EntreLeadership - #101: Gretchen Rubin–Breaking Bad Habits

Episode Date: June 29, 2015

Want to transform your life and accomplish more? Best-selling author Gretchen Rubin joins the podcast this week to show you how to break bad habits and create good ones that will last. This is a life changer. Don’t miss it.    Goal Tracker Tool   entreleadership.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New York Tye's bestselling author Gretchen Rubin stops by to talk about her new book better than before. And our Ramsey personality, Christy Wright, joins me in studio. Plus so much more. It all starts right now. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman.

We are coming to you from the Music City. This is the podcast of Leaders, by Leaders, and Four Leaders. excited to have Christy Wright in with me today. Back from maternity leave, back on the road, doing all things. Christy Wright, what does that look like right now? I tell you what, it's crazy. You take three months off and the work does not stop, so it's been nonstop, but I love it. I love being back.

All right, Carter, little man, is how old now? Four months. Four months. He's huge. Yeah, big kid. He's in the 95th percentile. He's going to be an athlete. Are you getting some sleep?

Yes, he's good now. We're on a great schedule, knock on wood. So I'm coming to work, rested, but still get. to enjoy him in his awake time, so it's fun. This is fun. And so here we are summer months, but we've got a great fall schedule. You'll be out there on the road. We'll talk a little bit about that later.

But this is fun for us, and I'm really glad to have you in the studio on this because Gretchen Rubin, we're both big fans. You love her first book, which was a wild success. Talk a little bit about why you like her work so much. Well, I think it's so applicable to anyone in any stage of life. So the Happiness Project was so practical. She has great research, but it's just real life stuff we all deal with. So you're reading it.

And page after page, you're going, Me too, me too, me too, I deal with that. And so I love all of her writing and everything that's kind of in her wheelhouse and I write on similar things. So I really learn a lot from her as well. Well, you're a personal growth junkie. I mean, that's fair. And I am as well. And you're so passionate about what proper balance looks like. You really define that well. So when you see this new book better than before, and I love the subtitle, mastering the habits of our everyday lives. Yes. That everyday lives part makes it very tangible. What I love about this is that it is a Research-based book. It really hits us where we are. When you see a book like this come out,

how do you process this, rather, in your own way? What's your Christy Wright personal funnel for growing on this? Well, I think for me, what's so great about writing on these similar subjects is that it's such great accountability for me in my own life and balance and time management and relationships and personal growth. And this book specifically, you know, we think that our life is made up of these big grand decisions, where we go to school, when we start a family. It's really just the everyday habits. It's just what she talks about in this book. Your life is made up of what you do every day.

And so I love that she digs into that because we can change that. And then it changes our life. All right, so we've got to talk habits. Yes. Let's have some fun. Let's put you on the spot. Okay. And you can put me on the spot.

Okay. All right. So here we go, just for fun. What's a habit that you really struggled to either get rid of or to implement? So a struggle. I'm looking for a struggle story. Meaning it could have been something it took you forever to make a good habit. stick or something that took you forever to kill. Okay, I'll tell you, I am a creative person.

Yeah. And so follow through is hard for me. Oh, hello. Anything on projects at work or projects at home or projects anywhere, I have no shortage of ideas, but man, I have started 15 ideas and I don't finish one. Right. And so having the habit of follow through because I'm such a high D, high eye, no C, no C at all. She's reading my mail too. It's difficult. The follow through is tough. So having accountability and systems in place and habits in place that make me feel. finish things is really important. That's so good. What's yours? Let's have it. Oh my gosh. You know, for the longest time, developing a good habit of sleep. Oh, okay. Naturally a late night hawk. Me too. Okay. So really function better later at night,

thus not naturally a great personality in the morning. Right. You know, it's not my sweet moment, you know. And so for years, you know, after adult, now college doesn't count, but into adulthood, really developing good rest habits to where you're not going to bed super late, but you still got to get up and go to work. You've got to be a responsible adult, which at least I was that. Right. But just learning how to sleep well, things that I would do before going to bed, it really was a big change about five years ago.

Kids helped. But it took me a while to develop good habits for being able to rest well. Well, and I think it's hard if you don't value sleep. I don't value that much. I'm just like, well, if I need to make two more hours in the day, I'll stay up two hours later. That was one deal. just cut into the muscle. I didn't want to stop having fun. Right. We got too much to do. Yeah. Before kids, it was not unlike me to come home from work, have dinner with Stacy, whatever,

and then play Tiger Woods when I was in my early 20s for four hours. Okay. Just obnoxious. I said, go to bed. Sure. And you don't want to go to bed. And then seeing how that affected me. It's tough stuff. It affected everything. Eating habits, all that stuff. So there you go. Fun stuff. All right, hey, let's get right to this. And by the way, stay tuned because Christy's got some takeaways after hearing this conversation. She's really going to read your mail. This woman is a phenomenal communicator. It's such a treat to have her in with us.

