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Hello and welcome to happier, a podcast where we talk about how to make our lives happier.
This week, we'll talk about why it can be helpful to go for the no, and we talk about the delight of a same day book and give some of our recommendations.
I'm Gretchen Rubin, a writer who studies happiness, good habits, human nature.
I'm in my little home office in New York City, and joining me today from Los Angeles is my sister, Elizabeth Kraft.
And Elizabeth.
This is reminding me that we need to figure out when we are going on our next reading retreat.
That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer living in L.A.
And yes Gretchen, I'll be making a note of books I haven't read that are same-day books for the reading retreat.
Absolutely.
But before we jump in, we got a few updates.
This comes from Anna.
Okay, and I'm going to mispronounce this word again.
I cannot get it right.
It's the Stumptisch.
Stumptisch.
Anyway, here it is.
I am a listener of the pod from Hamburg, Germany.
I loved hearing you guys talk about Stumptisch.
This really is a common social meeting in Germany.
My husband has a Stumptisch that has been going on for 15 years.
It started when he was in his master's program, amongst friends, and has carried on through all phases of everyone's life.
I started one a few years ago amongst my girlfriends, and it really does make me happier.
We now have three little kids, so our life looks very different from when we started our stumptish, but we both try and make our respective stumptish every month whenever possible.
No matter what phase of life we are in, it's always great to have a low-effort meeting with friends.
I also have to add that my jaw dropped hearing about Sarah's new substack.
I absolutely love roasting chicken and eating roasted chicken, so I'm excited to read about her journey with roasting chicken.
Okay, so Stammtisch, I just can't say it, but it's a great idea.
And yes, re-chickening out.
Sarah's very delightful.
I have to say I'm kind of amazed at how interesting she can make it, because there are a few things that I'm less interested in than comparing various recipes and approaches to roasting chicken.
And yet I'm like very excited for her to get her.
What is it her shears to do?
Her spatchcocking or whatever?
Yes, yes.
Yes, her chickening out Substack.
It's free to subscribe.
Go over to Substack.
Yeah.
Plus, if you are joining us for Move 26 in 26, but maybe you're feeling bored or disappointed with your movement of choice, I've partnered with All Healthy to create a winter bingo card that helps you think beyond traditional exercise.
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That's something I love to do.
Taking a new route.
Do your usual route in reverse, which is surprisingly strange to see your normal neighborhood going in reverse or parking farther away from your destination.
Just these little things that make it easier to get to the 26 minutes a day that we are going for.
You can get the bingo card at happiercast.com slash winter bingo.
Liz, how's it going for you?
It's going well, Gretchen.
I'm getting many days, my 26 on the treadmill desk, as I said I would.
So that feels good.
But I love a bingo card.
I love to gamify.
Love to gamify.
So this week, our Try This at Home suggestion is to go for the no.
So that's intriguing.
I love a good phrase.
What does it mean?
Okay.
So you know, it's very easy to get very focused on success and accomplishment and to really try to avoid rejection and failure.
But one of my secrets of adulthood is the more trial, the more error, and the more accomplishment.
And the idea of going for a no is that you don't see error, rejection, and failure as bad.
You see them, oh, this is part of success.
This is part of what I'm doing to get to where I want to go, which it is.
And originally when I was thinking about this, I thought, oh, well, this is to set a failure goal.
So like you make a goal of the failures.
But Alyssa, you and I love a rhyme.
And so go for the no just seemed more fun.
And it's a reframing.
A no is a success.
A no is a success.
Yeah, you can succeed by failing.
That's another one of my secrets of adulthood.
And there's actually really interesting research behind the suggestion.
Dr. Joel Lebon is a marketing and sales professor at Johns Hopkins Business School.
And he talks about this in the context of a sales strategy where you focus on targets for rejection, not solely on success.
Because the theory is this helps people to stay resilient, keep up their motivation, increase their overall confidence.
Performance because you remove the stigma of failure.
You don't feel conservative.
You don't hold back if you're worried about failing, because you're like well, I succeed by failing too.
