do to make your time count. Gretchen, I know you have thoughts on this.

33:01Gretchen Rubin:Absolutely. And it's so important to treat time seriously and not to hand wave it. Laura Vanderkam, who's a time use expert, one of the things she points out is that we often treat weekday evenings as kind of like lost time. Like, oh, what can you possibly do? We got to deal with the kids. We got to have dinner. Put everybody to bed. We're tired. It's the end of the day. Maybe you're checking your work emails. And we don't think of it as being really time to value. And so she talks about these as being the golden hours and like really try to set aside 30 minutes or an hour where you're really doing something intentionally.

33:37Gretchen Rubin:That's fun. You and your kids are going for a neighborhood walk or you're going out for ice cream or you're doing a puzzle or you're reading a novel, whatever it is. But again, it's this idea of the time confetti, like they're the little bits of time, like five or 10 minutes. But then there's also sort of the big chunks of time where we just sort of treat it like, what are you going to do with all that? Where if you think about it intentionally, you can really protect it. And I think you have to treat it as real time, like non-negotiable. I put things on the calendar, even things like read a novel in bed.

34:08Gretchen Rubin:Sometimes I'll put it on the calendar so that it really has that weight of like a dentist appointment. You know, like, that's what I'm planning to do with my Saturday afternoon. I need to schedule time to goof off. Like, one of the things I do is I go to the Metropolitan Museum every day because that's like something that goes on my schedule that allows me to sort of daydream and wander. And so I think that this basic point that we sort of treat some time as not real time, that can't really be used for anything that's really valuable is just not so. I mean, whether it's sprinkles of confetti or golden hours, I think that we can reclaim a lot of time with intention.

34:47Last night, when I was really at the depths of my stuckness, we took our son for ice cream, and then Bianca and I took a walk through the neighborhood. So even without hearing you talk, we did what you recommend.

35:01Gretchen Rubin:And it's so fun. You think, why is it hard to get myself to do something that's actually fun and good for me? And the question is, it's hard. Like, you really have to, like, make a point to do it or otherwise it just doesn't get done. It's baffling, right? But we've all been there. I think we also like to get stuck in our stuckness. You know what I mean? Like, Dan, I could imagine a moment where your wife's like, hey, let's go out for ice cream. You're like, no, I just got really bad creative news. Like, how do you suggest I go out for ice cream? But then it's like we actually have control over whether or not we feel better if we do something that will make us feel better.

35:34But yeah, sometimes we need to give ourselves permission and putting it on the calendar, making it part of your daily schedule can really give you that permission that you need. I will say I didn't resist because 10 years of hosting this show, I am 10 % less of a moron. So like I know when somebody is trying to help me with a wise suggestion. Gretchen, let me stick with you for tip number six, which is to engage your senses deliberately.

36:01Gretchen Rubin:For years, I just treated my body like the car that my brain was driving around town. But when we get up in our heads, that is one of the most common ways to get stuck. And deliberately having that sensory engagement is such a good way to connect to the moment, to connect to your own physical experience. and it's available to us no matter what sense sometimes we don't have all five senses but whatever senses we have they are at hand literally all the time one thing I love is and this is something people talk about all the time which is using music you can have an audio apothecary you can have your calm down music you can have your pump up music you can have your bittersweet music that can help you get into whatever emotional state you want I think, you know, sometimes people will use music as a focusing device.

36:55Gretchen Rubin:I had a friend where every time she sat down to start working on her PhD thesis, she played like this one favorite song. And that was kind of like her signal to her brain, like, okay, you know, bring it on. This is happening. And it just got her in the mood and got her to focus. And it became part of a ritual. research shows that one of the quickest easiest ways to intervene in our moods is through music but but you can use I love touch I think people don't think about using touch even though now people are using like play-doh what do you call that therapy therapy dough and pop toys and things like that as a way to use touch to calm down or just to focus I just I think tapping into the sense it's so energizing and the funny thing about the senses is no matter what you want to accomplished, you can do it through your senses.