So get your notebooks out, not just for the conversation with Gretchen, but we're going to have some great takeaways. And when we come back from the conversation, I'm going to tell you about our goal tracker. We have mentioned this in our last podcast. We want to make sure you get this free resource. So that's coming to you as well. But right now, let's get right to our conversation with Gretchen Rubin on her brand new book, better than before. Well, Gretchen, I want to focus on a phrase that you use around habits. and I think it's a wonderful framework for why you wrote this book. You say that habits are the

invisible architecture of our everyday lives. That is a wonderful word picture and words matter so much, and you believe that as well. What does that actually look like? What does that invisible architecture look like when it shapes us every day? Well, absolutely. I mean, habits research suggests make up about 40% of everyday life. And what that means is that if, we have habits that work for us, it's going to be a lot easier for us to be happier, healthier, and more productive. And if our habits don't work for us, that's just going to be a much bigger challenge because they just do make up so much of what we do every day.

And so if you're trying to get better than before, do something better, working on your habits is a really good way to start because it's freeing and energizing because you're not making decisions, you're not using willpower, and yet it does infiltrate every part of what you're doing. I love this book because it's very practical, but it's based on actual studies. And that's what I find to be so fascinated about this. So before we dive deeper into the conversation, would you give us a summary of how you set up this research, which then led to the book? I was just absolutely fascinated by the subject of habits, but I became increasingly frustrated because there were all these questions about habits that I didn't see being addressed. Like,

there's this unspoken assumption that we all have the same aptitude for farming habits, and we all have the same aptitude, attitude, toward habits. So if it works for you, it's going to work for me just as well, or if it works for Steve Jobs, or if it works for Benjamin Franklin, it'll work for me. And that seemed to me clearly not true. You know, sometimes we change habits overnight, and sometimes we don't, it seems like no matter how much we want to, we can't change a habit. And so what I did was I tried to look at everything I possibly could that touched on habits,

whether it was directly about habits or about something very closely related, like willpower and self-control, resilience, addiction. I don't look at addiction, but of course addiction has a lot to teach people who are looking at habits, and even things like monastic governance or the design of kindergarten routines. I've really concluded that anything that's true for a five-year-old is probably true for a 55-year-old. And so I was really trying to cast a wide net and also reading memoirs and biographies and trying to understand, like, how do people think about this? How does it play through?

And for people who are looking at it from really different perspectives, what are they seeing? Because I felt like a lot of the research was focused in on, like, one little area. That would be true as far as it went, but I felt like nobody had the whole picture. And what I was really trying to do was give a person an overview of, like, if you were going to try to change a habit, what's every strategy that's available to you?

Yeah, maybe doing your first thing, the morning is a good idea for you, but maybe it's not. What else could you do? There's a lot of things, and so I identified 21 different strategies that people used to make or break their habits, and I did that by just trying to look at as much material as I could and figuring out how to work it into a coherent framework. Yeah, and that framework you call the four tendencies framework, and what you're essentially saying is that people generally fall into one of those four tendencies. So walk us through those four tendencies because I think this is a wonderful context for folks that they can begin to identify. Oh, that sounds like me as we talk about

habits. Yes. So the four tendencies, most people can pinpoint themselves very quickly, but there is also a quiz on my site, Gretchenrubin.com, for people who are like, I need to check. I want to like take a quiz and find out. Yeah, that's good. Like 170,000 people have taken it at this point. And so this has to do with how you respond to an expectation, whether it's an outer expectation, like a work deadline, a request from a spouse, or an inner expectation, like your own desire to keep a New Year's resolution, your own desire to start a business in your free time. So there's upholders, questioners, obligers, and rebels.

Upholders readily respond to outer and inner expectations. They meet a work deadline, they keep a New Year's resolution without much effort. They want to meet external expectations, but their expectations for themselves are just as important or more important. Next are questioners. Questioners, question all expectations. They'll do something if they think it makes sense. They hate anything arbitrary or irrational.

They want to know why am I listening to you. So they make everything an inner expectation, because if they endorse it, if they buy into it, they'll meet it without trouble. If they don't accept it, they won't follow it. Next are obligers. Obligers readily meet outer expectations, but they struggle to meet inner expectations.