And there is a lot of research showing that encouraging somebody to go for a no to overcome the fear of rejection really does help people to be in a frame of mind where they're more open to trying.
And the more you try, the more you succeed.
This makes me think of a couple of things.
I remember once Adam and I were at a school in LA and their motto was the freedom to fail, which I thought was a cool motto.
Yeah.
But it also reminds me of Jenna Fisher's book.
So I remember Jenna Fisher played Pam in your favorite show, The Office.
Yes on, you know, moving to LA and how, what to do to be an actor.
And she had this thing that was 49 no's to a yes.
So she just told herself you have to get 49 no's.
So you might as well start stacking up the no's yes, because the sooner you're stacking up your no's right, the sooner you're gonna get to the yes Right, exactly.
Well, this way you get credit for the no.
So you get that feeling of sort of gain and positive action that is so satisfying and really helps you keep up the energy to keep going.
You feel like, oh, defeated.
You're like, oh, I'm not defeated.
I'm just closer to my 49.
Yes.
And Gretch, you're keeping track of your unfinished books. on this theory.
Right.
And this is what I realized.
So every month I post a photo of all the books that I have finished in that month.
I just get a lot of pleasure out of doing this.
And you know, I've been really trying to work on not finishing books that I don't enjoy.
And so I was thinking like, well, why is it that I do finish books that I don't enjoy?
And I realized that part of it is that I wanted credit for them.
I'm like, well, I'm halfway through this book.
If I finish it, I can put it in my stack and I sort of get credit for reading it.
But if I don't finish it, it doesn't go in the stack.
And I think that was pushing me to finish because I wanted that gold star, that checkmark.
And so now I'm thinking I should also keep track of the books that I don't finish, give myself credit for the books that I don't finish, because this really is an aim of mine.
My aim is to stop reading more books and so that I have more time to read the books I want, I need to give myself sort of a credit for it to be the counterbalance to the credit that I get for the books that I do finish.
Yes.
And I know we heard from a listener who does that and that helped her stop reading books.
Yeah.
My question is, would you take a photo of unfinished books to give yourself a credit?
I might take a picture of it, but I wouldn't post a picture of it because...
Because I post the picture and tell people what books that I read.
Because I love to shine a spotlight on books.
And I know a lot of people get ideas from reading from me and from other people.
And, just as a writer myself, it's bad karma to shine a spotlight on a book and say like oh, I didn't like it and I didn't finish it.
Because a lot of books I don't like, other people love.
Like, that's why I'm reading them is because somebody's recommended it to me.
So I wouldn't do that because of karma, but it's maybe a good idea, just in order to feel like both of these things are of equivalent weight.
Whether I finish them or whether I don't finish them, I still get that feeling of okay, you did what you set out to do, one way or the other.
Yeah, I hear you on that.
Well, let us know if you do try this at home and how deciding to go for the no works for you.
Let us know on Instagram threads, TikTok, Facebook.
Drop us an email at podcast at GretchenRubin.com.
As always, you can go to the show notes.
This is happiercast.com slash 573 for everything related to this episode.
I will be so curious to hear how people incorporate this into different contexts like reading and acting.
They seem very different, but it's actually the same strategy.
So let us know.
Coming up, we've got what I would call a digital hack.
But first, this break.
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Gretch, it's a new year and we're all focused on well-being and improving ourselves on our wellness journeys.
And what better way to improve our lives than to listen to an audiobook?
You know, I am absolutely in love with Audible and with audiobooks.
You'll be happy to know that the audiobook I am listening to right now was written by you, Gretchen.
Your book Get It Done about how to get a big project done.
Not surprisingly, I need help in that arena of my life.
And I love just listening to you reading your audio book.
Yeah.
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All right, Gretch, we're back with this week's happiness hack, and this comes from our mom.
Yes, okay.
So this was something that I knew how to do, but I forgot about using it as a tool.
And this is so basic that so many people their eyeballs will just be rolling out of their head because this is so basic.