37:42Gretchen Rubin:If you want to calm down, you can. If you want to pump yourself up, you can. If you want to connect with the present, you can. If you want to connect with the past, you can. If you want to think outside the box and be creative, you can use the five senses for that. Or you can use the five senses to help you really focus down on really drudge work. So I think tapping into the senses is something that's always worth thinking about. And there's just something so appealing about it. It's a very energizing strategy, I find. Lori, what say you on this score? Oh, I think this stuff is so important. And, you know, I'll pick up Gretchen gave so many of the reasons that tapping into your senses are important.

38:18I mean, for me, a big one is just tapping into the present moment, right? Like my brain will be everywhere, mind wandering, you know, like doing all the things. And folks who listen to your show, Dan, know a billion techniques that you can use to become more mindful, especially meditation. But sometimes like sitting down on a cushion to meditate feels heavy. but for me if I can just get present in my senses I think all of a sudden that is super helpful for me to be paying attention to what's going on to get out of that loop that's in my head and not to do another plug for fall but I'm totally obsessed with the season I'm like pumpkin spice you know basic girl like full full stop but no but this is a time of year when you just literally look at the trees like they're they're just gorgeous right they snap you out just by Having a color that you don't expect.

39:04You know, the fall brings me back to the nostalgia of smells. When I feel the smell, the like, you know, dead leaves on the ground, it takes me back to like playing in the leaves with my dad. And those moments can be incredibly powerful for making you present and shutting off that rumination loop, right? So much so that clinical psychologists have this five senses technique that they talked about, which is especially if you're in a stuck spiral, what are five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can touch, two things you can smell, and one thing you can see. taste. Right.

39:33And I promise you, if you do that, if I was do that now, I'm like, well, I can see, you know, my podcast lights. I see both of you on my screen while we're talking. I see, you know, my coffee mug. Like already I can't be in a ruminative spiral and I haven't even gotten through all the things I can see yet. Right. It's like you put your brain on what you're really seeing, feeling, experiencing in the world. And all of a sudden, all that stuff in your head goes away. Just to get back to your fall obsession. So instead of sporty spice or posh spice, your pumpkin spice. I'm completely pumpkin spice.

40:03Yes, yes. As I record this, I am in a large house filled with lots of families. We're all taking a break together. I have an 11-year-old, but many of the other families here have teenagers. And one thing I've been watching up close with great interest, because this is coming down the pike for me and my wife, is how parents with teenagers deal with money with those teenagers. Which brings me to one of our sponsors today. For all the parents out there with teenagers, we know you're already trying to keep a million different things under control. Cash App is here to make sure your teen's money and their spending is not adding to the craziness.

40:40Cash App is designed to help teens aged 13 to 17 where they are with intuitive educational tools available through sponsorship by an eligible parent or guardian. Teens gain access to a personalized Cash App card that comes in different colors and patterns to fit their style and the ability to instantly access money from family and friends. Download Cash App today and sponsor your teen. Visit our link in the show notes. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, Cash App Visa debit flex cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, and the Bancorp Bank N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa USA Incorporated.

41:21See terms and conditions for the Sutton Prepaid Card, Sutton Debit Flex Card, and Bancorp Debit Flex Card. Savings provided by Cash App, a Block Incorporated brand. Visit cash.app slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures. Here's something super annoying that used to happen to me all the time. I would find out that my son had some sort of event, a performance at school or a sporting event that I, of course, wanted to attend, but I hadn't known about it. So then when I found out, I had to scramble to rearrange my entire calendar, which was frustrating for everybody involved. Here's the solution, however.

41:56It's called Skylight Calendar. If your brain is already at full capacity with to-dos and errands, birthdays and the dinner plan for Tuesday, you can let Skylight Calendar handle the rest. It syncs your entire family's schedule onto a sleek digital display so you can focus on more important things like spending time with your loved ones. Skylight Calendar has been such a nice addition to our home. It's a great way for all of us to know what the other is doing so we can coordinate and there are fewer conflicts because everybody is briefed in advance. Skylight Calendar is designed to bring families together for more time.

