Little Happier: Habits Are the Invisible Architecture of Everyday Life

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project

Education, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

4.7 • 13K Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2020

⏱️ 2 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A passage from Christopher Alexander’s beautiful book The Timeless Way of Building is a good reminder of the importance of having habits that make our lives happier. Get in touch: @gretchenrubin; [email protected] Get in touch on Instagram: @GretchenRubin Get the podcast show notes by email every week here: http://gretchenrubin.com/#newsletter Order a copy of Gretchen’s new book OUTER ORDER, INNER CALM here: http://outerorderinnercalmbook.com Leave a voicemail message on: 774-277-9336 For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to happiercast.com/sponsors. Happier with Gretchen Rubin is part of ‘The Onward Project,’ a family of podcasts brought together by Gretchen Rubin—all about how to make your life better. Check out the other Onward Project podcasts—Do The Thing, Side Hustle School, Happier in Hollywood and Everything Happens with Kate Bowler. If you liked this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and tell your friends! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.
0:03.0	I write a lot about habits.
0:06.0	Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life, and about 40% of what we do each day
0:11.0	is shaped by habits.
0:12.0	For this reason, I've always been struck by this observation made by architect and design
0:18.0	theorist Christopher Alexander.
0:20.0	I really love Alexander's writing.
0:22.0	His book, A Pattern Language, is the book that I most often give as a gift, and I also love his
0:27.0	four-volume collection called The Nature of Order.
0:30.0	In his book, The Timeless Way of Building, he makes an observation about daily habits
0:36.0	and daily life that I think is very important to remember.
0:39.0	He writes,
0:40.0	If I consider my life honestly, I see that it is governed by a certain very small number
0:47.0	of patterns of events which I take part in over and over again.
0:51.0	Being in bed, having a shower, having breakfast in the kitchen, sitting in my study writing,
0:56.0	walking in the garden, cooking and eating our common lunch at my office with my friends,
1:01.0	going to the movies, taking my family to eat at a restaurant, going to bed again.
1:05.0	There are a few more.
1:07.0	There are surprisingly few of these patterns of events in any one person's way of life,
1:11.0	perhaps no more than it doesn't.
1:14.0	Look at your own life and you will find the same.
1:16.0	It is shocking at first to see that there are so few patterns of events open to me,
	...

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