But I just didn't do it which is in Outlook in my emails to make folders for things related to like oh you're taking a trip online or you've got some household issue.
That's requiring a lot of back and forth.
You can just put all those emails in a folder so they're easy to access.
And I am somebody who really uses email, and I use it as my to-do list.
I will email myself things to remind myself to do it.
I'll leave emails in my inbox as prompts to remind me that something has to happen.
So my email can get really junked up, but it's not junked up.
It's all valuable stuff, but it can get jumbled.
It can get jumbled and overwhelming.
It can be hard to find what I'm looking for, especially if there's been you're planning something.
And so like there's five different people involved.
Anyway, this is just really, really helpful.
And I've used it three times already.
And I'm sort of like, why have I not been doing this for 20 years?
Because I knew how to do it.
I just forgot that it was a useful tool.
Well, it reminds me recently on Happier in Hollywood, Sarah and I had a hack to schedule a text.
Yes.
Which we didn't know you could do, which again, great tool.
But listen, we talked about it on Happier, I think.
Did we?
Because I discovered that.
I think so.
It's one of those things if you hear about it, but you don't do it a couple of times yourself.
Yes.
You just forget that it's a possibility.
That's what happened with me with the folders.
If you had said, is this possible?
I would have been like, oh yeah, I think there is an easy way to do that.
But you just don't reach for it as a tool.
Yes, I had no memory of that.
Usually I remember things we talk about.
Well, you do.
So the fact is, maybe I put it in my Five Things newsletter or something, because you do have a very you have a steel trap memory for what we've talked about.
So maybe we didn't.
But anyway, it is super useful.
I use it all the time.
Okay, Gretch, it is time for a listener question.
Now, this is such a happy question.
So Jackie writes inspired by your recent reading retreat, my friend and I are planning one in summer 2026.
I'd love to see suggestions from both of you and listeners as to the same day books to bring with us.
Thank you.
Okay Elizabeth, for people who don't know what a same day book is, even though it's kind of obvious what is the same day book?
Yes.
That is a book that you can start and finish in the same day.
Now, I kind of categorize these two ways, Gretch.
Okay.
There are some books that are just shorter and therefore easier to finish in one day.
And then there are books that you just can't put down.
Yeah.
And so they become same day books, because you are just devouring them or you stay up till 2 am to finish them.
Yes.
Or they could be both.
Not mutually exclusive.
Yes.
There is something special about reading a book in one day.
It's just there is a special delight in that.
So I love the idea of sort of really leaning into this for a reading retreat.
They're also good like if you have a long flight.
I love when I start and finish a book like on a flight.
Yes.
Here is the thing that is bonkers to me, Elizabeth.
OK, this is a fact that truly astonished me.
And I consider myself like a super enthusiastic reader.
This is what astonished me.
Turns out the average reader can read 50,000 words in about three and a half hours.
And that means you can get up, have breakfast, go for a walk read for an hour and 45 minutes, take a short nap, have lunch read for an hour and 45 minutes and you are done with a 50000 word novel.
Now, that is a short novel, but it's not even a novella which is technically, like I think goes to like 40000 words.
So interesting.
I just thought it took a lot longer to read a book.
I think if you just sit down and read a book, you're surprised by how much you can get read.
Yeah.
Because a lot of times we're reading in like 20 minute, 30 minute things and maybe it stretches out over days.
So you feel like, oh, it takes weeks to finish a book.
But it's like not if you sat down.
So there might be a lot more same day books than you think.
Yes.
If you just sat down and read them in one day.
Yes.
If you were on a reading retreat where your whole point of being is to read.
Yes.
So make sure you bring enough books.
Yes.
But this is something you and I considered with the reading retreat.
I mean, I think we both wanted to make sure we finished a book, ideally in a day, but at least, like I, didn't want to bring a huge 1500 page book and only get through part of it during our reading retreat.
I wanted that satisfaction.
We did that, but I also brought a very demanding book.
That I thought because I love Iris Murdoch but her novels are pretty demanding in terms of like you really have to pay attention and they're long.
