Habit

Lots of good reviews here so I'm missing something I guess. I thought it was babbling nonsense. ( )

I have decided that anything Gretchen Rubin writes is going to be great. The first book I read, "The Four Tendencies,"describes four distinct categories of people and how they react in certain situations. This book is a continuation of that, but based on who you are and how you react, it delves more deeply into discovering the ways to make positive change in your life by rewarding yourself in a way that works. I really enjoyed this book. There is so much to digest that it is really hard to try to read this in one sitting. I look forward to even more books by Gretchen. She has such a huge understanding on the types of people that I had never seen discussed elsewhere. ( )

This is not a book. This is a series of poor personal rants, or substandard blog posts at best.

The author is extremely lucky to have so many supportive people -judging by what she says in the book- in her life enabling her to publish such shallow, incoherent, and incomplete personal observations that can only apply to her own life, as if they were "revelations" that can be dropped on the masses to enlighten them!

The readers are not as lucky as the author though. How this book got any star ratings, in any factor or criteria a book can be rated in, higher than 2 stars is really beyond my comprehension.

I created a new shelf, "Won't continue reading", because of this book. ( )

I've read a bunch of books on habits, and I wasn't expecting to find anything new here. And indeed, there's nothing groundbreaking in this book. But the way Rubin explains how we create habits -- and more importantly, why some habits stick so easily while others don't -- really resonated with me. I appreciated her approach to categorizing different personality types and how she recognizes that what works for one person will not work for someone else. I think that's something many of these types of books tend to overlook, offering instead a prescriptive, "one size fits all" formula that leaves readers frustrated and wondering what's wrong with them.

Rubin allows us to take an individualized approach to habit setting. However, she does give her admittedly biased opinion on what habits are best to set (i.e. low carb eating) and how to go about it (i.e. abstaining). But even if you never intend to give up eating bread or never sipping from a glass of wine again, there's plenty here to appeal to anyone wanting to improve their day-to-day life. ( )