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- [00:00]
Gretchen Rubin
A lot of times people know they want to leave, but they don't know where they want to go. And for me, it was less about leaving law, and it was more like wanting to write. You know the scene in the original Star wars where they're in the Millennium Falcon, they've got the tractor beam on them, and Han Solo says, we have to stop pulling back because we'll rip the ship apart. We have to allow ourselves to be drawn to this destination. I just felt like I was in the tractor beam and I was just being drawn so forcibly toward it. And I just thought I'd rather fail as a writer than succeed as a lawyer. I have a project in mind. I'm moving to New York City. This is my time to take a shot.
- [00:40]
Jimmy Soni
Welcome to this week's episode of Infinite Loops. I am Jimmy Soni, the editor in chief of Infinite Books, filling in for Jim o'. Shaughnessy. This week's guest is Gretchen Rubin. She is the author of multiple bestselling books, probably best known for the number one New York Times bestseller, the Happiness Project. Please enjoy this conversation with Gretchen Rubin. Well, I have an amazing privilege today, which is I'm here with one of my. Not just one of my favorite writers, but one of my favorite people in the world, Gretchen Rubin. And to set the scene for people, this is you and I get together semi regularly for lunch to talk shop. Yes. And the way I describe these lunches to other people is I always tell them that they are like a. Like a Gretchen Rubin vitamin B shot of, like, energy and ideas and inspiration. And you push me to, like, think more critically about the platforms I'm on or what I'm doing or talk about this or that. And so I'm hoping that our conversation today captures some of that energy, because I do think of you as one of these great pushers of ambition and, like, creativity.
- [01:47]
Gretchen Rubin
Well, I'm so happy to hear you. I feel exactly the same way. I feel like I leave our conversations with, like, homework because I have to go home and, like, look something up and figure out how to do something.
- [01:56]
Jimmy Soni
See, that's way less nice than the first I did.
- [02:00]
Gretchen Rubin
No, that's the highest phrase. Like, I'm actually going to do what you tell me to do.
- [02:03]
Jimmy Soni
Amazing. So I thought what we would do just to give people a sense of, you know, where your. Your career started and. And, you know, where your writing career started. You were a recovering lawyer. You went to law school. So can you just walk us through kind of how you got from law school to the. For the formal work of doing books, but just from. From your legal career to your authorial career.
- [02:24]
Gretchen Rubin
Okay, so I went to law school for all the classic wrong reasons. It was a great education. It'll keep my options open. I can change my mind later. I'm good at research and writing, so I'd probably be good. Father's a lawyer, so I went to law school. Did very well in law school. I was editor in chief of the Law Journal. And then I went on to clerk for Sandra Day o'. Connor. But at that time, I was sort of starting to realize that I didn't know what I wanted to do next. And simultaneously, I have this habit of asking myself theoretical questions. Just, I don't know, kind of conversation starters with myself. And I was out on my lunch break. I was looking up at the Capitol dome, and I thought, what am I interested in that everyone else in the world is interested in? And I thought, well, power, money, fame, sex. And it was like, power, money, fame, sex. It was like this one big idea. I instantly got incredibly preoccupied with it and started just doing masses and masses of research and note taking, which is something that happens to me all the time and has happened to me since I was a child. So this was very familiar. So I was doing all this research, doing all this note taking. And then finally it occurred to me, this is the kind of thing a person would do if they were going to write a book. Maybe I could write that book. So I went to Kramer Brooks and afterwards in D.C. and got a book called something like how to Write and Sell youl Nonfiction Book Proposal.
- [03:46]
Jimmy Soni
Oh, wow.
- [03:47]
Gretchen Rubin
And then cut to. I followed the directions and that's how I got my first agent. And that was my first book. Power Many Fame, Sex, A User's Guide.
- [03:57]
Jimmy Soni
Got it. Okay.
- [03:59]
Gretchen Rubin
So that's how I switched from lotter writing.
- [04:01]
Jimmy Soni
Got it. So what I find interesting about that is the theoretical question piece. How long has that been a habit? Because you're. You're one of the great kind of studiers of habits. And, you know, how do you. Have you always done that? Is that something that.
- [04:13]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah, often it will. Often it will be. It will be a question. Or it might be a word. Like I went through a period where apocalypse was like a word that I was really preoccupied with. And I ended up writing this like really bad novel that I have locked in desk drawer. Or when I was very young, I was really interested in the Salem witch trials. And so I have like a little notebook that's just my, you know, nine year old handwriting of Sort of like facts about the Salem witch trial. Now for some reason, I have this incredible antipathy to any plot having to do with unjust accusation. So probably as a result of that, like, I would never study the Salem witch trials now. But yeah, so I will. And then I got really preoccupied with the subject of color in a way that I really couldn't explain. I was just. Did enormous amounts of research and I even wrote a little book called My Color Pilgrimage. And I would. I showed it to a couple editors and they were like, well, you really had fun with that, didn't you? It's like, that's not the answer I'm looking for. You know, you're a child. So I turned it into this is. Okay, Jimmy, you'll appreciate this. Like, this is very much a today solution. I was like, I'll Adapt that, like 30% of that material and I'll make it into for like a bonus for paid subscribers in my sub stack. Right? Because nobody seems so far. Nobody wants the entire entire My Color Pilgrimage. But there's really good stuff in there. So it is something that's happened to me. Or like I remember with Churchill when I just all of a sudden was just like, oh my gosh, all I wanted to do was think about Churchill morning, noon and night. And so when I get that, that's when I usually.
- [05:43]
Jimmy Soni
When I start a book, that's amazing, you reminded me of something, which is there are all of these creative people I admire, yourself included, who have projects that they have taken, let's say 40, 60, 80, or even 100% of the way, and then haven't had them see the light of day. And I remember either reading or talking to you about novels that you had unfinished. So that is tantalizing. Like, what are, what are those projects?
- [06:06]
Gretchen Rubin
Okay, so they're all finished. They're just bad. But one of the things I would warn anybody doing a creative project is that if you suddenly lose interest, like call it 80% of the way there, if you're all of a sudden like, oh, I just. I'm not interested in this project anymore. It's often a fear, a failure if you finish. Then it becomes like, am I going to try to get an agent? Am I going to show this to my agent? Am I going to show it to anybody? Am I going to admit that this is the best that I can do? And so sometimes I think people turn away from it out of self protection. And so once you get to a certain point, I'm like, take it all the way. And then Let it succeed or fail. And like my Color Pilgrimage, like, let's just say it did not succeed in what I wanted for it, but he
- [06:54]
Jimmy Soni
got a second life.
- [06:54]
Gretchen Rubin
Now, I found, as you say, you find a second life for things. Things, you never know. What do they call it? Saving string, where things can end up paying off. But any kind of, like, I think for people who are doing creative work, anything that you're interested in doing, it's like, if nothing else, it's doing scales. If nothing else, it's practice. If nothing else, it's learning and not, you know, every. You know, the more success means, probably the more failures too.
- [07:22]
Jimmy Soni
Right. Did the novels come before the nonfiction work or did you like how. In what. In what sequence were the novels? The unfinished. The unfinished. And I'm sure better than you think they're finished.
- [07:32]
Gretchen Rubin
They're just bad. You know what it is, is I. Growing up, all I read was novels. I was an English major. I just read novels all the time. And I didn't really. So they were novels of ideas, because I didn't really understand that what I wanted to do was write nonfiction. So I was trying to channel ideas that I had through fiction. That's very, very hard to do. Most good novels are really about character. And so once I switched to nonfiction, then I sort of stopped writing novels because I found the right vehicle for the ideas I wanted to express. Yeah, I wrote a novel in law school. I wrote a novel about. Because I went through a serious period of being absolutely obsessed with the question of why people destroy their own possessions. And I wrote a law school paper about it, then I wrote a novel about it, and then I actually published a book called Profane Waste as a collaboration with an artist, which is all about this question of why. Why people destroyed their own possession. So I tried it every which way, and then I just ended up with nonfiction.
- [08:29]
Jimmy Soni
So this is. This is why you will now. You are now and will forever be one of my favorite people. Because these are the kinds of rabbit holes that I go down, right. And I'll just find myself lost in some. Some question that possesses you, and then
- [08:44]
Gretchen Rubin
you ask, oh, delightful.