42:32It's an all-in-one digital smart calendar, and it syncs seamlessly with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and more, giving you customizable views for daily, weekly, or monthly planning. Families are better when they're working together. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners$30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to myskylight.com slash happier. Go to myskylight.com slash happier for$30 off your 15-inch calendar. That is myskylicht.com slash happier. If you're a loyal listener to this show, you know that I am an avid worker outer. And if you are going to exercise on the regular, one thing you need, it's a non-negotiable, at least in my opinion, you need quality socks.

43:14You can't skimp on your socks. And one of the sponsors of this show is Bombas. And they've been sending me these socks that I use when I work out, not only when I work out, but also when I'm out in the world, just wearing sneakers and I want some good looking socks. I go to my the Bombas on those occasions as well. It's become a little bit of a source of marital discord because my wife and I compete for the Bombas socks. So that's reminding me I need to go order some more. Long way of saying they make high quality socks, but that's not all they make. They also make footwear. Do you know what EVA stands for?

43:48Neither did I, but Bombas makes their sandals and slides from this super lightweight, cushy, waterproof EVA foam. It's like walking on marshmallows. They also make underwear and T-shirts, the best base layers you'll ever own. Head over to Bombas.com slash happier and use the code happier for 20 % off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash happier, code happier at checkout.

44:17Let me stay with you, Lori, because tip number seven is to get your body basics right. Yes. We so often forget that our minds are connected to our bodies. And like when in doubt over your mind being in a spiral of being stuck, sometimes moving the body can be all you need. And like the studies here are just so clear. A half hour of cardio movement a day can be as effective as taking a prescription of antidepressant medication. We know this from meta-analyses, which are these big studies of studies, right? So moving your body can sometimes get your mind moving in ways that you need. but another big one that for me will definitely fall by the wayside if i'm feeling stuck is getting some sleep right um sleep is the thing that especially when i'm super busy and i'm traveling and that kind of thing it's the thing that i don't get in but it's often the thing that can make whatever problem has come up feel just like much less frantic um and this is feeling very salient for me right now i'm just as you can probably hear from my voice i'm like overcoming a cold and i had one of these like you know the cough hack post-nabels drip yuckiness that like Like it was just making me cough so I couldn't sleep.

45:24And so for the past couple of nights, I'd been getting like, you know, five hours of sleep, six hours of sleep. And just like every personal thing, like an email would come up and it would just be like, oh, I can't, I don't know how to deal with this. Right. But then finally, like my cold is breaking and I got like nine hours of sleep last night. And this morning I woke up with this like Zen, like everything's fine. I have no problems in the world. And I was like, nothing that was happening in my life has changed. It's just like I finally got some sleep and now everything seems just like so much easier.

45:50And all of that is because bodies connected to minds, if when in doubt, start by treating your body well. And a lot of the other stuff will come along being fixed along for the ride. I'm glad you're feeling better. Gretchen, people might hear the exhortation to move your body or get more sleep and think, yeah, I've tried that, but I can't get into the habit. What would you advise?

46:16Gretchen Rubin:Well, take it back to the tendencies. So if you're a questioner, really read these studies. Like there is so much research about why it is so important to get a certain amount of movement in your day and how valuable that can be about the importance of sleep for every kind of like physical functioning that we do. and really think, well, what's the most efficient form for me? What's my chronotype? I do best when I go to bed at 10 and wake up at 7 and really figure that out. If you're an obliger, think about your duty to other people. If I'm hangry and exhausted all the time, then I'm not going to be a good family member.

46:51Gretchen Rubin:I'm not going to be a good friend. I'm not going to bring my best efforts to work. I owe it to other people. People are counting on me. I need to do it. Now, as an upholder, I'm always thinking, well, you should do it for yourself. It doesn't matter if other people need it. But for an obliger, that can be a really helpful thing to think. Like I need to put on my own oxygen mask first if I'm going to help other people put on their oxygen mask. And then for the rebel, for rebels, it's often really good to lean in like, whoa, like they're trying to, you know, like, oh, they're trying to keep me glued to a screen.

47:24Gretchen Rubin:They think their algorithms are going to keep me out of my bed, but they are not because no one is going to boss me around. Nobody's going to keep me from jumping into bed at 10 p.m. because that's what I want. That's what I choose. Or I talked to a rebel and I was like, how do you exercise every day? And she said, oh, I go during my lunch hour when I'm supposed to be working. You know what I mean? Like, so different people find different ways to do it. And I think sometimes back to this idea of self-acceptance that we started with, sometimes you think like, well, there should be a way that I could get myself to do it.