And I got insight into this tendency when someone told me, well, the funny thing about me is when I was in high school on the track team, I never missed track practice, but I can't go running now. Well, when there was a team and a coach providing external accountability, the habit was effortless. But without that, the habit wasn't forming. So what was needed was external accountability. And finally, rebels. They want to do what they want to do, when they want to do it in their own way.

If you ask or tell them to do something, they're very likely to do the opposite. And I must say of all the tendencies, Revel is the smallest tendency, and obligor is the largest tendency. So anyone who's struggling to meet inner expectations, the answer is to put in a form of external accountability. If you're having trouble meeting a deadline for a career transition you want to make, give yourself external accountability, and it's going to be a lot, lot easier to follow through on that habit. Now, which one are you? Well, I'm an upholder, and that is also a tiny, tiny category, and many things became clear to me when I realized, you know, here I am writing in this book about habits, but I'm actually a very extreme personality when it comes to habits.

I kind of had to rewrite half the book because I thought I was, when I went into it, I was pretty typical because there was no way, there was no existing framework to understand how people compared to each other. But once I figured out this framework, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm on a freaky fringe. Most people, overwhelmingly, people are questioners or obligers, and this has a enormous implications for healthcare professionals, device manufacturers, teachers, spouses, HR people, teams. Because if you want to communicate in a way with someone and you want to be compelling, you have to talk to them in the way and set up things in a way that's going to allow them to succeed.

For instance, if you're working with an obliger, you want to give them systems of external accountability, like deadlines and supervision and benchmarks, because without that, they're not going to move forward. That was hard for me as an upholder to understand until I came up with this framework. That's right. This is wonderful stuff for, as you said, spouses, leadership, teams. And I'd throw another category in there selfishly as parents. This is wonderful information because we're simply trying to help our kids form good habits. And when we know this kind of stuff, boy, it's inside baseball.

It's really great stuff. All right, let's see. You know, it's funny. one of the people that I hear about from the most are people who are the parents of rebel children. Yes. Saying, how can you parent a rebel child? Because the more you tell them to do something, the more they resist. And that is, in fact, exactly what rebel parents experience. And so it's been very interesting for me to talk to parents of rebel children about how they successfully navigate that. But each of

the tendencies has strong points and weak points. And it's all a question of figuring out for yourself, for other people if you're a parent or a manager, how can you set things up to help people do their best and succeed? Now, we can't just leave this, so we can't go through all of them or we'll get off total track here. For the parents that are listening in and they've got the rebel kid, I feel like we teased them so much, we've got to help them. And in short, what would you say to those folks as far as handling that rebel child?

This is hard medicine, but from what I know about rebels and what parents are telling me what works. The best thing to do is to give the rebel child information, presented as something that only they can't deal with, and then look away. Because if you're watching and monitoring, that sets up at an expectation that then the rebel wants to resist and push back. So you say something, so a friend of mine was saying how when she realized her son was a rebel, he was like, look, you want to play the, because the rebel wants to do what they want to do. So they can do anything they want to do. And she's like, you want to take the violin. So I'm paying good money for you to take violin lessons because that's what you want. Now, if a person's

going to learn how to play the violin, they must practice. So you need, if you want to play the violin, you have to practice. And she said, like, every night she'd been reminding him and nagging him to do it. And the more she reminded him to do it, the more he would resist. And she said, once they had that conversation, she never mentioned it again. And she said it was really hard, but then he can do it because then he didn't have to resist her. He's just like, well, this is what I want. Somebody else told me that with her mother in music lessons, whatever she would say she wanted to quit, her mom would say, you know, why are we wasting our money on the piano lessons? You're not making nearly fast enough records. I think you should quit. And that was like made her want to stick

with it. Wow. But that can feel dangerous. Yes, it does. Do that negative, that, that reverse psychology. But you just have to remember that the more you tell them to do something, the more you're going to ignite that spirit of opposition, but the more you present it as a challenge, they love a challenge, they love to do it in their own way, they love authenticity and identity, so you're like, this is what you want, this is the kind of person you are, this is what you choose. That's good. You just might go about it in a way that is not what you as a parent would want. Yes, and you know what, that translates to leadership as well. You know what to me? Where you kind of got that rebel employee, maybe they're not a rebel in spirit and in heart, but they just have rebel tendencies,