- [08:45]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah, it's the best. And honestly, I think. I think Wikipedia scratched that itch for people who are satisfied with, like, you know, 10 to 20%. But then there's a whole other level. So if you. If you rewind the clock and it may. I don't know if you can remember this question of why people destroy their own possessions. How did you even get to the question itself?
- [09:03]
Gretchen Rubin
Oh, I Know exactly. I was again, I was in D.C. i was walking my lunch hour. This is why it's important to go for walks, because you have all these ideas. And I went to the. One of the. I forget the exact title of the museums, but you know how the Smithsonians, you can just. They're free. You just walk right in. So I walked in and it was a display about potlatch. And potlatch is a tradition of kind of exorbitant gift giving. It's like the big man, it's like will give extravagant gifts and kind of give away everything as a. And there's a lot of research about why the custom of potlatch existed. And then when trading came in, these groups of people had so much wealth that they literally couldn't give it away fast enough. And they were throwing, like, goods into the ocean too, because they just. Anyway, but this idea that, like, people would destroy something as a way to show their possession of it just messed with my mind. Okay, then there's another thing that happened. So this is in my mind. Then something happened. Where? Okay, so I was in law school. I was first year law school, so in love with the guy who's now my husband. He was a summer associate at a law firm. And because I was so in love, I'm like, I'll go with you and just like, do my own thing while you're doing your summer associate thing. And on our way there, we started. We stopped at a corner store and he bought a couple snacks. I got a couple snacks. And one of the things he got was a piece of cheesecake wrapped in plastic. Why? I don't know. So we get there, he does his work. We're getting ready to leave, and I look in this trash can and I see there's the unopened piece of cheesecake. And I say, oh, I'll fish this out. You never opened it. Like, you know it's still good. And he goes, no, I don't want it anymore. Just throw it away. And this rocked me to my core. I'm like, what are you talking about? What just happened? You just threw it away, right? And I can't. I mean, looking at it, did you
- [11:02]
Jimmy Soni
have an explanation or did you?
- [11:04]
Gretchen Rubin
Well, I thought I wanted it. Now I don't want it.
- [11:05]
Jimmy Soni
Oh, wow.
- [11:06]
Gretchen Rubin
And.
- [11:07]
Jimmy Soni
And there was some part of you that was disturbed by this.
- [11:09]
Gretchen Rubin
I was absolutely baffled by it. And so that. And then the potlatch, this. And then when I was got to law school and we were talking about property rights and all the bundle of rights that are property. I wanted to write a paper about it and a lot. And one of my law professors said, but people don't want to do that. That doesn't make any sense. Why would somebody want to destroy their own property? And I was like, that's exactly my point. Why do people do this? It doesn't make any kind of economic sense anyway. So I would talk about a rabbit hole. I went deep down there. Yeah, this. It's such an interesting subject that is.
- [11:38]
Jimmy Soni
That is totally fascinating on a number of levels. And did you. At that point, you knew you had this curiosity and you knew you had this kind of. You'd wanted to sort of take ideas and make them packaged in some way. Novels weren't going to be it, because novels are based on character, so. But you also achieved the highest heights of, like, legal. Of what someone could do with a legal education, like clerking for Supreme Court. That is the NBA of law school graduation. Right. And so were you ever at any point in your career, like, surely were torn to, like, what might be considered more practical, like, go down the law, like, make partner or all of that. That track against this following every, you know, your curiosities. How did you. How did you deal with that? Sort of in the tail end of law school and then immediately after.
- [12:23]
Gretchen Rubin
Well, right after law school, I went to work for the Federal Communications Commission. So in there, I was really, like, acting as a lawyer. I just. I didn't know what I wanted. I noticed that when I would look, you know how you read your alumni notes? You get that, like, magazine or whatever. And I realized, oh, by the way,
- [12:42]
Jimmy Soni
I don't think most people read their alumni notes. I think people like you and I read.
- [12:45]
Gretchen Rubin
If one reads.
- [12:46]
Jimmy Soni
Do you know why I read it, though? Do you know, the real reason is because I always read it for the. It's like the, you know, memento mori. Because it covers people who are gone.
- [12:55]
Gretchen Rubin
It does. It sure does.
- [12:57]
Jimmy Soni
And you have this connection to them. Like, I look at my Duke, you
- [12:59]
Gretchen Rubin
know, they're your exact age.
- [13:01]
Jimmy Soni
Exactly. And you go back to the end. And I always look for the people who are. Who are the untimely deceased, the ones who are close to me in age, where we have the same experience, we live the same four years at Duke. And, you know, for some one reason or another, they're here, they're not here, and I am. Right. And it kind of invests your time and your life with a bit more significance. That's the reason I do it.
- [13:20]
Gretchen Rubin
That's a great That's a great. That's a great reason. That's a great. I'm going to start doing that too, because I know exactly what you mean. For me, it was just curiosity, but I noticed that when people had really interesting law jobs, I felt sort of like mild interest. But when they had really interesting writing jobs, I felt sick with envy. So that was one data point. But one of the things that really made it easy for me is I think a lot of times people know they want to leave, but they don't know where they want to go. And for me, it was less about leaving law, and it was more like wanting to write. And it wasn't even that. I just wanted to be a writer, where I think some people are like, I'd like to be a writer. I'm like, I want to write a book called Power, Money, Fame, Sex. And I have done like a thousand hours of research and note taking about it, and I really want to do this project. And so it was very clear what it was I was aiming for. And I think that made it easier in my mind. So, you know the scene in the original Star wars where they're in the Millennium Falcon, they've got the tractor beam on them, and Han Solo says, we have to stop pulling back because we'll rip the ship apart. We have to allow ourselves to be drawn to this destination. And I'm like, I just felt like I was in the tractor beam and I was just being drawn so forcibly toward it. I thought, I'd rather fail as a writer than succeed as a lawyer. I have a project in mind. I'm moving to New York City. This is my time to take a shot. And if I fail, then I'll figure out what I want to do later. But if I take another law job now, it might be too hard to switch. I will have started to invest so much.
- [14:53]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah, because already, I mean, you'd gone and gotten a job.
- [15:00]
Gretchen Rubin
No, I know, right? If I. Any more investment in it starts to become something that you just can't step away from.
- [15:08]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah. I like this metaphor of the tractor beam as a way of thinking about creative influences and things that pull you in. Is that something you'd consciously thought of in the past, like the idea of what's pulling you creatively in a certain direction or another? Yeah.
- [15:22]
Gretchen Rubin
I mean, I don't know about you, but for me, there is a compulsive element to it which is incredibly gratifying, but sometimes inconvenient for people or it's not what they want. I Think sometimes people feel compelled to do things even though they kind of rationally know it's not a good idea, but they just can't resist it. I definitely know that feeling.
- [15:45]
Jimmy Soni
In your case, though, the writing of books happens to be a compulsion, but also a positive compulsion.
- [15:50]
Gretchen Rubin
It's been very positive for me, but, like, let's say I couldn't afford to take a risk, then maybe I would have had to make a different choice, and then it would have been extremely painful for me not to have been able to write the books that I wanted to write.
- [16:03]
Jimmy Soni
Right. So we're going to bounce around a little bit chronologically. But, you know, one of the things that that is true of the writers I know is at one point or another, their childhood was consumed by books. Right. Not everyone, but I would say there's a pretty high overlap. Like, it's like 90 plus percent. What was your childhood relationship to books? Like, like, how did you.
- [16:23]
Gretchen Rubin
I read all the time, but I. But I read nonfiction. I mean, not nonfiction. I read fiction all the time. No, I was a huge, huge reader.
- [16:32]
Jimmy Soni
Did you spark that in you, or was that. How did that start for you?
- [16:35]
Gretchen Rubin
My whole family are readers, and so it's like a very. Like, we would go to the library every week, and it was a really big deal, but so I saw people reading for pleasure. We had a lot of books in our house, but it was. Yeah, I remember, like, they had to tell me I had to go outside for a certain amount of time when I was little because otherwise I would just stay indoors and read all the time. So they were like, no, you have to go out for 45 minutes every afternoon after school. Yeah.
- [17:00]
Jimmy Soni
Did you have favorites growing up? Do you remember some of your favorite readings?