47:54Gretchen Rubin:Like I should sign up for a class if I want to exercise and that will mean that I will exercise. But for some people signing up for a class is actually counterproductive. They don't want to do it that way. And so if something's not working for you, try it a different way. There's many ways to get yourself to get some movement into your life. There's many ways to get better sleep. If one way isn't working for you, then try a different way. I think a lot of times we need to experiment on ourselves. I find listening to a podcast is super helpful in helping me to fall asleep. And other people, it just keeps them awake.

48:27Gretchen Rubin:So sometimes you just have to experiment with tools and find the way that's right for you, whether that's your tendency or some other aspect of your nature. I'm trying to make this show boring enough that people just drift off. Well, there's the Sleep With Me podcast, right, where he just tells you a really long, boring story. I think you just got to use like more ASMR, Dan, like just whisper, you know, talk. Yeah, talk really slowly. Occasionally people come up to me on the street and say, but your voice is so soothing. And my wife's always like, I don't find it soothing at all. Right. All right.

48:59Tip number eight, Lori, I love this. Counterintuitive, but in my experience, incredibly helpful. Do something for somebody else. Yes. This is one that I think modern culture gets wrong all the time, right? Go on the internet and you'll see this idea of self-care or treat yourself, right? But often the way we can treat ourselves best is to do something for other people. And this just comes straight from the research. Pretty much every available study of happy people show that happy people are really other-oriented, right? Controlled for income, happy people tend to donate more money to charity than those who self-report not being so happy.

49:33And so one of the ways you can help yourself out is to do something nice for somebody else. You get the warm glow of that feeling of doing something nice for somebody else, but you also wind up getting that kind of sense of agency again. You know, we talked about this before. Sometimes to get yourself unstuck, what you really need to do is just gain a sense of control. If you're the one that's going out and helping somebody else, if you're taking action to do something nice for somebody else, that convinces you that you have your own agency. it can help you figure out what you can do for yourself too.

50:05And so it's being doing these pro-social actions for other people isn't just a great hack for your happiness. I think it can also convince us that we have the agency to get unstuck when we need to.

50:15Gretchen Rubin:Well, and also, Lori, picking up on your idea of time affluence, I've read research that suggests that people who volunteer their time actually feel like they have more free time, which is a very paradoxical, how could that be? How could you feel like you have more free time if you actually objectively have less, but it's this idea of like, because I have time to give to other people, I feel more in control. I feel more abundant in time. That's exactly right. It's kind of like, well, if I could give this time away to somebody else, I must have some, right? You know, this is the, our brains are dumb, right?

50:45You know, so many of the ways our mind works. That's a great podcast title right there.

50:51Gretchen Rubin:I feel all of our podcasts could have that title. But if we can hack the dumbness of our brains, then all of a sudden we're kind of using them in effective ways. And this is this is a clear case of our brains being dumb, right? It's not the objective amount of time you have. It's how you feel. Doing something nice makes you feel like you got more time. Gretchen, I believe your point is that doing something nice doesn't actually need to require that much time. That research is more that it just it kind of has this effect of making you feel like you have more time. But it is very true that a lot of times you can make these make these gestures or do these behaviors without spending a lot of time.

51:25Gretchen Rubin:Like just saying a warm hello and goodbye to somebody is a really good way to feel connected to them. Reaching out to somebody. I love like if there's a way you can help people like get work, like make recommendations, make suggestions, make introductions to people who need them. These, you know, these don't take a lot of time. they can sometimes be extraordinarily valuable to other people. And it gives you that feeling of constantly being on the lookout for how to help other people. Also, one of my favorite things is picking up trash in your neighborhood. It's such a little thing, and yet you feel that sense of, well, just as I'm going about my day, I'm trying to do something to make the world a little bit better off.

