Gretchen Rubin

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Gretchen Rubin
Rubin at the 2014 Brooklyn Book Festival
Rubin at the 2014
Brooklyn Book Festival
BornGretchen Anne Craft
(1965-12-14) December 14, 1965 (age 58)
Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
OccupationAuthor
blogger
speaker
NationalityAmerican
Alma materYale University (BA, JD)
Notable worksThe Happiness Project
Better Than Before
The Four Tendencies
Spouse
Jamie Rubin
​
(m. 1994)​
Children2
RelativesElizabeth Craft (sister)
Website
Official website

Gretchen Craft Rubin (born December 14, 1965) is an American author, blogger and speaker.

Early life and education[edit]

Born Gretchen Anne Craft, Gretchen Rubin grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, where her father was a lawyer at the firm of Craft, Fridkin & Rhyne.[1] She attended The Pembroke Hill School.[2][3] She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University, was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal and won the Edgar M. Cullen Prize.[4]

Career[edit]

Law career[edit]

Rubin clerked for Judge Pierre N. Leval of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and then on the U.S. Supreme Court for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor from 1995 to 1996. After her clerkships, she served as a chief adviser to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt.[1][5] She has also been a lecturer at the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management.[6]

Writing career[edit]

Rubin is a writer on subjects of habits, happiness,[7] and human nature.[8] She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Better Than Before, Happier at Home, and The Happiness Project.[9] Rubin's books have sold more than two million print and online copies worldwide in over thirty languages.[10][11] On her daily blog, GretchenRubin.com, she reports on her adventures in pursuit of habits and happiness. On her weekly podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, she discusses good habits and happiness with her sister Elizabeth Craft, a Los Angeles-based television writer.[12][13][14] The podcast won the 2016 Academy of Podcasters award for best health and fitness podcast and was a finalist in 2017.[15][16] On August 10, 2003, Brian Lamb interviewed Rubin on the television show, Booknotes.

She is author of The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun.[17] On September 4, 2012, Rubin published the follow-up book Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life.[18] Her third book, Power Money Fame Sex: A User’s Guide, parodied self-help books by analyzing and exposing the techniques used to exploit those who strive for those worldly ambitions.[19][20]

Her book Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life recommends setting manageable goals, and breaking up tasks into small steps.[21][22][23][24] Her two biographies, Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill and Forty Ways to Look at JFK uses the "forty ways" structure to explore the complexities of these two great figures and to demonstrate the limits of biography.[25][26][27]

Her book, The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People's Lives Better, Too), was published on September 12, 2017.[28][29]

In 2017, Rubin helped create the "Joy Index," a list of the ten "most joyous" places to visit, based on several "happiness factors".[30]

In March 2019, she published a new book, Outer Order: Inner Calm, in which she continues to trace the connection between happiness and personal habits.[31]

In April 2023, she published a new book, Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World, in which she explored the influences of the five senses on well-being.

Personal life[edit]

Rubin lives on Manhattan's Upper East Side with her husband, James ("Jamie") Rubin (son of former Clinton-administration Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs CEO Robert Rubin),[32][33] a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and children.[3][34]

Writings[edit]

Books[edit]

  • Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill: A Brief Account of a Long Life. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003. ISBN 978-0-345-45047-0
  • Forty Ways to Look at JFK. New York: Ballantine Books, 2005. ISBN 978-0345450494
  • Power Money Fame Sex: A User's Guide. Atria, 2005. ISBN 978-0671041298
  • Profane Waste. Gregory R. Miller & Company, 2006. ISBN 978-0974364834
  • The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. New York, NY: Harper, 2009. ISBN 978-0-06-158325-4
  • Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life. New York, NY: Harper, 2012. ISBN 978-0307886781
  • Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits--to Sleep More, Quit Sugar, Procrastinate Less, and Generally Build a Happier Life. New York, NY: Crown, 2015. ISBN 978-0385348614
  • The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People's Lives Better, Too). New York, NY: Crown, 2017. ISBN 1524760919
  • Outer Order, Inner Calm. New York, NY: Harmony, 2019. ISBN 9781984822802[35]
  • Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World New York, NY: Crown, 2023. ISBN 978-0593442746