- [17:03]
Gretchen Rubin
Bazillion. And I still have a love of children's literature and young adult literature. I'm into adult groups where we read young adult literature and children's literature. So. But then. But I was also one of those kids who started reading adult books very early. Jane Eyre. You know, I remember Jane Eyre being like, the first sort of really adult book that I read. And then, you know, all of the trashy novels that you're not supposed to read when you're young. But yeah, even, like. And not even really understanding books like, you know, David Copperfield, but wanting to read adult books.
- [17:34]
Jimmy Soni
And so for me, the books that change or that, like, engrossed me. I mean, I had a bunch, but it was the Mossflower and Matameo series by Brian Jacques was one that stood out for me. And I remember just being able to, like, lose myself in them for hours. And like, sometimes I'd, like, look up and all of a sudden, like, day had turned to night. And I didn't even realize was, what were the. Do you have. If you have titles in mind from when you were a kid, what were those for you? Did you have anything that, like, stood out?
- [17:59]
Gretchen Rubin
It's such a basic answer, but I have to say Narnia.
- [18:02]
Jimmy Soni
Oh, really?
- [18:03]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah.
- [18:03]
Jimmy Soni
That's not a basic answer.
- [18:04]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [18:06]
Jimmy Soni
That's amazing.
- [18:07]
Gretchen Rubin
And the thing is, I still admire C.S. lewis tremendously as an adult writer, too. So, I mean, one of the things I love about children's literature is that a lot of them are masterpieces of literature on their own terms. And it's, you know, great, great writers. Do you look at something like Charlotte's Web? It absolutely will stand up to any adult novel, you know, and just like his adult work does his children's work. Yeah.
- [18:30]
Jimmy Soni
So fast forward. Actually, this is a bit of a tangent, but you're. You, you know, you became a parent. How did you encourage this in your daughters? What's their relationship with reading? Like, how do you think about the parenting parent as reader trying to inculcate a love of reading into kids?
- [18:44]
Gretchen Rubin
That's such a great question.
- [18:46]
Jimmy Soni
Asking for a friend.
- [18:46]
Gretchen Rubin
Asking for a friend. But your child is a big reader already.
- [18:48]
Jimmy Soni
She's a big reader and she reads obsessively.
- [18:50]
Gretchen Rubin
You don't have to fan those flames. I kind of think a little bit, as people have to find their way to it. But it's interesting because my two daughters, who are now in their 20s, I would say, didn't read a lot for pleasure, but now they are much more. And even my. My 21 year old was like, came home from. For college break and was like, I want to read. I want to spend the summer reading classics. I feel like I haven't read enough of the classics, so maybe people come to it later.
- [19:15]
Jimmy Soni
But I think you didn't do any years. There weren't active steps you took other than having books around and being an author and all of that and talking
- [19:21]
Gretchen Rubin
about it and having people talk about. My husband's a huge reader too. He reads a lot of policy. He reads a lot of very contemporary fiction. So it was always that people were always talking about. Talking about it and, you know, but I think the more you sort of try to make people do things, then it, you, you. I worry about igniting the spirit of resistance.
- [19:38]
Jimmy Soni
Right.
- [19:39]
Gretchen Rubin
Because it's supposed to be fun. The Reason you do it is because it's fun. Oh. But one thing I will do is like, I. I will be like, have you read the Secret History? You know, like, give them something that you know is going to be like, really high payoff, like a really, really good book.
- [19:52]
Jimmy Soni
Did you write as a child? Did you write stories? No, no, no, I didn't do that. You didn't write for the school paper? No.
- [19:57]
Gretchen Rubin
Well, I wrote for the school paper, but only just like, in a very perfunctory way. Not like, oh, I'm going to be a journalist or anything. I've never had the desire to be a journalist.
- [20:05]
Jimmy Soni
Got it. So it was always ideas and just rabbit holes that you were going down.
- [20:09]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah.
- [20:09]
Jimmy Soni
And then sort of how to work backwards from there.
- [20:11]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah. Okay, so just on my own.
- [20:13]
Jimmy Soni
So let's go through the first book in some detail of the process of the first book, because I think I were, you know, we'll recommend your books and people should check them out and we'll talk more about them toward the end of the interview. But the, the question I have is the first book is like the Big threshold. You don't really. These are like. So you sort of have these book, like objects. You know that theoretically somebody is behind them.
- [20:35]
Gretchen Rubin
Right.
- [20:36]
Jimmy Soni
Like somebody does something.
- [20:37]
Gretchen Rubin
Yes.
- [20:38]
Jimmy Soni
So you went and bought a book called how to write your first nonfiction book, book proposal. Right. So walk.
- [20:44]
Gretchen Rubin
Because as you know, like, one thing I think a lot of people don't understand is, like, writing a proposal is very different from writing a book. And getting an agent is probably harder than actually getting a book book deal. So it's very. The challenge of like being sort of a traditionally published author is very front loaded.
- [20:59]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah. But you're doing this in an era of. So I had the equivalent experience. So my, my story of the first book is I googled how to write a nonfiction.
- [21:07]
Gretchen Rubin
Right.
- [21:08]
Jimmy Soni
But you had to go to Kramer's and buy, Buy. Right. So what was that? What was that like? How did you know that the idea had merit? You know, now you can test ideas. You can put things on substack, you can put things on medium, you can put things on LinkedIn. Right. How did you even know to go down that road?
- [21:23]
Gretchen Rubin
Just the utter commitment. Like, I just, I. It just felt irresistible. But, you know, one thing that's happened to me over and over in my career is I'll have an idea and I'll be like, this is an amazing idea. This is so fascinating. Everybody's going to love this idea. And people will be like, yeah, I don't really get it. I don't really think so. And so I often end up writing almost an entire book before I write a proposal because I feel like I have to have it so well developed in my mind before I can describe it in a way that other people see its potential. Like the Happiness Project, my current project. Power, many fame, sex. I really had to do a huge amount of. It's very hard to describe what you're going to do, I think. So I often end up. Which is. Then I often end up throwing out just a gigantic amount of material because I may have completely changed my entire structure. You know that. That has happened to me many times. I have many, many versions, almost complete versions of things that then I was like, no, this isn't the right approach. And I've had to recast it.
- [22:25]
Jimmy Soni
Have you ever taken a project that far and just abandoned it entirely? Like, no, no. So something's always netted out from the work you've done.
- [22:33]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah, but I think sometimes. Well, I wrote a book called Life in five Senses, and it's about life in five senses. And at first, beautiful book. Well, thank you. Thank you. I love writing that book. But. So first there were nine senses, and I wrote it for nine senses. And I'm like, no, actually there's 11 senses. And I wrote it for 11 senses. And I was having all this trouble and I was like, do I divide it into sub things? I'm like, what about this? What about that? Which ones are alike, which ones are different? And then I was, I was just sort of like, you know, sometimes you can intuit by. By extroverting. And you just. I was just like talking it out with somebody and they said, maybe you just want to do five senses. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is the big insight of all time. Like, went home, like, really just like threw away everything that didn't fit. Just did five senses. Which if I had gotten a board book for a three year old, it would have been seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, the five senses. And that was the structure I ended up with. But it took me so long to get.
- [23:24]
Jimmy Soni
It took you this, but then I
- [23:25]
Gretchen Rubin
do have to write through that. Like, you have to understand, like, why is this, you know, why am I writing but this and not that? How does this all. You know, how does proprioception. What are my thoughts and feelings about proprioception? Turns out I don't have to go into that so much.
- [23:41]
Jimmy Soni
So when you open up this book, how to write your first nonfiction book proposal, what was the process like between that and getting an agent? Just like, brass tacks, because you're not just now. If you and I were to work on a proposal, we've seen it done, we know what we're doing. We can kind of approach certain. We know what the method is like. Yeah, but you're doing it for the first.
- [24:01]
Gretchen Rubin
There is a strange variety. Like, I do feel like there are many, many different ways people do proposals. There's like, do you do 40 pages or do you do four pages? Do you. Do you know anyway? Yes, but we know that those questions exist.
- [24:14]
Jimmy Soni
Right, but you were. You're dealing with unknown unknowns then, or at least sort of semi known.
- [24:19]
Gretchen Rubin
I knew no. And I knew no writers. I remember when it was a huge thing for me. I'm like, it was like, on my list of, you know, like, life goals is like, make friends with writers. Of course. Like, now I know so many writers I can't count.