52:07Yeah, especially at a time when people feel particularly anxious about politics. That's why you hear the phrase Action absorbs anxiety Just doing anything Even if it has nothing to do with our political scene Like picking up trash Or being nice to your friends Or volunteering Can just give you some One of you earlier used this term agentic It gives you a sense of agency And it's quite powerful Tip number nine Gretchen, I'll stay with you for this If you're feeling stuck Make a decision Any decision

52:41Gretchen Rubin:Yes, because sometimes we just get stuck. I sometimes say, do I need more information or do I just need to make a decision? Because sometimes you sort of say, well, I need to ask this person or I need to discuss this decision with them. And it's like, do you really? Are you just putting it off? Like I will often, that's something I often do when I'm stuck is I pretend like I need other people to weigh in. But what I really want is either to delay or I want to shift the responsibility to decision making on them. Like, what time do we need to leave for the airport? Like, I can figure that out and I should figure that out.

53:15Gretchen Rubin:There's a quotation I love from George Bernard Shaw when he says, to be in hell is to drift, to be in heaven is to steer. And I think that sense of steering, it comes back to this idea of agency. Again, like, am I taking action according to what I want to get done or where I want to go? You know, sometimes just by posing a question to yourself, you kind of know the answer. Like, you're thinking, okay, I just wrote this really angry email. Should I send it? It's like, no, you should not. But if you're asking yourself a question like, am I a good enough parent? It's like, well, probably people who are worried about being good enough parents are probably good enough parents.

53:56Gretchen Rubin:Like that's sometimes to ask a question is to suggest the answer. If you think, am I drinking too much? Maybe that's a sign that you know the answer. Laura, I mean, I can imagine people hearing this and obviously it's self-evident in its wisdom in some ways, but also for those of us who struggle sometimes to make a decision, the notion of just making a decision can be terrifying because what if it's the wrong one? Right. I think so many of us, especially these days, get into like optimization head, right? About the like stupidest thing, right? You know, I'll give an example. I was visiting New York recently and it was like, what restaurant do I want to go to?

54:41Like probably most of the places I would choose would just be like fine restaurants. But it wasn't just like pick a restaurant that's good. It's like, you know, with the available time I have and in the borough I am in, I'm going to pick the best restaurant possible. And I'm spending my visit to New York scrolling through Yelp reviews to try to figure out like, oh, that one's only a 4.3. I don't know. We should find one that's 4.5. And it's like if we just decided on a restaurant, we could have gone to the restaurant and had some drinks and like had a good time. But it was like I was wasting time trying to optimize something.

55:08And I think sometimes what we need to do is just give ourselves the gift of overcoming our own choice paralysis. Right. You know, there is a psychological phenomena of choice overload. When you keep too many options open, you wind up making worse decisions. And even if you make a good decision, feeling bad about it. Right. You know, I had this in New York where it's like, you know, we ended up going to a crepe place and was like, did I really want to create? Maybe I should have gone for Mexican food or maybe I should have gone. You know, it's like, no, no, no. It was just fine. So I think giving yourself the gift of making that decision and admitting having some self compassion over like, I'm not going to optimize.

55:42I'm just going to satisfy. I'm going to make a B plus decision, but it will be made. and therefore we could eat our meal and just get to it and enjoy it. I'm having a brain cramp, but there's that professor at Harvard, Ellen Langer, I think maybe is her name. And she often says, don't worry about making the right decision. Just make whatever decision you make right. That totally lines up. The other thing that we know is that we have all these mechanisms that will convince us that as soon as we make a decision, it was the good one, right? There's some lovely work by Dan Gilbert, also at Harvard, not to get too Harvard focused in this discussion, but Dan Gilbert basically finds that we have this entire psychological immune system, right?

56:18As soon as you make a decision, all of these mechanisms are going to come into play to rationalize, be like, oh, that was a great decision. You did such a good job. You're going to start revealing what that decision tells you, which is inevitably going to have some good stuff. You know, the great place had some, you know, nice Nutella and whipped cream. I didn't think about that when I was making my decision, but now I get to experience it. Most decisions are just going to be fine, especially if you're having a tough decision. That means you're between two good things, what researchers call an approach-approach conflict.

56:46And usually the best way out of that conflict is just to pick one.