They want to do it on their own and how to guide them as opposed to manage them. Big difference. That's really good stuff. So what managers of rebels say is like what works for them is to say like, hey, you've got the chops to get this done. This is your budget. This is when the client needs it. Go do your thing. And the more freedom they have to do it in their own way, then the more that they will embrace

that. And they'll do things like they won't keep the deadline or they won't keep the budget because they have to prove that they're doing it their own way, but they will deliver because often they do want to show what they can do. do. But the more you micromanage, the more that they're going to start pushing back. And so it is tricky. I've talked to people who manage lots of rebels, and it's really something that they grapple with because you really have to resist that urge to get in there and tinker because you can really have a destructive influence on whatever they're doing, whereas if you give them just general

guidelines and freedom, then they tend to do much better. Yeah, that's so good. Again, folks, this is why the four tendencies is, you know, just wonderful information in this book. I want to talk some about the myths, Gretchen, because you identify some myths about habits, and this gives us great clarity as we try to master habits. After all, that's the subtitle the book. So let's talk about some of the myths that you discovered. Well, one of the myths is that there's a magic one-size-fits-all solution. You know, a lot of times it's like, do it for saying in the morning, start small, give yourself a cheat day, do it for 30 days. And the fact is, these work sometimes for some people, but they don't work all the time

for everyone. So what I found is the myth is that there is an answer, you know, or like we can look at somebody and say, well, what are the seven habits of great entrepreneurs? Well, if I did that, then I'm going to be a great entrepreneur. No, when you look at the people who are the happiest and the healthiest and the most productive and creative, what you realize is that they're the people that have figured out what works for them. And they work like crazy to make. And they work like crazy to make sure they get what they need. You know, if they work in an best, as some people do, an environment of a lot of silence and quiet and calm and clarity, that's what they work. They make sure that's what they have. If they want bustle and profusion and lots of things happening all the time and

people running around, then they make sure that's what they've got. This comes up in the most basic way, is like morning people, night people. A lot of us are somewhere in between, but there truly are morning, people, and night people. This is hardwired. It's not something you can adjust by moving your bedtime around. And yet over and over, a friend of mine who I knew well, who I knew was a night person, I'd done him for years. He can barely get out of bed in time to go to work, absolutely at his most creative and productive later in the day. And he looked me in the eye and said, for the new year, I'm going to start getting up early to run. And I said, have you met yourself? That is not setting yourself up for success. I get why that works on paper. And why, my, my, my,

a good idea for somebody else, but that's not what's true for you. That's not the way for you to set the habit. So this myth is like, if only I could figure out the right, kind of the right specific habit, then I'll succeed. No, it's the question of the match. What is true for you, and then how do you bring your habits? Like, if you're an obligeur, what you need is external accountability. That's what you need. So figure that out and you'll be finished. And then a related myth is the myth of the 21 days or the 30 days. And the fact is, just as there's no magic one-size-fits-all solution in terms of shape, what the habit looks like, there's no time. There's no, you can't just repeat something a certain number of time. And then, prusto, it's

turned into a habit. Some habits form faster, some form much more slowly, some form overnight. And so there isn't just, it's a myth to think that there's a certain number of repetition. that's going to solidify that habit for us. I love that. Folks, I just want to make sure that we single one thing out that Gretchen just said there. I love the question you asked your friend. Have you met yourself? You dive deep on this in the book that we, you know, before we even get into some of the

habits, we've got to be honest with who we are. And I thought the example of your friend was a wonderful framework there. Have you met yourself? It's a good question. So I have the 21 strategies in the first two have to do with self-knowledge and understanding the kind of person you are and how that might affect your habits. For instance, boy, this often comes up, especially in teams, is marathoners and sprinters when it comes to work habits. So marathonsors are like me, and we like to do everything like starting way in advance. We like to do a little bit

steadily. We don't like to be up against deadlines. But then there are sprinters, and sprinters like the adrenaline of the finish line, and they like to work long and hard right up against the deadline. And they feel like that's when they're at their most creative and productive. If they start to early, they kind of burn out, they waste time, they lose momentum and energy. And so it's really important to understand neither way is right or wrong. Like as a marathoner, I was always, before I understood this, I was always trying to convince sprinters that they were doing it wrong because to me that just seemed crazy. But it's not.

For them, that's what works. It's just there's no right way or wrong way. It's however you do your best work. But you can see how in teams, it's hard to manage this sometimes. But I think that sometimes just having a vocabulary and understanding, these are just two different ways that people go about with their work habits. And so how can we all do our best work? How can we figure this out?