- [24:31]
Jimmy Soni
Now you're like, I need friends who are not writers because they annoy me and invite me to do podcasts like this.
- [24:36]
Gretchen Rubin
This is so exciting. No, but, yeah, I felt like. But I was lucky. I had a few friends from college who were just like, starting off in that world themselves is, like, very, very early. But they were able to, like, give me lists of names. And so I. I did have that. Like, I had. I had, like, who would I send it to? Cold. Right?
- [24:55]
Jimmy Soni
And then did you do. Was it sort of the first. You had already written a lot of material and then condensed it into a proposal and then sent it off?
- [25:02]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah.
- [25:02]
Jimmy Soni
And so what was the moment like when you had your first agent conversation or when the agent said yes?
- [25:07]
Gretchen Rubin
Oh, my gosh, it was the hugest moment of my life. I mean, I think it's probably the most important moment because it is the moment where you are. You're. You're not an amateur anymore. Because even before I got paid, I was like, time is money. And this person saying they'll represent me means that they're putting their time in me. This means that I am like, I'm on the first rung of being a professional writer. So it was huge. I still have the same agent now that I.
- [25:35]
Jimmy Soni
Still the same agent all these years later.
- [25:36]
Gretchen Rubin
All these years. All these years. Yeah.
- [25:38]
Jimmy Soni
Did they. Do you remember any of the specifics of what they kind of told you after they read the proposal, or did they make changes? How much of a gap was there between what you pitched to the publisher and what you ultimately did with the book?
- [25:51]
Gretchen Rubin
I think it Was pretty close. It was pretty close. In general. My agent is really good at saying something's not good enough, which is a very useful thing. It's not always the most welcome thing. I'm not always eager to open her emails, but she. I remember with the Happiness project, I remember her writing something and she was like, I'm so sorry to write this, but I just don't think it's there yet.
- [26:18]
Jimmy Soni
Wow.
- [26:19]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah. Wow.
- [26:20]
Jimmy Soni
And has her feedback generally as a tuning fork been pretty useful for you?
- [26:24]
Gretchen Rubin
No. Absolutely. Yeah. No. I think she's got a really, really good sense of what's missing, which I think is often hardest to see. As the writer, you don't see what you've left out because it. Forever. Well, you've left it out. So for some reason, it's just like that's something that's in your vision or tone problems. Sometimes you get the tone wrong. Like you're trying to be funny, but it's not landing or you're not seeing that. You need to find a moment of lightness. So I think that that's where her. That's. And then she'll do like a line edits and stuff. But. But yeah, it's more those big picture things.
- [27:00]
Jimmy Soni
Did you talk to multiple agents or did you kind of find one that really understood you?
- [27:04]
Gretchen Rubin
I did talk to multiple agents. I was just thinking. I was just telling somebody the other day. Do you remember Judith Regan?
- [27:09]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
- [27:10]
Gretchen Rubin
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, a huge, big personality. And so my first book is called Power, Money, Fame, Sexy User's Guide. And it's kind of like if you imagine the Preppy handbook being combined with Machiavelli. Right. And it's written like a how to guide. It's very much. And I've always been sort of enchanted by the how to format. So it's written and it's kind of like right on the line between is it satire? Yeah. Or is it.
- [27:33]
Jimmy Soni
Or is it real?
- [27:34]
Gretchen Rubin
Like, you know, and so anyway. But it's very, very dense because it's written in this, like, how to guidebook format. And Judith Regan said to me, she pointed to a page and she said, too many ideas. And I remember thinking that is the most preposterous thing. It's like that scene in In Amadeus where he's like, too many notes. I'm like, what do you mean, too many notes? You can't have too many ideas. That's what we all want. But now I realized that was actually like a really profound insight. Like, I write too tight. I Cut too much. I need to loosen. I need to open it. Ever since, like, like, that's something that I've. So. No. So I talked to, like, nine agents, I think, at that time. Yeah.
- [28:13]
Jimmy Soni
What made you want to pick the one you went with? Just to get very tactical. If you can think back, I think
- [28:18]
Gretchen Rubin
she just felt like she understood what I was trying to do. Like, she got why it was funny, she got why it was interesting. She wasn't trying to fundamentally change it. You know, sometimes my sister writes for Hollywood, and there are these moments where they're like, we love it. It's wizard school, but let's set it in Wall street, you know? And you're like, okay, I don't really see. So sometimes you do get or just like, their taste. Like, sometimes people have a taste where you're thinking, I don't want to be fighting their taste. So I just felt like we were the most, like, in sync in terms of, like, her response and everything. So.
- [28:52]
Jimmy Soni
And so you. You send a proposal to the agent, and I remember this process, and they then, you know, at the time especially, it was much more of a black box. Like, you. You don't know what they do.
- [29:00]
Gretchen Rubin
I don't know what cocktail partners are going to take Forever.
- [29:03]
Jimmy Soni
It takes forever. What was it like? Like, did you. How did you land on the publisher? You found? Like, what was that process? Like, did they. Did you have multiple offers? Like, how did you. You remember back to what happened?
- [29:15]
Gretchen Rubin
Gosh, isn't that crazy? I don't even remember if I have multiple offers. I'm still really good friends with my first editor, Greer Hendricks, who now herself is like, a very, like, you know, like a number one best selling author of psychological thrillers. So she's still in my life as well. I might have only gotten one offer for that. And I remember, like, you know, somebody said like, well, how much did you get? I'm like, I would have done it for free.
- [29:34]
Jimmy Soni
I would have done it for free
- [29:35]
Gretchen Rubin
if they had said, like, we're paying you $0, but we will publish it. I'll take that deal. Yeah.
- [29:40]
Jimmy Soni
I always tell authors to just write the proposal. Like, it's. It's not. You don't. You don't really lose that much if you're trying to put a nonfiction book project together. And you, you know, you could go one of two ways. Your way is far. It requires far more. Like, it's actually much more admirable in some ways. You sort of write the book fully through.
- [29:58]
Gretchen Rubin
But I will say, like, I'm not in. I don't have to do, like, things like traveling to do interviews. Like a lot of nonfiction authors. There's a huge financial thing, whereas I'm really writing more of an essayistic thing where it's my time and it's like money that I don't have in my pocket now. But I'm not paying, you know, paying
- [30:14]
Jimmy Soni
to do the proposal because a lot
- [30:16]
Gretchen Rubin
of people, they have enormous expenses associated with actually writing the book. Yeah.
- [30:21]
Jimmy Soni
But I, I tell authors too, that the proposal does help you clarify. Like, even if you're going to self publish, even if you're going to do anything.
- [30:27]
Gretchen Rubin
100.
- [30:28]
Jimmy Soni
Right.
- [30:28]
Gretchen Rubin
No, you. Everybody wants to skip that stage because you're like, why should I waste my time in a proposal? Let me just get to the book. But you're right. It can save you. A lot of times, I think people write a proposal and they realize it just doesn't. Just doesn't hold up. And then you've saved yourself tons of grief. Tons of grief.
- [30:44]
Jimmy Soni
You actually are forced to get the structure down. I mean, you're forced to do like much of the book, you know, even getting style.
- [30:51]
Gretchen Rubin
Such good advice. Pacing. Yeah. Like, you can look and say, like, oh, this book is really out of pace. Like too much of it is in two chapters. But I'm saying there's 10 chapters. Like, I have to. That's. You can't have a book like that.
- [31:07]
Jimmy Soni
And I would say even the comp titles then force you to make the argument about why your book is different. And I was going to ask you about that, that project in particular, because it's not like you're the first person to write about those four themes. Right. What in your head back then, what were you trying, how are you trying to position it to make it different?
- [31:21]
Gretchen Rubin
Well, part of it, that it was this really like, how to.
- [31:23]
Jimmy Soni
How to do these things.
- [31:25]
Gretchen Rubin
And it's written. And it is, it's. It's written in a. In a particular tone. It is very distinctive whether or not you like it. It's a, It's a distinctive book. Yeah.
- [31:37]
Jimmy Soni
When you go back, what was the. So you get the deal. Do you remember any of those moments, like when you find out that you're going to do it and then. Because there is a moment where you figure out you have the deal and you're like, oh, I'm like the dog that caught the car.