56:49Gretchen Rubin:But I also think that sometimes you just have to recognize that you're going to have regret either way. I think sometimes we fall into this trap of thinking, well, if I really think this through, there is a right decision that I will feel 100 % happy with. And it's like, no, if you move to Florida, you're not moving to Vermont. And you're going to regret all the things that Florida would have given you, or you're going to regret all the things that Vermont would have given you. There's just no way to have both. And so I think sometimes you just have to accept that life has trade-offs and you're going to make a decision, but it doesn't mean that you're not going to sort of wish for, you know, the sliding doors if you had made a different decision.

57:26Gretchen Rubin:And it's just understanding that that's inevitable, that there is no perfect choice that is going to relieve you of just the natural limitations of our decisions. Let me just press you both on this slightly, just in a very selfish way. I keep coming back to the fact that I'm in a little bit of a situation of stuckness myself vis-a-vis creative project. And I, on the one hand, will ultimately make a decision. On the other, it feels wise to me to sit in the not knowing for some period of time rather than rushing. But that's a mindful delay, not mindlessly pushing something aside because you don't want to face it.

58:09And Dan, your creative project, I mean, I don't know what it is, but it's probably a much bigger deal than whether I should get a burrito or a crepe on some random Wednesday night, right? I think we also have to take into account the scale of the decision. The ones that I think stress me out the most are the ones that ultimately don't matter. You know, I can dither on like, should I take the three o 'clock flight or the seven o 'clock flight? Well, if it's a three o 'clock flight, I'll have to get dinner. And it's like, it doesn't matter. But those flights are fine. So I think we also have to be mindful of, you know, is this one that I need to intentionally and mindfully sit with to see what else reveals itself?

58:44Or is this one that like, you know, rip the Band-Aid off and just pick something because it's not really going to matter that much. We're about to leave on a family beach vacation and my wife, in an act of kindness and generosity, went on Quince.com and ordered me some more of my favorite shorts. So I'm never out of shorts to wear. A couple of weeks ago, I got this pair of shorts from Quince and I've just been wearing them like all the time. So now thanks to Bianca, I've got three pairs, which I'm very excited about. Quince focuses on high-quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like 100 % Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and merino wool.

59:23Their styles are timeless, versatile, and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for day after day. Their 100 % Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just$60. I think I have three or four of those. They give you the softness and quality you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. Quince also makes premium pants, fitted tees. I've got a bunch of their t-shirts and also polos and breathable active wear. Quality basics designed to work across your wardrobe and hold up to everyday wear. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen.

59:59So you're paying for high quality, not brand market. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash happier. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash happier.

1:00:22Imagine you finally have a free day out of town. You're about to enjoy a nice lunch when you get the alert that a window has been broken at home and you are miles away. These are the wake up calls that remind us in one second, everything can change. ADT's security systems are built for those moments. They help keep your home safer with 24-7 monitoring. No one wants to feel unsafe at home or vulnerable when you're away, and with ADT, you won't. Their systems can be professionally installed by trained technicians, so you can trust them to watch out for your home from day one. ADT has the most company-operated monitoring centers in the industry, and the ADT Plus app lets you keep tabs on your home from anywhere you have service, you'll get the alerts that matter about your home's safety.

1:01:08Don't wait to prepare your home for an emergency. When every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com or call 1-800-ADT-ASAP.

1:01:24The final recommendation, and this one will go to you, Lori. Also counterintuitive in this age of individualism and tech-induced isolation. Invest in social connection when you feel stuck. Yes, single most robust finding in all of happiness research. Happy people are just more social and social people are just more happy. It's just one of the most reliable predictors of how good you're feeling. And social connection, I think, can be incredibly important for getting unstuck for a couple different reasons, right? One is that we use other people as good social indicators. social comparisons, right?