So I did bring one, Iris Murdoch, because I thought well, this will be good, because I can really concentrate and really read it.
So you could have different philosophies about the kind of book that you wanted to bring.
But yeah, we did take special pleasure in bringing those same day books.
You weren't necessarily sure you would read it in one day and you did.
On our reading retreat, I read James by Percival Everett in one day.
And that was a case where it was just super entertaining.
Once I started reading it, I just kind of whipped through it.
Yeah.
And it was very satisfying.
And it's a great book.
I mean, it's won all sorts of awards.
So it both was entertaining and great literature.
Right.
Okay.
So Jackie asked for some suggestions.
So let's throw out some suggestions.
But listeners, we want to hear from you because I think this is such a great category.
I will go first with the book that I am absolutely recommending to every single person.
It's barely a novella.
It's like a short story but you will feel like you read a whole novel because it is so good and so dense and so surprising.
And that is The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt.
I don't want to say a thing about this book, because part of what's fun is navigating the book itself.
And if I described it, it wouldn't sound as good as it is.
Just take my word for it.
Everybody I've recommended it to has loved it.
Yeah.
And then there's Claire Keegan's Foster, which our mom was absolutely obsessed with.
It's a beautiful story set in Ireland about a girl.
And it is a novella, I believe.
Yes.
Yes.
And again, it's like great literature and also a page turner and a same day book.
Okay, a book that I will say not everybody loves.
Elizabeth, you do not love this book, but I have to mention it because I've read it like 15 times and I love it.
It is The Prime of Miss Jean Brody by Muriel Spark.
And I would say if you're a fan of Muriel Spark or if you love sort of character development, if that's what really draws you to a novel is like an interesting character and seeing like characters change over time.
And it's about a charismatic teacher and her set, the Brody set of her pupils.
I love it.
But it's not for everyone.
Gretchen, this book is perfect for a reading retreat.
Heartburn by Nora Ephron.
So good.
Yeah, it's based on Nora Ephron's true story.
In the movie, it's Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.
And it is just an entertaining, gripping tale of marriage.
Well, yeah, it's a hilarious divorce book, which you don't think you could pull off, but she does.
If you are into science fiction and I am talking, it's science fiction where there are talking spaceships and there are AI-powered androids and you know it's deep science fiction, but it's also hilarious and heartwarming.
I cannot recommend highly enough Martha Wells.
These are the Murderbot books.
The first one is called All Systems Red.
I just whipped through them.
They're so good.
I haven't watched the TV show, but love All Systems Red.
Gretchen, I'm going to also recommend Happy All the Time by Lori Colvin, which is a book you love.
I know you, I think, sent it to me once is how I got to know it.
But Lori Colvin is a delightful writer.
Yes.
And Happy All the Time is a delightful book if you want something to make you smile.
Yeah, it's like young romance.
But all of Lori Colvin's books are good and probably all of them are same day books.
She's that kind of writer.
In another category of books that are deep and compelling and haunting and fantastic, that I've read a million times, that you could easily read in a day but is not for everyone, I would say Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor.
And it's funny, Elizabeth, I was talking to mom asking for her ideas.
And I mentioned this one and she goes, what's, I don't know that I've read Wise Blood.
I'm like, it's Flannery O'Connor.
She goes, oh, that's all you have to say.
Because people hear Flannery O'Connor and they're like you either want to be reading a Flannery O'Connor book or it's not to your taste.
So I love Flannery O'Connor and this is my favorite of all her books.
I think I read it decades ago.
Yeah.
I don't remember anything.
Oh my gosh.
That gives me chills just thinking about it.
I want to go reread it right this second.
It's so good.
And then, Gretch, here's a book that's just out very recently, Half His Age by Jeanette McCurdy.
It's an extremely quick read.
It's not for everyone because it's about a student having a relationship with her teacher.
But it is very good.
I read her memoir, so I saw she had a novel.
Excellent.
There's a really beautiful sort of odd book called The Summer Book by Tove Janssen.
That's the person who wrote the Moomin books, if you're a fan of Moomin.
