I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier. I love secrets of adulthood,

when a big idea can be summarized in a phrase or sentence.

Because of something called the fluency heuristic, it turns out that if it's easier to say or

think something, it seems more valuable. And that affects the secrets of adulthood.

For instance, an idea that's expressed in a rhyming phrase seems more convincing than the same idea

paraphrased in a non rhyming phrase. So you get what you get and you don't get upset.

It's much more convincing that take what's given to you without a bus.

And anytime something is expressed in a particularly succinct and powerful way,

it has more power in our minds. And I recently encountered an example of this.

My daughter Eleanor often gives me a sort of student review of her teachers and her teaching styles.

She does this without whining or complaining, but making constructive observations about what she

thinks is and isn't working. In fact, I've often suggested to her over the years that she write

a kind of student's guide to teaching more effectively, because her observation seems so helpful

to me. She shows absolutely no interest in doing this. But anyway, she's been making these

observations ever since she was very young. And I remember that when she was really young,

she told me how it bothered her about one of her teachers that that teacher has favorites.

When she told me that, my response was something that perhaps was not admirable, but I think

understandable and apparent. I said, well, how does the teacher feel about you? And she said,

I'm one of her favorites. But still, that makes me like her less. Because maybe I'm a favorite now.

But the fact that I'm a favorite now means that I could not be a favorite.

At the time, I remember being impressed that such a young child could understand this fact about

the way the world works. As it happens just recently, my father was telling me a story about

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