1:02:02If you're feeling stuck and there's a particular thing you want to move towards, find other people who are doing that. Gretchen mentioned this earlier. If you want to read more, join a book club. If you want to work out more, get a trainer, right? We can use other people, not just as obligers, but anyone can use other people to motivate ourselves and move a lot. But the other thing is that we underestimate how much social connection is going to make us feel good. So if part of being stuck is just a real negative mood, you're just in a bad place, just get social. There's so much great work by Nick Epley and his colleagues showing that we just don't realize the power of other people to make us feel better, whether that's giving somebody a compliment, kind of, you know, saying that you're grateful for someone in your life, writing someone a letter, talking to a stranger on the train, all these little moments of social connection wind up boosting our mood.

1:02:51And there's just so much also evidence showing that it's easier to make a decision if you're in a good mood, right? If you just kind of give yourself a little emotional bandwidth, then that can also help you feel a little unstuck too. I'm going to say a phrase that gets uttered a lot on this show that I first heard from Dr. Robert Weldinger. Sorry to mention Harvard again, but he's at Harvard. And that is never worry alone.

1:03:12Gretchen Rubin:That's a great, great phrase. I have a lot of bad habits, but when I'm feeling stuck, I have a really good habit of I will just reach out and talk to the people in my life. I won't. I won't suffer in silence. Yeah. Yeah, this is another thing that boosts our happiness and other people's happiness is asking for help, right? Those people in your life who care about you, if you were to call them and say, hey, you know, I'm feeling really stuck. Can you help me? You're giving them a boost to kind of make them feel happier because not only do they get to have some social connection, they get to help you, right?

1:03:45They get that other oriented boost to their own happiness. And so I think sometimes when we need to worry with somebody else, we worry about worrying with somebody else because we don't want to kind of, you know, make them feel uncomfortable or maybe they're busy or whatever. But by and large, what the studies show is that it's always just better to reach out. People are always appreciative to give help more than we realize. Gretchen, I don't know if this maps onto tendencies per se, but what if you're an introvert and other people are, you know, like not so appetizing to you?

1:04:16Gretchen Rubin:Well, one thing that the research shows is that even for introverts, connecting with other people does give them a mood boost. So one of the things, back to this idea of self-knowledge, what kind of connection feels right to you? Like a super extroverted person might really love the idea of walking into a crowded bar and seeing a lot of friends and being kind of in an overwhelming social situation. And an introvert, it might be more like having coffee with a friend and really having a deep conversation or having a little exchange with the barista at their favorite coffee shop. But it's just the fact, I mean, Laurie's true.

1:04:53Gretchen Rubin:I mean, ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree that at its core, relationships are the most important thing for happiness. And I think we can build this into our lives in little ways. I think sometimes people think of like grand gestures, but, you know, just texting somebody like, oh, I saw such and such and I thought of you or having just like making, you know, an appointment with a friend to go for a quick walk. You know what? I want to bring this back. This is my pledge right here, right now. When I was in high school, we would do errand dates where a friend would just come over and you would run errands together.

1:05:28Gretchen Rubin:And I'm like, why don't I do that now? That sounds amazing. Like you have your errands, I have my errands. And well, let's just spend the afternoon doing errands. Like, you know, so we can, or like, I think a lot of people do walk and talks where if like I have a friend who lives in London and we'll get on the phone and I'll walk and she'll walk and then we'll use that time to catch up. But so I think looking for small ways and then big ways to connect with other people really is at the core of our happiness. I think, you know, yeah, Lori is exactly right. I often think about like the fact that psychologically speaking, there are two spirals available to us.

1:06:01So there's what my friend Evelyn calls the toilet vortex where you're stuck or because you're stressed or whatever, you are beating yourself up and that impacts your relationships. And because relationships are, as we've just established, probably the most important variable in human flourishing, we feel even worse. And then we're then our relationships suffer even more and down you go. Conversely, there is an upward spiral where you and I think the upward spiral is is accessible from either side. So you can either start with, you know, doing some of the inner work that we've described in this conversation, or you can start with the outer work that we've described in this conversation, helping somebody or just having some social interaction.

1:06:42And once your inner weather is bombier, your relationships improve, and then your inner weather gets even better and your relationships improve even further. And so, yeah, I just want to see whether you think this makes sense, specifically the part about how, you know, we can get unstuck by starting on either side of the upward spiral.