- [31:47]
Gretchen Rubin
No, no, no, no. Right, right, right, right.
- [31:49]
Jimmy Soni
Did you have that feeling at all?
- [31:50]
Gretchen Rubin
Oh, no. Just like so happy to be. Just. Yeah. But you know I mean, to your point about the, like, kind of the confusion around the, the, the process, one of the things I, and I often will say this to people who are on the publishing side. I'm like, people know how to be a writer, but they don't know how to be an author. Like, they don't know what trim size is. They don't trade publishing is. They don't know what a pub date is. They don't know, like, what first run is or first serial or like promo copy. You know, there's all these things that you don't understand. And I think a lot of times they don't know what you don't know. And I do remember a lot of it just feeling like, oh, I'm supposed to know so much more about this process and feeling like I shouldn't just say, oh, I don't, I really don't know what that word is, or I don't know. You're asking me a question, but I don't know the implications of my answer.
- [32:41]
Jimmy Soni
Right.
- [32:41]
Gretchen Rubin
Like, I remember somebody who was, who self published and they changed the number of pages and then when she got the book, the quality of the paper was lower than they had agreed to. And they said, but you raised the page count and that meant the quality of the paper had to change. And she's like, but I didn't know the implications of that decision. So you don't know again, you don't know what you don't know. So now I try to really just admit, like, I don't know what you're asking. I don't know what that means.
- [33:10]
Jimmy Soni
Even now, it's an interesting, you know, I had a similar experience because I don't know if you felt this way. I certainly felt this way. You get the first deal and you, you do feel a bit like you're like, I got away with something. Right. Like, I sold this thing to you. You're about to give me money and you don't know that I have no
- [33:28]
Gretchen Rubin
idea what I'm doing. Here I go then.
- [33:30]
Jimmy Soni
So then you start doing it and they will ping you with things or send you terms of art within the publishing world and you don't want to reveal to them. Yes, you have no idea what you're doing.
- [33:41]
Gretchen Rubin
You just try to figure.
- [33:42]
Jimmy Soni
It's like, no pump that I got. And then you're like furiously trying to look up, like, what the answer to the question is. Yeah, I think this actually drives a lot of authors to drink.
- [33:50]
Gretchen Rubin
Like it's a pub day for a reason.
- [33:52]
Jimmy Soni
Well, It's a good thing you do find yourself, like, having to find. Fake it. Especially if you're getting started. You don't know what you don't know what you don't know. And then worse is you don't know. You always have this persistent fear, at least I did with my first book, of if I say the wrong thing, they will wake up to me being an imposter, take the deal away and say, what business do you have doing this kind of work? Right. Yeah. Did you. Was any of that part of your experience of writing the book? So once you go through the deal, you're done with the deal. We've gotten past the deal. Now you're in the writing. What was that process like? How did you. Because it's your first time out.
- [34:23]
Gretchen Rubin
It was my first time out. Yeah. Like, I remember not understanding, like, something like, first pass. I don't. I still am like, remind me, what about first pass? For me, a huge thing. And I didn't know this until I was like, on my third book. So this is the kind of thing you learn the hard way is there is a. There. There's a point at which you can make lots of changes. You can change anything you want. You could add an entire huge chapter. You could change the ending. You could do anything you want. Then there comes a point where your window is starting to close. Then there comes a point where you're looking at it, but they're only going to fix a mistake, a typo, a factual error, and they might charge you even for that. And then there's a point where they're like, if you do it, it is the hugest, biggest deal. And I also learned is every time you go into a draft and make a change, you introduce an opportunity for error because something goes wrong. There's an. There's a stray, like, punctuation piece that doesn't get caught. Or you use the same word two sentences above, but you forgot to check because you just added this one thing and you didn't realize you just used the word pageant or whatever. So one thing I've learned is, like, you need to watch. I need to watch that very carefully. Like, what. What stage of editing am I in? Because I will edit, edit, edit every single thing up into the last minute. I would never just say, oh, it's done. Pencils. Oh, here's a question for you. Somebody just asked me this question. Let's say you submit a draft to your editor. Okay? So it's with your editor. Are you like, okay, now I'm Gonna take a break for the book while it's in their hands. Are you like, I will continue to edit myself and then I'll just incorporate their edits into whatever I've done. Right. It never even occurred to me to stop editing my own work. I'm like, of course I'm gonna edit every single day. I'm not gonna wait for them, right? No. Somebody was like, that's. Why would you do that? That's bonkers. I'm like, I. Okay, what's your thought?
- [36:23]
Jimmy Soni
So this is the thing, is that you, you and I are wired very similarly.
- [36:26]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah.
- [36:27]
Jimmy Soni
But it is also an editor's nightmare to have this happen, Right? Like in the sense where the diverging. Where the diverging. Well, because I'm like you, as soon as I turn it into them, you're like immediately thinking, hey, let's like go back and revise every chapter and like blow things up and twist things around
- [36:41]
Gretchen Rubin
because you got this time. You can't wait.
- [36:43]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah, you can't wait. And the thing, so I would say one is, I know you, you probably feel this way as well. No one is going to invest the time into my book that I will, full stop. My name's on the front. I live and die by the words in it.
- [36:56]
Gretchen Rubin
You're thinking about it morning, noon.
- [36:58]
Jimmy Soni
And I, I can't tell you, I mean, for most of the books I love, I probably couldn't tell you who published them with a couple exceptions. I know sometimes, like, just because of the way we're in the industry, I know some of the editors that are putting out the work I like, like. But for the most part, most listeners aren't going to know who published the last great unless they looked at the spine of the book. I know I'm going to live and die by the words. And I know that I'm going to obsess over them like nobody's business. And here's the thing, I think there's, there's, there's the way publishers tell you that the editing ought to go, which has a rhyme and reason, by the way. Like there's a reason why they do things the way they do. And I have found that that process is actually first rate everything kind of post copy editing production with traditional publishing is actually phenomenal. Right. But I have found that like we're ultimately dealing with a PDF and in 2026, like making those changes is not that big of a deal. Like there's ways to work around it. I edit right up until the goal line. I edit until I Can edit no more. If it were possible to edit in the hour before it was sent to China to get, I would.
- [37:56]
Gretchen Rubin
Because you're constantly like, that verb is kind of, you know, vague. I can strengthen that. Or like, oh, I thought of a. Or like, for me, I use a lot of examples. So if I. That I get from real life. And so sometimes I'll just get a much better example from life. So I'm like, well, I want to swap this example for that example. Because it's just a stronger, more interesting version of the point that I'm trying to make. Or you just have an original idea and you're like, oh, I want to. I want to layer that in.
- [38:21]
Jimmy Soni
And I would frame it differently. And this is true of all creative work for me. It's just a touch different. The specifics matter, what you just said about word choice and about. But I actually think what happens is if you have a deadline where you're supposed to send something into an editor, you pour an enormous amount of energy into everything leading up to that moment, right? And you sort of give it your all. It can be this, like, whole body experience of editing. Your friends can't talk to you. You, like, sort of can't communicate with the rest of the species. Your family starts to resent you a little bit. You drive and drive and drive and drive. And let's say it's like a Monday at 5 o' clock and you press send Monday at 5 and you send them to draft. You're so frustrated, fried. At least for me, I'm so fried at the end of that process that if I take. If I take a day or two, the editing I do after that is better often than the editing I did at the tail end of that crazy marathon. So I take a day or two break, but then I get right back at it because I'm bringing better, you know, energy to it than I was before. So I actually think of it as super important to go back and dive into the draft as opposed to walking away from it. Because I. In that state, I don't know what I was doing in the 72 hours leading up to the deadline. Maybe it was good, maybe it was bad. I frequently find it wasn't that good. And so I think it's an energy management thing. My energy goes all the way to empty right up until the deadline. And then it sort of fills up in the day or two after and I'm ready to look at the project with fresh eyes. And ultimately the line I always use like, everybody wins. Like we're going to, we're going to sell books.
- [39:42]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah. No, no, no, no. It's better to have a better book, as always. Well, one thing I want to do too is read the book aloud. And that takes a lot of time. And so like, that's the kind of thing that's good. Nobody's going to do that other than you. And so that's the kind of thing also that you can do when you're sort of in that downtime. Because it takes a lot, it takes a lot of time to do it and a lot of focus, but you can kind of do it, you know, in that period.