But this is like, it's a beautiful story.
There's a grandmother.
It feels very northern.
It's a quiet book.
It's a very interesting book.
It would be really good for a summer retreat.
And sort of along the same lines is a book that I absolutely love by Elizabeth von Arnhem.
Elizabeth and Her German Garden.
I love all of Elizabeth von Arnhem.
I would say The Enchanted April is maybe the more perfectly crafted novel.
You could also read that in a day.
There's something kind of oddball about Elizabeth and her German garden, but that just makes me like it even more.
But they're like beautiful, wonderful Paige Turner books.
Elizabeth Strout's O. William Gretchen, I think, is definitely a same-day book.
We've talked to her on the podcast.
She's such a great writer very spare, so you really can quickly read, but it's high literature for sure.
And O. William is a great story set in New York and very compelling.
Yes, yes, absolutely.
If you want to go more the novella route, there is a book called Different Seasons by the master of the page turner, Stephen King.
It's four stories, all of which are fantastic.
Some of them have different titles, but they were the inspirations for the movies Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption.
They're like very, very long, short stories.
They're published in the collection Different Seasons.
And they're sort of more literary than the horror series.
So if you're not like that into the horror, this is that aspect of Stephen King's writing.
Now Gretch, I'm going to go back a ways here and recommend The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger.
Yeah.
I remember going to Hawaii with Sarah in, I think, like 2002.
Wow.
And taking The Devil Wears Prada...
And I did nothing the entire day but read The Devil Wears Prada.
I think maybe we even got room service.
And I mention it especially now Gretchen, because they're coming out with a sequel to the movie Devil Wears Prada.
So everyone's excited about that.
Yeah.
So go back and read the original.
There is a book called A Month in the Country by J.L.
Carr.
And I found this book because they talked about it on one of my very favorite podcasts Backlisted, which is a podcast where they talk about backlist books, or books that have sort of were written a long time ago but that are really worth our attention.
And when they started, I mean, there are hundreds of episodes into it now.
I think I've listened to every one.
But the very first book they chose was A Month in the Country.
And what they said at the time was because both of these hosts work in book publishing in one way or another.
And they said whenever somebody says, you know what?
I've really fallen out of the habit of reading.
I really want to re-engage with reading.
Do you have a book recommendation for me?
They always say A month in the country because they're like it's a short book but it's such a good book.
And it gets you back into that feeling of such a pleasure to read.
And they're like, everybody likes it.
And it's about a man.
It's after World War One.
And he goes back and spends a month reading out in the countryside as he's restoring a fresco or doing research on a fresco that's in a local church.
And it's just how he sort of embeds himself in the community there.
And it's just a really wonderful book.
And then, Gretch, Piranesi is one of your favorites.
I love, love, love Piranesi.
Now, Piranesi is interesting because it is short.
You could read it in a day.
This is a book that you really need to read every word, because it's like it's full of twists and surprises.
This is kind of a fantasy book.
I don't want to say too much, because part of the pleasure of this book is getting oriented in what is happening.
And I feel like anything that I say could take away some of the surprise for people.
It is that thing, though.
If you're like, oh, I never like a fantasy, then you might not like this.
It's not like there's dragons, but there is a fantastical element to it which just made me love it more.
It's by Susanna Clark, who wrote Mr. Strange and Dr. Norell or Dr. Strange and Mr. Norell.
I can never get it right, which I read years ago and have been meaning to reread.
That's extremely long.
This one is very short.
It's delightful. good.
Our mother loves to read.
She loves a same day book.
And she had two suggestions of books that I have not read.
One was Trained Dreams by Dennis Johnson.
And Alyssa, I want to buy it, but I can't.
So I'm going to check it out in the library.
It looks really good.
Yeah.
Mom and I watched the movie when I was home.
It's nominated.
Oh, I didn't know it was a movie.
Yes.
Oh, okay.
And then this is sort of an odd choice for a summer reading retreat, but she suggested A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, which I really want to read.