1:07:01Gretchen Rubin:Well, just to add to that, one of the things that's very startling is that people who are lonely are actually pricklier. And you would think that being lonely would open you up and make you more receptive to, like, warm gestures and to people wanting to connect, but actually it makes you, like, harder to connect with. And so it is, I mean, that's going to the toilet board that you're talking about, but it's something to be really aware of because it is a spiral that can go in the wrong direction for sure. I think one way to pop out of the spiral for me, maybe this is just because I'm a nerdy scientist, is like I like when I can get some evidence-based courage.

1:07:38Like I like when I can learn something about the mind that teaches me like, oh, if I do this, it will be better. And one of my favorite pieces of evidence-based courage that comes when I might need to switch from the toilet spiral into a more social spiral, talking to friends, getting some advice, asking for help, is remembering this phenomenon of the liking gap. Oh, I love this. Yes. Yes. The liking gap is that your brain assumes that everybody likes you less than they actually do. It's the saddest studies, honestly. The researchers go to college roommates and they ask, like, how much does your college roommate like you, you know?

1:08:12And what you find is that, like, all college roommates think the other roommate doesn't like them very much. And, you know, usually the roommate's like, no, they're great, or at least they're better than they expect. And so that one seems silly, but for me has been helpful, which is like if I'm about to ask somebody for help, if I'm about to, you know, contact somebody I haven't talked to in a while, if I'm about to even like chat with a stranger, you know, on the street or, you know, in a coffee shop or something like the whatever I'm predicting about how that reaction is going to go. I am underestimating how much liking I'm going to get back in return.

1:08:44Gretchen Rubin:Yeah, we think it's way that we're being really cringy when really actually people welcome these gestures. Exactly. And so that for me can help me do step one on the spiral, right? Often we just need to step out of one spiral and go to the other. So anything you can do to overcome that friction can be, at least for me, super helpful. Well, like I said, this was perfect timing for me. It's so helpful to talk to you on this day. It's always great to talk to both of you, but specifically today. I just want to remind people on the way out here, Laurie Santos hosts an excellent podcast called The Happiness Lab, and she teaches at Yale.

1:09:17And Gretchen, we discussed so many projects, so many tips today that overlap with the books she's written. Those books include The Happiness Project, Better Than Before, which is about habit formation, The Four Tendencies, which is related, Life in Five Senses. We talked about that. Secrets of Adulthood is her latest book. And she has her own podcast called Happier. Thank you both. Love seeing you both. Thank you.

1:09:39Gretchen Rubin:Thank you. This is such a wonderful conversation. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. One last thing before I let you go. If you want to listen to this show without ads, check out 10 % Happier Plus, which is a subscription that is available right inside Apple Podcasts. If you become a subscriber, you'll get every episode ad free. That's new episodes and all the episodes from our vast 10 year plus archive. Look for 10 % Happier Plus in Apple Podcasts and just hit subscribe. And a quick heads up, if you're already a subscriber to my app, 10 % with Dan Harris, you've already got access to ad-free podcasts.

1:10:16Ad-free listening is baked right into your app subscription along with everything else, so please don't pay twice. You can check out the app at danharris.com, and you can check out 10 % Happier Plus inside Apple Podcasts. Thank you very much for listening to the show. I deeply appreciate it. See you soon. Deuces. Thank you so much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. 10 % Happier is produced by Tara Anderson, Marissa Schneiderman, DJ Kashmir, David Hart, and Hayden Broom. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. And Nick Thorburn of the indie rock band Islands wrote our theme.

1:10:54Thanks for listening. Peace.

1:10:59Insurance is not one size fits all. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years now. With the Name Your Price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easier to see your options. Visit Progressive.com, find a rate that works for you with the Name Your Price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, price and coverage match limited by state law.

1:11:34Gretchen Rubin:Hey, Chicagoland, the Wayfair store is in your neighborhood at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Finally, you can feel the fabric, sit on the sectionals, and even open the refrigerators. Plus, our in-store designers will help you bring it all together with free one-on-one design support for any project on any budget. Yep, we said free. Oh, and did we mention the cafe? So what are you waiting for? Come see all that's in store. Visit the Wayfair store today at Edens Plaza and Wilmette. Wayfair, every style, every home