- [40:11]
Jimmy Soni
So you go right back into editing as soon as you turn it in and start to dive right back in.
- [40:15]
Gretchen Rubin
Well, and I don't even really have a deadline. So what I'll say to my editor is like, I will edit right up until the time I'm ready. Now, what I have now is a complete draft, but I will continue to edit it. So when you're ready to read it, tell me and I will give you the most up to date draft. Because if you're not going to read it for a week, it's already going to be changed by the time. So for me, the deadline is always okay, I'm ready to read it now. Send it to me. And then. So they'll have the most up to date one, and then, and then. So I. So for me, the deadline is just a suggestion. It's, it's like now I'm. What by when do you need to have it be ready for you? A lot of times I find editors really aren't ready. Like they might say, I'll be ready early this month, but then they have something that came in that needed a lot more work than they expected. And so they're not really ready right then. So I always feel like it's good to say, when are you ready for me?
- [41:06]
Jimmy Soni
Well, and I think that the publishing industry is pretty accustomed to delays. Right? Like it's, it's, it's like you can always move it back. You can't move it forward. I followed that rule sometimes in a reckless way. Like I actually got charged for additional editing. I was one of those people because I edited during my first and second and third pass pages.
- [41:22]
Gretchen Rubin
Oh, but then, but then do this with the kids.
- [41:25]
Jimmy Soni
Don't do it at home. Really don't.
- [41:26]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah. There's a point where they get very, very cranky.
- [41:31]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah, I would say that being on the other side of it, I understand why they get cranky. And at the same time, there's a writer I really admire, Eric Larson, who talks about how he edits his first and second and third. And I was like, you know, if it's good enough for Eric, it's good enough for me. Like, because there. There is something. What I would say is the reason that authors edit the first and second and third pass pages, sometimes more aggressively than a Word document or a Google Doc or something else, is because we're finally seeing it laid out on page.
- [41:56]
Gretchen Rubin
It makes a huge difference.
- [41:58]
Jimmy Soni
I don't know if you've had that experience. You have.
- [41:59]
Gretchen Rubin
No, I. Funnily enough, I think anything that you do that changes the way it looks like if you print it out, you'll pick up completely different things. If you read it out loud, you'll pick up different things. You can put it in a different font. Because I feel like my font kind of looks like my handwriting. And if I even. But there is something hugely psychologically, when it's laid out and it looks like a xerox of a page of a book now. In fact, that's a really good point. I mean, I'm sure now we could easily do that ourselves.
- [42:25]
Jimmy Soni
Oh, yeah. It's much easier.
- [42:26]
Gretchen Rubin
That's a really good idea. I want to do that.
- [42:28]
Jimmy Soni
It's much easier. And I actually done it just because,
- [42:30]
Gretchen Rubin
as you say, you pick up a command completely. You have a completely different sense of your book.
- [42:33]
Jimmy Soni
Well, you do. And also, by the way, the simplest example, and it happens all the time, is you write a paragraph and you think it's short, but it turns out to be really long. The only time you realize it's really long is when you see it in your first pass pages. You look at it and you're like, this is a giant block of impenetrable text that nobody is going to want to go through in 2026. Right. Like, this is. We don't. We don't have these kinds of attention spans. I need to take this, create an indent. And I'm only going to know that when the first pass pages come around.
- [42:59]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah. Where your line edits fall. I mean, your line breaks fall, whether your headers are working. I think a lot of things do become you. Just a lot of stuff. Sort of. That's a really good idea. I'm going to do that. Like, figure out how can I make it look. Or maybe they can do it just like. Well, we'll just do it to you as a favor.
- [43:18]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
- [43:18]
Gretchen Rubin
Like just to kind of fake it.
- [43:19]
Jimmy Soni
A fake first pass.
- [43:21]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah. That's a really good stage.
- [43:26]
Jimmy Soni
It's a great stage. And it's also, it's save them time, it'll save them time later. It's also an important stage. Like it really is. Like you look at it differently, you feel differently about it. I've actually cut chapters in half.
- [43:37]
Gretchen Rubin
You've got a publishing house. You've got to introduce the past pages.
- [43:41]
Jimmy Soni
We've got to introduce. Yeah, this will be our, among our many innovations, another one. The thing, the thing about it though, if people don't realize that when you're, when you are have stared at something as often as your own words on the page, the change in form matters a great deal. It is the only way to see them afresh. You don't, otherwise you're just looking at the same document the same way. And so for me, I do this thing. I have a tracker for every chapter of a book and it has read aloud, question mark, printed, question mark, printed edit, question mark. And like, what was it? Oh, mobile. So I read on my phone.
- [44:17]
Gretchen Rubin
So I also, I've never done that.
- [44:19]
Jimmy Soni
So let's nerd out for a second. So here's why there's two, there's two or three reasons why. The first is people are reading on smaller format devices.
- [44:27]
Gretchen Rubin
That's 100% true.
- [44:28]
Jimmy Soni
And so you have people who will download the book to Kindle, they'll have their Kindle synced to their phone.
- [44:32]
Gretchen Rubin
But even a Kindle is a smaller format than reading a book. So you already. They're multiple sizes.
- [44:37]
Jimmy Soni
So that's one reason is my reader. Readers are reading that way. The second reason is an interesting one. If you're, if you're working in Google Docs like I am. But I'm sure this is true of any software you're editing on. You can find a mobile version when you're in your phone. You actually like, because of the way we text and because our thumbs are doing a lot of thinking, I find that I write differently. And so when you're reading something on a phone in Google Docs, you're kind of having this experience of like, what if this was being, what if this passage was being texted to a friend? Does it work? And so it's actually like, it's a way to sort of look at it and be like, you know, this could be tighter, this could be shorter, this could be more succinct. It, it pushes you in the direction of being succinct. That's reason to.
- [45:17]
Gretchen Rubin
That's like, really? Because a lot of times I might this is the training as a lawyer that I always have to push back is a lot of times my first is like, really kind of like long and wordy, and it's like, pull it back, pull it back. Be more succinct. Speak more clearly. That's a really good point.
- [45:32]
Jimmy Soni
The reason is if you turn off your notifications, which should. Anyway, you. You realize that on a computer, it's much easier to be distracted because you have to make an affirmative choice to open up a new tab or, like, change software to, like. It's a real choice for some reason to me on a. On a computer to go and be distracted like you. I'm sorry, it's not. It's a much easier choice on a computer to be distracted than it is on a phone. Because with a phone, I find that if I've got the notifications off and I'm looking at that document on my phone, there's something about it that's much more. It compels me to focus on it as opposed to, like, oh, I could just like, drift off and do this, or drift off and do email or anything. The final reason is simple. I have my phone with me all the time, so I can always be editing. Like, you're on subway, you can edit. You're waiting for a friend at a restaurant, you can edit. You can edit in all these, like, little confetti minutes, right, that, like, you just sort of track during the day. And I find that for me, editing on the phone has actually become a big part of getting books to just be snappier, be more succinct. It's a totally different way of looking at it.
- [46:28]
Gretchen Rubin
That is such a good idea. I'm going to. I'm going to instantly do that. I never thought of that because I know I always read books and paper, right?
- [46:35]
Jimmy Soni
Same.
- [46:35]
Gretchen Rubin
I always.
- [46:36]
Jimmy Soni
And I'm old school in that way, so it didn't.
- [46:38]
Gretchen Rubin
It just. It didn't occur to me, but 100%, I know you're exactly right. And it's just any. Any ch. Anything that switches it up reveals new problems, basically.
- [46:48]
Jimmy Soni
One question I have, not about just your first book, but about projects in general. There are lows in projects, right? So you and I have talked about the highs, right? We covered the highs. Did you have with your first book or with subsequent books, do you have a method or a way of dealing with the moments when you feel stuck or when you're like, I don't know if this is going to work or that kind of thing, or do you just like breeze through.