Rather than like, oh, we all need to do it the way the team leader says we should do it. Or we all need to do it this way because, you know, some book says that's what you should do. It's really to know yourself. And when you succeed, when you do your best work, when you feel most creative, most productive, of kind of most yourself. Fascinated to know if there was something that was an aha moment for you. I'm sure there were, but what was a surprising finding? Because, again, the study of this is what led to the book.

So what surprised you? One thing that just was so surprising to me that it was almost impossible for me to grasp it. So I look at all the research and everything, but I also try to listen very carefully to what people are saying around me, because I think sometimes understanding the obvious is the hard. thing. Like, you know, what's right in front of you was sometimes hardest to see. And I was very puzzled because several people told me the exact same anecdote, it almost the exact same words. And it was a story that didn't make sense to me. And finally, I was like, clearly there's some

aspect of human nature at work here because why are all these very different people who don't know each other telling me the same story that doesn't make sense? And most memorably, it was when I went to my college reunion and I was talking to my friend Brad about his habits. And he said, well, I wanted to form the habit of exercise. So I decided to train for the marathon. And I trained for the marathon, and I love training for the marathon. And I ran the marathon, and it was amazing. And I took the rest days off that you take after you run the marathon, and I haven't run since.

And then I heard this from several people. And then I heard people had similar things. Oh, I quit sugar for lunch. I thought this is amazing. I finally given up sugar, but now eat just as much sugar as ever. Oh, I did a 30-day challenge, but now that's a day challenge. but now the 30 days is over and I'm not doing it anymore. And what I realize is that when you have a finish line,

like running the marathon or giving up something for length, there's a finish line. And a finish line means you're finished. And so people are like, oh, I'm done here. It's disruptive if what you really want to do is to form a habit. And this was surprising to me because I thought, well, something like hitting a big milestone, like running the marathon, would be energizing.

It would make you more committed to your habit. We've had this big success until now you're like all the more likely to go deeper into the habit. But actually it has the opposite effect. And so we have to be very careful whenever there are finish lines. Because if it's a behavior that we want to continue indefinitely, if you want to get up every morning and work on your own project for an hour, you don't want to say like, you know, be aiming, aiming, aiming for like a certain deadline, a certain finish line because then once you hit that finish,

you feel like, well, I did what I set out to do. I'm finished. And if you need to start, you're going to start over. And starting over is very hard. So it's important not to think of finish lines, but to think of milestones. So maybe you've hit an exciting milestone along the way, but it's not a finish line. That is a huge distinction. Milestone versus finish line.

And this, again, this is not just personal. This is great for businesses to apply as well. No, and it's interesting because I was talking to, I was invited to come and speak to a bunch of trainers at a big, one of the big gyms here in New York City, and they were saying like, oh, well, we see this because we have a bridal package. Count down to your wedding day, get fit, and what we've noticed is that they never come back. Right. They'll be, they'll come religiously during this time, but then we lose them as customers. And I said, that's right, because they feel like they're finished. They had their wedding day, they reached their finish line, it's over. And so they were thinking, like, well, how do we change the language that we use around our marketing so that people don't see it as a finish line, but they see it as a mile sign? Because it's an important way to get people in, but how do we make them? Because you might think, like, oh, well, they've come so faithfully. Haven't they formed the habit of come to this gym?

They themselves might think that they formed the habit of going to the gym. But they hadn't. They really hadn't. They've been working towards that finish line. And a wedding day is for exercise and eating. It's one that I hear a lot. Men and women alike. You know, they aim for that wedding, and then they're like, ooh, that's over.

Wow, that's really good. That's really good. And I guess, and it's important, too, as we think about this, that if you want to go on an adventure, it's fine to put a finish line to certain things. We just have to delineate between where we use a finish line. That's the real gift here to this concept and to this book, right? Finish lines can be good, but they can also be detrimental. And they're great for hitting a goal. If what you want to do is hit a goal, then finish lines are amazing, because you do get the,

that excitement. The problem is what you really want to do is to form an indefinite habit. Right. So, like, maybe people know Nano Rima, which is National Novel Writing Month, where you write a novel in a month, and you write 1,500 words a day or something like that for a month, and then at the end you've written a novel. Well, that's great if what you want to do is write a novel in a month. If what you want to do is to work on your novel for an hour every day for the next five years, then that could interfere with it because you're like, oh, I did it. I did what I set out to do, but what you really wanted to do was to have the habit.