I think I read it so long ago, but I looked it up and there's an anniversary edition with illustrations by one of my very favorite illustrators, Trina Schardt-Hyman.
So that will be a little retreat for me to get at the end of February because I feel like, oh my gosh, I really want to have that, because I love her illustrations so much.
Well and Gretch, we should mention that children's literature is a great way to do same-day books, young adult books or children's books.
Because these can be towering classics of world literature.
So good.
And yet often they are shorter and you can whip through them.
So a book like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or Charlotte's Web, or Tuck Everlasting or Walk Two Moons or Graceling,
These are books that are so, so good.
And if you haven't read them as an adult, or if you've never read them, you should run, not walk.
You could also go for something like The Hunger Games.
So good.
Golden Compass.
These are amazing, amazing books.
And if you haven't read them, or you haven't read them as an adult, you can experience them in a whole new way.
So hit us up with your suggestions because this is a lovely category.
I didn't really think of this as like a category of book.
It's an excellent.
It would be great to go into a bookstore and just see same day books, memoirs, nonfiction, novels.
That would be a great category, like a great table for a bookstore.
It also might be nice if people think of it to sort of say what kind of book it is.
Like, is it a beach read?
Is it high literature?
Is it a mystery?
Might be helpful to categorize.
Yes, because it might be fun, like on your reading retreat, to say like OK, I want one that's like a beach read.
I want one that's sort of high literature.
And then I want one that's a mystery or something like that which reminds me I just read A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie, which I got as a recommendation from another one of my favorite podcasts, The Secret Life of Books.
That's definitely the same day book.
All right, Gretch, coming up, you have a winter demerit, but first a spring.
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OK, we are back with demerits and gold stars.
And Gretchen, this demerit surprises me from you.
It kind of surprises me, too, I have to say.
So we've been going through an extremely cold period here in New York City, like historic lows, and for a really long time.
I haven't been dressing for the cold and I have everything I need.
I have long underwear.
I have snow pants.
I have wind pants.
I have fleece pants.
I have long underwear tops.
I have warm sweaters.
I know about the value of layering.
So, of course, like I wear my scarf and my heaviest coat and a hat, but...
Every day it's kind of like, huh, wow, it's just so incredibly cold.
Instead of saying, okay, yeah, deal with it.
Like, really wear the clothes that you need so that when I'm out there walking a dog or walking somewhere because you know you walk so much in New York City you really notice it if it's bitterly cold.
By giving myself this demerit.
I'm going to just say I'm going to pull out the stuff that I need and really commit to putting it on, and I'll be so much more comfortable.
Yeah, because Gretchen, I think of you as a long underwear person.
You're one of the few people I know who regularly wears long underwear as part of your wardrobe.
But see, I kind of forgot that about myself.
I should just wear it every single day.
Why wouldn't I?
Right.
Because rarely are you too warm.
No, I'm rarely too warm.
Or like wearing cotton socks.
I was just wearing cotton socks, wearing cotton socks.
And finally, I'm like, you know, I was in when I was in Iceland, I was wearing wool socks every day.
It's colder here than it was in Iceland.
So why am I not wearing the wool socks?
So it was just sort of some lagging mental framework.
I think I just kind of hadn't said to myself, OK, this is deep.
We're at the height of winter.
Yeah.
It is very cold and it will be very cold.
Just put on the long underwear every single day.
Put on the wool socks.
Pull on the wind pants if I'm going to go out for the evening walk with a dog.
But Alyssa, you know how it is with demerits.
You give yourself a demerit and then you do a better job.
So this is a good demerit for me.
I'll be much better going forward.
And how about a gold star?
What is your gold star?
Well Gretchen, I'm giving a gold star to mom and me because I went to Kansas City for a few days and we did so many errands.
We were like on a mission to do as many errands as we could.
You did so many errands.
I have to say I was astounded by how much you got done in one day.
Three days in a row.
Yeah.
And the nice thing is we also had fun things we did.
Like we went out to eat.
We met friends.
We went to a couple of stores that I really wanted to go to.
So it was like we had a mix of chores and fun stuff.