- [47:08]
Gretchen Rubin
No, if I feel stuck, I, I will just get up and walk around so I won't like, persist in something that I'm stuck in. I'm a big believer of like the unconscious mind will, will be working on something. So like, let's say, let's say I'm in a late stage of editing and so like I have five problems left to solve. And these are the hardest problems because they're the ones that do all the easy ones first. So I might just like look at them and think about them and then walk away or you know, let a day go by and try and try them again and then if I still can't solve them, like sort of repeat. So I'm like in the problem and trying and trying to, and really pushing myself to try to solve it. But if I haven't solved it, then I'll get up, walk around. I'm also really, really a morning person. So I get up at 5:30 and from 5:30 to 9 is the best time for my thinking. So anything that's hard, I do then. So if I have a hard problem, I'll sort of skip it and save it to do it first so I can do it first thing in the morning. Because that's my, by far, my, my best time. But yeah, I think there's always, there's always problems. There's always things when you're like, I don't, this is something I should incorporate, but I don't see how or where it should go or how I would even broach it or it's like a complicated idea that's hard to succinctly convey. Right.
- [48:28]
Jimmy Soni
You know, when you're, when you're in
- [48:29]
Gretchen Rubin
the middle, some kind of pervasive issue you gotta tackle when you're in the
- [48:32]
Jimmy Soni
middle of a project. I have the challenge of sometimes you're, you're sort of, you know, you want to dance with the girl that you brought, but then you have this other project. Like there's always the other projects that you're like, hooky book.
- [48:42]
Gretchen Rubin
That's what I have.
- [48:44]
Jimmy Soni
That's a great, that's a great one.
- [48:45]
Gretchen Rubin
I often have a hooky book. Yes. Now my, When I was writing better than my book about habit formation, my hooky book was a book that turned into Outer order Inner Call. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
- [48:55]
Jimmy Soni
Wow. So how do you, how do you prevent yourself from going to. And turning the hooky book into the. The Daily Driver?
- [49:02]
Gretchen Rubin
Right, right, right. Yeah, I know that it is. You've got to remember it's A hooky book. For me, it's all about note taking. So note taking is a big. Is a big thing for me. So I will let myself take notes on it. Like, and I'll. I might read for it and take. Put notes into it, but I would never allow myself to, like, begin to structure it. Because once I'm structuring, then I'm like, okay, now I'm really tackling it. Book. But because I always start with a bunch of notes, having a bunch of notes, then when I'm ready to start writing, then I. I have this, like, huge head start. So it's a good use of my time. But you're right, you've got to make sure that it doesn't. It doesn't swallow up what your. What your main project is.
- [49:39]
Jimmy Soni
And sometimes, by the way, hooky books can yield something amazing, as you put it. You know, like, you. You can have a. I just. I find that. That. That is a. It's tempting because the beginning of these projects is some of the best. Yeah.
- [49:51]
Gretchen Rubin
Okay, so there's beginners, and there's openers and finishers. Okay, so openers are people who love to open a project. So, like, they love the beginning stages. They love to start something new. Like, I talked to a professor, and he's like, I have, like, seven half finished, you know, new curricula for new classes, because he loved to open. But then there. And then finishers are people who love to end. They love to finish. And both of them have pros and cons because openers sometimes don't finish. And so they don't get, like, the benefits of their work. And they can get distracted because they're pulled in so many directions. But finishers, sometimes they just want to be done so badly that they might rush at the end because they're just like, okay, I just really want to get this crossed off the list. But a lot of times it's that last work that's really painstaking and difficult that can really make something go to the next level. And sometimes they are too cautious about what they start because they think, well, if I can't finish it, maybe I shouldn't start it. But sometimes with creativity, you kind of have to say, like, well, maybe I'll start it and. And maybe it won't go anywhere, but I need to just kind of, like, get it started to see. And so I think it's good to know, like, which one do you lean toward so that you kind of can try to offset that.
- [51:00]
Jimmy Soni
Are you an opener or finisher?
- [51:02]
Gretchen Rubin
I'M a finisher for sure.
- [51:03]
Jimmy Soni
Okay.
- [51:03]
Gretchen Rubin
I'm a finisher. I love to cross things off the list. And it is, it's like towards the end, I, I feel myself like being like, like, let's just, let's just say it. Done. Oh, here's an edit. But I'm just going to decide. I don't agree with that edit. It's like, I actually do agree with that edit. I just want to be done. Yeah, I want to finish.
- [51:20]
Jimmy Soni
There's a, there's that expression, once you're lucky, twice you're good. Right. And the first time I did a book, I really did feel like I was. I mean, I knew the book was good, but I felt like I got lucky. It was the second time where I was like, okay, I can actually, this is a real thing. I know how to do this. What, did you have a similar experience? How was it, what was the process like from the, the first to the second project? Because you also changed.
- [51:39]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah, I changed that my second book was like a short, unusual biography of Winston Churchill.
- [51:47]
Jimmy Soni
Which is, it's a fantastic book.
- [51:49]
Gretchen Rubin
It's really great. No, I love that book for me. And this still is a thing which is, are you going to be able to write your next book? If you're a traditionally published person, that's a concern. Which is, are you going to get published again? Are you going to get a deal again? You know, is somebody going to want to publish you again? So I do feel like that. And I've never done a two book deal, so I've always faced that, which is, I'm going out there again. Right.
- [52:13]
Jimmy Soni
And so how did you go from power, from the power book to Churchill? Like, what was that process like?
- [52:19]
Gretchen Rubin
Well, when I was studying power, I kept coming across these references to Churchill. So then I became very preoccupied with Churchill. And then a lot of my books have sort of like an origin moment. And so I was standing at the corner of 69th and 3rd Avenue and I said to my husband, you know, you could write a book about Winston Churchill. That would just be like the most adulatory thing of all time. And you could write a book about Winston Churchill that is so critical of him. And both of them could be completely factually accurate. And he said, you could write that book. And I was like, oh, my goodness, I am 100% going to write that book. And I had been reading all these biographies, so I had all these thoughts about the nature of biography. That's another unwritten book that I have. I have this enormous collection of Quotations about the nature of biography which I could work into something which I actually, I forgot until this minute I had. I should go back and look at that because it's very cool. But anyway, so 40 ways to look at Winston Churchill is both about Winston Churchill and it's also about the nature of biography. But how this connected with power, money, fame, sex. Like, in my mind, they're very closely associated. From a book publishing standpoint, they're not closely associated with it, but I was just able to pull that off.
- [53:30]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah. And how did. Did you have to convince, coax, cajole, like, you know, because you're one of the rare people and this is a true gift that you've managed to like, jump from idea to idea. But they're very. They can be very disparate. Right. Like it. They're like, to quote the church, like, the pudding has no theme. I know it has a theme. And I kind of know that you're following your intuitions and your curiosities, but it's not as though you're sort of.
- [53:51]
Gretchen Rubin
They're all about human nature. To me. That's the thing is they're all about how do you. And one of the ways you understand human nature is you look at someone like Winston Churchill or jfk, and they're just so huge and there's such a vast quantity of information about them that you can study them in a way that you can't study somebody who's just like, more a more modest player on the world stage. So to me, they feel very, very connected. But you're right, but from a publishing standpoint, they're incredibly disparate.
- [54:15]
Jimmy Soni
But I'm surprised that nobody pushed back to say, could you do another book on, you know, power? Or, hey, could we take one of the verticals and like, really go deep, you know?
- [54:21]
Gretchen Rubin
I know, I know. It's down now to me. Yeah. Because once I started writing about happiness, I have. They've all been sort of connected with how do you have a happier life?
- [54:30]
Jimmy Soni
Right.
- [54:30]
Gretchen Rubin
And it is nice to sort of be building around a core subject now with 40. So when I wrote sorry, I wrote 40 ways to look at Winston Churchill, it did pretty well. I wrote 40 Ways to Look at JFK. And you know, when a book is flops, they tell you. Or at least my. My team tells me, your book didn't find its audience. My book didn't find its audience. I wanted to write. I wanted to write 40 Ways to Look at Richard Nixon. Oh, and that wasn't going to just like this Just wasn't a form. I probably would have kept going. I wanted to do Ben Franklin, I wanted to do Leonardo da Vinci, I want to do Saint Therese of Lia. It just, it wasn't, it wasn't supported by the market.
- [55:08]
Jimmy Soni
Why do you think, why do you think Churchill worked but JFK didn't?