And so it's finish lines are great for goals, but if what you want is an indefinite habit, you have to really be very careful about the way you think about that. I mean, the same thing with dieting. Oh, I hit my goal weight, 140 pounds. Now I can go back to eating normally. What happens when you normally? You gain all the weight right back because it's not about hitting that goal weight. It's about eating healthfully forever. That's right. All right. So, Gretchen, we know that. when you write a book, you learn a ton and you've shared so much of that with us. But let's get personal. Let's put you on the spot here. What's a habit that you changed? Well, a habit that I've

changed most recently is I started a podcast with my sister called Happier with Gretchen Rubin. And it was quite fascinating to me because in starting a podcast, I had a clean slate, which is one of the strategies, which is when you're doing something new, when you're going through a big transition, you have an opportunity for a new habit because there are no old habits. And so it's much easier to shape your habits. And so with this podcast, I had to do, you know, to really think about like, well, how do we want to do this and how do we want to set it up? And what are my habits of work going to be so that I can run this easily? Because it's a whole new responsibility that I have on top of everything else I'm already doing.

How can I set it up in a way that's going to allow me to execute as painlessly as possible indefinitely as indefinitely? Because the little habits that you make at the beginning, again, this is the strategy to clean slate, the strategies, the habits that you put in at the beginning, a lot of times you think, like, oh, it doesn't really matter where I sit the first day of my history class in college. But then guess what? You sit there every day for the rest of the semester. So, you know, all things being equal, we tend to continue the way that we begin. So you always want to think very carefully at beginnings about how you're setting up your habits, because once they're

put into place, they get hard to change. Yeah. One last thing I want to ask before we let you go, and I think this is a wonderful challenge in the book, and that is that you believe that groups can be a wonderful thing and essentially accountability. And I know this is true from my personality type, but I want you to talk about how you think this works for everybody when it comes to really setting habits. These are the milestones, not goals, but those habits that last a long time. How do groups and accountability play into this? Certainly for obligers, the external accountability is absolutely key and crucial and the necessary piece. And so for obligers, I have a starter kit on my website, Gretchenrubin.com, for people, who want to launch a group of people who are going to be an accountability group,

you know, a habits group where you're going to hold each other accountable. And it's like AA or Weight Watchers. People just do better when they're held accountable, and there's a lot of energy and ideas and support and accountability that come from groups. But even people who aren't obligers, upholders and questioners often also, and even rebels, if they want to do that, find it helpful to be in these groups. Now, you can hire a coach. That works great.

You can work with a trainer. But for a lot of people, they want the social aspects. of a group, and also it's free to have a group. You know, you're not paying for a coach or whatever. And I think that a lot of things happen. One problem with having an accountability partner, that can work, but then you're sort of dependent on the partner staying engaged. And over and over, people said to me, like, oh, I was doing a really good job on this thing or that thing, but then my accountability partner kind of drifted off, and then I sort of slowed down and without really realizing it got stuck again. A group is, like, you're not,

not dependent on one person as much. And you get a lot of ideas and it's fun to be part of a group. And you don't all have to be working on the same habit. I have a group of friends who are all ABD, which is when you're a graduate student and you finished all your coursework, but you still haven't written your dissertation. Very dangerous for PhD students. The procrastination around that is a very big challenge. And so what they did is they formed an accountability group. They weren't in the same field. They weren't studying the same material, and they didn't look at each other's stuff. All they did was meet to say, have you written that chapter?

Have you talked to your advisor? Like, have you scheduled this? When are you going to do that? Now, I have to say they met in a bar once a month. I think they might have made more progress. Had they met, like, in a coffee shop. Yes, maybe. But they all finished their dissertations, and they all say it was really, really important.

And just to have that feeling that someone's looking over your shoulder and someone's saying to you, like, hey, man, you said you were going to do this. Like, what's up with that? And so these accountability groups can be very powerful for people. The book gets better than before. Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, it's a great read. It is steeped and wonderful research that you've heard. Just a smidge of today. And Gretchen, I've got to tell you, just personally, really enjoy your work.

love your blog, love what you do, your books. The Happiness Project was a wonderful read as well. And I know I speak on behalf of our entire audience and our team here at Entree Leadership. We're grateful for your work and for you hanging out with us today. Oh, well, I appreciate it so much. It was so fun to talk to you. Absolutely, great stuff. Thank you, Gretchen. Thank you. Well, folks, I hope you are enjoying our Infusion Soft series. Man, I mean, these are the Snickers of Leadership Podcast, brought to you by Clayton Mask and Infusion Soft. Clay, you like that?

And all of a sudden, you're a candy impresario. I love it. And Snickers is the best. That's right. Because they satisfy, and so do you with these nuggets. Here is this episode's question. What does it mean to be a liberated entrepreneur? That is a soaring thought.