And it was really cold there.
It was like six degrees, 15 degrees.
But we just kept going.
We got a ton done and we enjoyed ourselves.
So I'm giving us a gold star.
Well, so let me ask you this.
Did you deliberately say let's keep this fun by mixing in fun lunch dates and like oh, we'll go to this place you've been wanting to go to try?
Or did that just sort of evolve naturally?
It just evolved naturally, at least not consciously.
I don't think we were trying to do that, but it just did work out that way, which maybe that's a hack, because it is really helpful if you intersperse Doing something you really want to do with things that are more, you know, just boring, or chores like going to a fun new stationery shop or a lunch that at a place you know you love, things like that.
Right.
So you don't just look at the schedule and just sort of your heart sinks deeper and deeper with every item on it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, well, gold star to both of you.
Yes, you were telling me what you're doing every day and I was texting the gold stars to you in the text chain.
Yeah.
The resource for this week.
If you like this episode, if you like this podcast, you might enjoy my weekly newsletter called Five Things Making Me Happy.
It's free.
And every Friday I share a short roundup of five things that are making me happier.
Last year, I added a new reader favorite newsletter, which is called Five Things to Try.
And so this is a monthly newsletter that features practical ideas for happier healthier, more productive and more creative lives.
It's sort of the most distilled thinking in one place.
You can subscribe to the Five Things newsletters at happiercast.com slash newsletter.
And, Elizabeth, what are we reading?
You are reading a book that is, I dare say, not a same-day book.
Yes, I am catching up on Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
And I'm reading Random Harvest by James Hilton.
And that's it for this episode of Happier.
Remember to try this at home.
Go for the no.
Let us know if you tried it and if it worked for you.
Thank you to our executive producer, Chuck Reed, and everyone at Lemonada.
If you haven't subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet, now is the perfect time.
You can listen ad-free.
Just tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or go to LemonadaPremium.com.
And here's your rhyming reminder.
Go for the no and love the show.
Leave a review to let us know.
Until next week, I'm Elizabeth Craft.
And I'm Gretchen Rubin.
Thanks for joining us Onward and Upward.
Oh listen, you know, here's a drive-by hack that I should have mentioned, which is, you know, related to how long it takes to read a 50000 word book.
I think if there's something that you need to do, actually time how long it takes you to do it.
Because I used to think it took me like 45 minutes to take a shower and dry my hair.
And so I would just think, oh my gosh, it's going to be like an hour doing that.
And then when I actually timed it, it was so much less time.
It's just a good thing to do.
Yes.
And also for the opposite.
Sometimes things take longer than you think they take.
And so it's good to know that, too.
Yeah.
Like how long does it take to drive to the airport or something?
You want to have an accurate sense.
Yeah.
From the Onward Project.
Hi, Gretchen, Craig Robinson, and my little sister Michelle here.
We host a new podcast called IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.
We know you're the queen of giving advice, so we wanted to get a few tips from you.
You know, Gretchen, a lot of our listeners are going through some major life changes.
What advice do you have for folks who are trying to stay grounded in the midst of major life transitions?
Craig and Michelle, I am so happy to be talking to you.
Here are a few questions that might help us gain perspective.
So consider questions like this.
What activities take up my time but are not particularly useful or stimulating for me?
Do I spend a lot of time on something that's important to someone else but is not very important to me?
If I could magically change one habit in my life, what would I choose?
And here's a question.
Would I like to have more time in solitude restorative solitude or would I like to have more time with friends?
You know, just thinking about questions like this can help us start to figure out how we might make our lives happier.
With greater self-knowledge, we're better able to make hard decisions that reflect ourselves, our own nature, our own interests, our own values.
In my own case, I have found that the more my life reflects my nature, the happier I get and the more grounded I feel when I'm going through a period of major change or transition.
For more great advice, search for IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson wherever you get podcasts.
You can listen to Issa Rae on letting go of certain friendships, Kiki Palmer on why disappointment is actually the key to career success, Seth and Lauren Rogan on caring for aging parents, and so many more.
