Gretchen Rubin Quotes

I think people are happier when they have structure, you know? You realize that as you get older. You have to have rituals and structure.

I keep telling people that the secret of their success is discovered in their daily agenda. What they do daily is going to determine their success.

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.

I have a wonderful husband, and we have had a great life.

I like to try to do a little work before I do anything in the morning, even if it's a paragraph.

I've always been a night person. There's a sense of virtue attached to getting up in the morning and doing things and starting the day, and I always felt bad for not being that person.

Anjana knew me inside out even before we got hitched, and now married life is blissful. We are very happy.

Discipline is not consistency, and the reason why I say that is - like, for an example, making prayer five times a day, that establishes routine and consistency. That I can do. And having certain fundamental consistencies in business, can do. But time management, outside of that, that's where that's a challenge.

I realize that in a happy life, making your bed should play a very small part, I don't know why this is so helpful to people getting started on a happiness project, but for some reason, making your bed - it's concrete, it's manageable. There's a big difference between having a bed that's unmade and a bed that's made. That little bit of outer order in people's lives seem to help them get started. So, that's a very small thing that you can do.

If you make exercise your hobby instead of your enemy it becomes your friend; it's the one thing that will never let you down. It will always be there for you and it will always make you better than you were before. Remember: every time you go to the gym, every time you put the right supplement in your mouth, you're better than you were ten minutes ago. [...] The irony is most people know what to do, they just don't do what they know.

Success is determined by your daily choices and habits

People, especially successful people, are habitual creatures. They're organized. This makes them productive - Gus Mitchell

The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.

If you're happy, that's probably the most important thing. Everyone probably has their own definition of success, for me it's happiness. Do I enjoy what I'm doing? Do I enjoy the people I'm with? Do I enjoy my life?

Routine is not a prison, but the way into freedom from time.

The number one resolution that people mention to me as something that's made them happier is - to my surprise - making the bed.

The one thing that's common to all successful people: They make a habit of doing things that unsuccessful people don't like to do.

We wish that we could take magic drugs, play around all day, read, and do nothing strenuous, and be the smartest, happiest people in the world. The truth is, it's all about sweat.

There is an advantage in having a routine and working with the same people when you can and in writing as a regular thing and filming as a regular thing. That routine pays off for you. You get a lot of productivity that way, rather than sitting around waiting for inspiration and waiting for the perfect thing to happen. I would be much less productive that way.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.

The best security for people's doing their duty is that they should not know anything else to do.

I thought it was interesting when [Bill Clinton] said, I married my best friend, because people are always asking, what is the nature of their marriage.

Married people dont look like they have bedrooms on their minds when they look at each other. In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both...Not both.

In marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people living together day in and day out in the same house.

I want to be married and I want to be away from people.