I mean, that just sounds good. I get energy when I hear that. What does it mean to be a liberated entrepreneur? Oh, yeah. What it means is it's recognizing the reality that what most business owners find when they start their company is not the freedom that they were after, but actually they really become kind of prisoners, even slaves to their business. And they don't have, they don't find the control that they were after and the satisfaction.

And it takes a long time. And some business owners never really get that. They're constantly feeling like the business controls them instead of them controlling the business. And so the liberated entrepreneur is about implementing smart automation in your business, that really enables you to sort of clone yourself and make a lot more effective use of your time so that you can be successful and not constantly feel like the business is just keeping you chain to your desk. Boy, that's so good, and I love that phrase.

And I also know that liberating entrepreneurs is absolutely at the core of InfusionSoft mission. What fires you up so much about liberating entrepreneurs? We love helping small businesses be successful. We love helping them get organized, grow sales, save time so they can have a great business and a great life. And we love helping them do that with our software and the services we provide so that they can have a lot more fun in their business. Well, that's well said. From his heart to your bottom line, I'm telling you folks, check them out. They can help you.

That's why they exist. Learn so much more at infusionsoft.com slash entree. that's infusionsoft.com slash entree. Clay, we have entirely too much fun on these, but I absolutely love them. It's perfect for my attention span, and I just want to say we're grateful

for you hanging out with us here on the podcast. Hey, thanks so much. We love doing it, and we love your audience. I think we've got kindred spirits and you guys and what we do here, and we just appreciate the opportunity to work with you guys and hopefully help a bunch of listeners

to be more successful in their business. Absolutely, man. We'll talk sooner rather than later, man. Have a good one. Okay, thanks so much. Take care. Well, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we did. And before I give this to Christy for a little takeaway,

because she's scribbling like a mad woman over here. This is very fun. I want to tell you about our brand new goal tracker. Now, I told you about this in our last podcast. For those of you that heard it, I'll get right to this very simple stuff. Our team at Entry Leadership has created this goal tracker tool so that you can measure your results. And we know that when we write things down, when we put things in front of our eyes, and we begin to track it, we have a greater rate of success.

Here's what we want you to do. You just simply text the word tracker. T-R-C-K-E-R-Tracker. Just text it to 3-3-4-4-4-4-4 is the number to text the word tracker. And we will get you this free tool so that you can begin now to track your goals and win big in life. So take advantage of that opportunity. And Christy, I know you're excited about that. We talked about this earlier.

You're like, what is this goal tracker thing? I need to use it. I'm ready for it. Yeah. How are you going to use it? You're kicking around this idea of using it in a talk. Absolutely. Well, when you're managing your time, your time is made up of a lot of little goals,

even if it's just a goal to read or get more sleep, like you said. So, you know, you can put that in the goal tracker. I'm excited to use it. All right. So much to take away from the conversation. Yes. Dying to know. What did you walk away with?

So the one thing that you mentioned when you were talking to her is the quote that she said, have you met yourself? When she was talking about her friend, it was so good. So here's what I think is so important for us to realize is, and she talks about this, there's not one formula for success, right? There's best practices if you want to be successful. You need to do the work required. But how you go about that work should depend on how you're wired and what works for you. So what works for you can, maybe different than me, maybe different than Dave or someone else. And so it really comes down to knowing yourself and being self-aware and setting yourself up for

success. So if you're not a morning person, don't try to force yourself into this formula that morning people use to be successful. Find what works for you. And what a love to be. And what a love is, about this whole concept that I really just would love to talk about more is it really ties in with what I talk about life balance. People think this is what life balance should look like. It should look exactly like this or it should look like that person or my neighbor or my mom. But really life balance is about being true to yourself. What is your version look like? Is it working, you know, 60, 70 hours a week if you're a single person and that doesn't take away from something else? Maybe. Maybe it does. Or maybe you're in a different season of life. So figuring out what works for you in your life phase and what's

true for you is so important to finding that sense of balance. And as she talks about, it's important to being successful as well. It is, but you really nailed something. I want to stay here for a second. The freedom that that honesty must bring. Because you mentioned this, we look at our peers, don't we? We go, well, they're successful. Yes. So my formula for balance has got to look like this. And that creates all kinds of nonsense, doesn't it? It does. And it's interesting because I see this, I do a lot of coaching with women. And you see this with women specifically, but I think we all all struggle with this comparison thing, where I look at another mom and I say, oh, man, she cooks every night. I should cook more. No, if I don't like to cook, that's not a good use of my time