Articles[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Margolies, Dan (December 13, 1998). "His signature's on the buck, but did Rubin pay the tab?". Kansas City Business Journal. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  2. ^ "Watch Alumna's Hazard Lecture". Pembroke Hill School. October 2, 2014. Retrieved May 12, 2017.[permanent dead link]
  3. ^ a b Harrison Smith, Sarah (October 5, 2012). "Happiness Expert, Plying Her Craft". The New York Times.
  4. ^ "Class of 1989 15th Reunion". Yale University. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  5. ^ "Speech of Reed E. Hundt: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow". U.S. Federal Communications Commission. May 27, 1997. Retrieved October 3, 2017. Gretchen Rubin...as Legal Advisors, have served brilliantly and wonderfully
  6. ^ "Yale Bulletin and Calendar". Yale University. September 14, 2001. Retrieved October 3, 2017. Visiting lecturer at the Yale School of Management Gretchen Rubin
  7. ^ "Happiness in a Pandemic". Spark Podcast. August 19, 2020. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
  8. ^ Paumgarten, Nick (September 11, 2000). "Dept. of Self-Help Former Lives A Rubin's Guide to Getting it All". The New Yorker. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  9. ^ "100 Bestselling books of 2012". Toronto Star. December 28, 2012. Retrieved May 12, 2017. Special interest: rank number 11, Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin.
  10. ^ Koncius, Jura (July 11, 2016). "Find your inner calm by containing your clutter". Houston Chronicle. orig. Washington Post. Retrieved May 13, 2017.
  11. ^ Turnbull, Barbara (September 11, 2012). "Gretchen Rubin's top happiness tip". Toronto Star. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  12. ^ Larson, Sarah (August 17, 2015). "Better Living Through Podcasts". The New Yorker. Retrieved April 21, 2019.
  13. ^ Quah, Nicholas (August 15, 2018). "My Favorite Murder's Creators Are Launching a Podcast Network". Vulture.com. Retrieved August 18, 2018.
  14. ^ Schawbel, Dan (March 17, 2015). "Gretchen Rubin: How To Create Healthy Workplace Habits". Forbes. Retrieved October 15, 2015.
  15. ^ "Academy of Podcasters: Past Winners". Academy of Podcasters. Podcast Movement. Archived from the original on October 3, 2017.
  16. ^ "2017 Finalist". Academy of Podcasters. Podcast Movement. August 23, 2017. Archived from the original on February 5, 2019.
  17. ^ Fraser, Elizabeth (August 11, 2018). "WV Book Team: Finding your happy place through reading". Charleston Gazette-Mail. Retrieved August 18, 2018.
  18. ^ Zipp, Yvonne (October 19, 2012). "Looking for happiness at work, home and in life". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  19. ^ Wood, Thomas (September 2000). "Power Money Fame Sex: A User's Guide". Bookpage.com. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  20. ^ "Review: Power Money Fame Sex: A User's Guide". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  21. ^ Ko, Claudine (January 7, 2016). "How to actually keep those New Year's resolutions". New York Post. Retrieved June 17, 2017.
  22. ^ Nesdoly, Tracy (June 7, 2015). "Taking Gretchen Rubin's advice, it's never too late to know better: Nesdoly". Toronto Star. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  23. ^ Roberts, Genevieve (March 24, 2015). "Gretchen Rubin: In trying to tackle our bad habits, has the author developed some of her own?". The Independent (UK). Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  24. ^ Stevens, Heidi (March 9, 2015). "In 'Better Than Before,' Gretchen Rubin examines how habits shape our lives". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  25. ^ "Review: Forty Ways to Look at JFK". American Library Association. Booklist. October 1, 2005. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  26. ^ Rubin, Gretchen Craft (October 25, 2005). Forty Ways to Look at JFK-Hardcover. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0345450493.
  27. ^ Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill: A Brief Account of a Long Life. Random House. May 11, 2004. Retrieved May 12, 2017 – via Amazon.
  28. ^ Rubin, Gretchen (2017). The Four Tendencies. New York, NY: Penguin Random House. ISBN 978-1524760915. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
  29. ^ Saner, Emine (September 11, 2017). "Want to be happier? First, work out if you're an 'upholder' or a 'rebel'". The Guardian (UK). Retrieved October 4, 2017.
  30. ^ Sewing, Joy (June 23, 2017). "Houston named 10th most joyous place on Earth". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved October 8, 2017.
  31. ^ Lanks, Belinda (April 12, 2019). "Spring Books: Spring Cleaning Stay on top of things with helpful books from Mason Currey, Laura Vanderkam and Gretchen Rubin". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 21, 2019.
  32. ^ "ENGAGEMENTS; Gretchen Craft, James Rubin". The New York Times. November 7, 1993. Retrieved May 12, 2017.
  33. ^ "WEDDINGS - Gretchen A. Craft, James S. Rubin". The New York Times. September 4, 1994. Retrieved January 11, 2017.
  34. ^ Hoffman, Jan (February 26, 2010). "On Top of the Happiness Racket". The New York Times. Retrieved October 15, 2015.
  35. ^ Outer Order, Inner Calm at publisher's websight.

External links[edit]

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