to cook all the time. So find what things bring you joy, what things breathe life into you and do those things. Stay in your strengths, whether it's in your life outside of work or even in your wheelhouse at work. It's going to make you successful when you find what works for you. You're going to thrive that way. It's the hardest part of that process, the realization process, that you're not like somebody else. Is it just swallowing whatever kind of misnomer's and the comparisons and the pride that comes with that? And once you kind of swallow it and you begin to experience the freedom, what's it look like

on the other side? What's the emotion? Yeah, I think it gives you such permission and freedom. You know, I'm a runner and I love to run. But people that are not runners are very quick to say, I don't like running. So they don't try to run. They don't make running a priority or a goal or schedule time for it. So what are those other things in your life that you're exhausting yourself trying to do?

that you don't enjoy that are not in your strengths, and give yourself permission to just find with those things that bring you joy and do those only. You're going to be the most successful when you find the formula that makes you successful, not trying to emulate someone else's. And this is a, this is that I think I want to mention because I think what you just said ties into something that we have actually up right now. I think it's about a two-minute clip or so at Entreelearship.com. Christy's talking about no. Yes.

Just that wonderful little word and what that does. Yes. And I think that fits into what you just said there. So I want to make sure we told people that you can see that. Give us a quick summary. That clips there on Entryleadership.com. Talk about that idea that you share briefly. The summary is this.

You don't just have the right to say no. You have the responsibility to say no. And so when you are running your life here, if you don't protect what matters to you, your time, your sanity, your sleep, your habits, your work. If you don't protect them, no one else will. You have the responsibility to set these boundaries, say no and run towards your finish line

because no one's going to do it for you. All right, folks. That was the bumper sticker. version of the two-minute clip that's on the homepage, Entreeleadership.com, and you need to go see this. It's just a little bit of what Chrissy does real quick. Tell them where they can see you and follow you on Twitter, of course, and then the blog and what you're doing there, because we want folks to know you're doing some fun stuff. Big news coming. We can't talk about it now, but just give us a highlight. Sure. So, Christyright.com, C-H-R-I-S-T-Y-W-R-G-H-H-R-I-G-H-T-T-com.

And that's where I really do a lot of my writing. We have some great video clips there. We have some tools and resources. We mainly focus on leadership and life balance. It's what I'm known for, certainly in the Entree leadership space. It's such a need there. But we've got some really cool stuff coming up for women specifically starting side businesses and helping them earn an income from home so they can have more flexibility with their families, but really get to experience that as well. It's great. And one of the fun things we do on the Dave Ramsey show is a feature we call Backseat Driver. It's on the video channel. And I'm just telling you, tomorrow, Christy and I are doing the episode with her. And that's all I can say.

It's going to be awesome. It's going to be great fun. And I'm going to tell you about it because she a big part of what we do here at Entree Leadership, and it's going to be great fun. So that's, I'm looking forward to that. Can I say that? Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be really fun. It's going to be awesome. Well, all I can see, it ties in to Christy's past entrepreneurial experiences. It's going to be a lot of fun. Now, remember, folks, you can get everything related to this podcast at Entreeleadership.com slash podcast. That's Entreeleadership.com slash podcast. So, Christy, can I assume that now that you're back from maternity leave, you can hang out in the studio with us more often? Absolutely. I'm here. Do you like the co-ho?

I do. I love it. Yeah, I love the energy of working with people. I do a lot of stuff, you know, me to the audience. I love me and, yeah, I love the conversation. You heard it here first. She's going to be back on a regular basis. It's very exciting. The fall. Real quick, how excited are you about the smart conferences? Oh, my gosh. You're going to be speaking there. That's the biggest audience I've ever spoken to. I'm nervous. It's crazy. But I can't wait. I can't wait. She was huge at the Entree Leadership Summit. Big, big, big results. The crowd loved her. So it's great. It's great fun. You're going to love that audience. It's huge. Absolutely. And the talk that I I'm so passionate about.

I can say it all day, every day, and it never gets old. Yes, it really connects. All right, folks, well, this has been a phenomenal episode. I want to start by thanking my co-host, Christy Wright, Ramsey personally, so great to have her in studio with us. Of course, Gretchen Rubin for her time. Claytonask, always doing a good job for us, giving us a great tip from InfusionSoft,

and Eric producer and the entire Entree leadership team for what they do to make this podcast happen. But we cannot say goodbye properly without thanking you the audience because you are why we do what we do and you are why we get to keep doing it. So thank you very much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.