- [55:12]
Gretchen Rubin
Okay. So I think I have a theory about that. Let me tell you what I think. So I think the people that, that are interested in JFK are, they are either they adore Kennedy and admire him tremendously and everything that he stands for in their minds or they think they really, this, you know, they think Kennedy like was such a fake and he was like doing all this stuff and it's like this dark underside and like what was he getting up to? And so a book that talks about the Camelotter conspiracy. Yeah, but exactly, that's perfectly. Well, that would be great cover copy. Yeah, you're thinking like a publisher. So they don't want to see the other side. They want one or the other, they don't want to see both. And so like people would look at this and they're like, I don't want that. Whereas I think the people who come to Churchill. So when I wrote the Churchill, and this is a good example of the fact that when you write a book, you never know who the true audience for the book is. You don't know who it's really going to appeal to. So when I wrote the Churchill book, I was, was thinking, there are all these people in the world who have no idea that Winston Churchill is the most fascinating character in history and I will be the gateway drug. They will read my short book and then they will go on to the eight volume biographies, which I think is absolutely fascinating. But they don't yet know that they want to read. Yeah, but that wasn't who the audience for the book was. The audience for the book was the people who had already read every single Winston Churchill biography. They knew tons about him. So they were interested in my take because my take was like, look 40 ways to look at Winston Churchill. So it was looking at him through all these different lenses, often which were like very much in opposition or very surprising and they're meant. Or paradoxical. They were meant to sort of show you what you could. The limits of biography. So people who knew a lot about Churchill were the people who were attracted to that and with whom it resonated. So it was not at all the audience that I thought I was writing to. It was like the opposite. But I think that audience didn't exist for jfk because the Churchill people, I think that was an audience that understood, like, the triumphs and tragedies. You know, I think that's even like, the title of one of the big. Yeah, they got it. That his flaws were his weaknesses, and his weaknesses were his strengths. And, you know, so part of it, I think, had to do with the nature of the audience for that figure.
- [57:17]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
- [57:17]
Gretchen Rubin
But somebody told me. They said to me, gretchen, when most people read a biography, they want an authoritative account with some new information. Information. And that's not what you're writing. And it's like, it's not what I'm writing. It's like I was writing a book that people weren't that interested in.
- [57:32]
Jimmy Soni
It was more of an impressionist painting Almost. Right.
- [57:34]
Gretchen Rubin
40 ways. Right. So it's like a Monet haystack painting. Yeah. Right.
- [57:38]
Jimmy Soni
And then, you know, I have a million questions about that. We could get into. About the Churchill book. But the. One of the. One of the. I. I imagine a criticism or I imagine pushback that you could get is. Gretchen. I mean, the shell's grown under the weight of Churchill.
- [57:54]
Gretchen Rubin
100%. Yes. No, Churchill himself said.
- [57:57]
Jimmy Soni
Exactly.
- [57:57]
Gretchen Rubin
That's. That field has been plowed. I mean, even when he was still
- [58:00]
Jimmy Soni
alive and he himself was prolific and
- [58:03]
Gretchen Rubin
like, oh, my gosh, this is his own.
- [58:04]
Jimmy Soni
Competing against your subject and people who have written about your subject ad nauseam for 50 years. 60 years. So how did you. Did you have to deal with that? Any of that?
- [58:13]
Gretchen Rubin
I mean, I drove. I dealt with it in the introduction. I just said, yeah, like, I get it, but your publisher still went for it. Yeah. And it's just like. But there's always a new way to understand him and his own account of himself. The biggest problem with the Churchill book was that Churchill himself is such an outstanding writer that I felt like whatever he wrote just, like, jumped off the page. And then my stuff was like, eh, this is. Yeah, meh. But I learned so much as a writer from Churchill. Like, that was the thing I didn't expect. It's just like. Because I would type out, like, all these. You know, these. My favorite speeches and things that he would write my favorite passages. And there was so much. As a writer, like, that would be a really fun book, which is like writing lessons from Winston Churchill because he was a master.
- [58:56]
Jimmy Soni
So I think there is a book like Churchill as writer.
- [58:58]
Gretchen Rubin
I'm sure there is. Right. Yeah. The wit and wisdom. No, I'm sure I probably have that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [59:06]
Jimmy Soni
You made a really important point and it's, it's an interesting one for any, anybody who's listening, who is a creative and there are many that you. I. The way I've heard it described ones, you have to leave a reader sized hole in your work, right? So you never know. That's what you said. You never know who is going to find your book and use it or treat it or think about it in a way that you've never anticipated, right? So for you it was, oh, this is the gateway drug. And it turned out to be.
- [59:28]
Gretchen Rubin
It's like
- [59:31]
Jimmy Soni
this is the aperture, this is the finishing course for this particular meal, right. I had a similar experience with my first book which was about an ancient Roman senator named Cato. It was called Rome's Last Citizen. And I remember thinking, well, I'm writing this for people who are super nerdy like me, really enjoy Roman history. They probably read about Caesar. They might have read about Cicero. This fits that spot on the bookshelf.
- [59:53]
Gretchen Rubin
Great.
- [59:53]
Jimmy Soni
That's the audience. And it turned out that Cato was one of the patron saints of stoicism. And stoicism had a renaissance like among different people. And like people like Tim Ferriss, like, read my book, loved it. Let me blog on his site. Way back in the day, right? And it took off among the sto, the sort of contemporary stoicism set, right. I heard a story about Michael Lewis when he did Liar's Poker. He said he thought he was writing kind of a message in a bottle for people to stay away from lost, to stay away from Wall Street. And what he got were like hundreds of letters like, I read your how to guide for how to succeed on Wall street. Like is there, are there things you left out?
- [60:30]
Gretchen Rubin
Right.
- [60:31]
Jimmy Soni
I do think you have to leave a reader sized hole. Like it's one of the challenging things actually about doing this work is when you see it misinterpreted or you see it kind of like. And it's not always a bad thing because if people are reading it, you're happy, right? But I do find that there's a little bit of like, well, what about that little thing that I put in there that everybody missed that I was so happy about? Have you had moments like that?
- [60:50]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah, you have to let go of that. You have to let go of that. Well, it's funny because in writing about happiness, like a lot of times people will say to me, well, I know you wrote in your book, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I never wrote that at all. You know, But I'm just like, if you brought that to it, that's fine. You know, it's because I think once people start thinking, one of the nicest things that anybody said to me about my work was somebody said it was either better than before or the Happiness Project. They said, I've never read a book about somebody else that made me think about myself more. And I'm like, that's exactly what I'm going for. But when people are reading a book and they're trying to understand it for themselves, of course they're going to start seeing things in the book that you
- [61:24]
Jimmy Soni
never put that intended.
- [61:26]
Gretchen Rubin
And.
- [61:26]
Jimmy Soni
And it's. And it's actually also one of the. The books are great randomness machines in this way.
- [61:31]
Gretchen Rubin
That's a great way. It's just like, just throw a bunch of ideas and, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. But the question is, how do you put yourself in the place where the teacher can appear?
- [61:41]
Jimmy Soni
Right, Right.
- [61:42]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah.
- [61:42]
Jimmy Soni
And it's. But it's also one of the most gratifying. Like, I'll. You get random notes from people about some little ingredient you included you didn't think was a big deal or a footnote. You threw that a stray footnote that ends up being a thing.
- [61:54]
Gretchen Rubin
Wait, can I tell you an example from our podcast? Okay, so I have the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast, which is my sister. So sometimes people would, would, would send in. And this is to the point of, like, you never know what ideas are going to land deep with people. So somebody had written in and said, I lost my engagement ring. It was really important to me. We can't afford to replace it. I am just sick about it. I don't know. I looked everywhere. I just can't find it. I just can't find it. And my question is, how do I make my peace with this? How do I find happiness when I have just, like, so much, when I'm just so upset about this? So the question isn't how to deal with a ring. The question is, how do I deal with the negative emotions that I have around the ring? So we had our own answer. Whatever. Then a listener wrote in. And her answer, People to this day are like, what was the episode where the woman talked about this answer? We have returned to it several times because people just struck a chord. She said, in Japan, we have the belief that a precious object might sacrifice itself for you, that to save you from a bad fate, it might lose itself. And she said, it's totally a myth, but it might be Comforting for her to think that this precious possession had lost itself to save her. And to us, this was so striking because it's just a reframing, right? Nothing in the. None of the facts have changed. It's just. Just the reframing in your mind. And people to this day are like, what episode was it where that woman talked about the ring losing itself? There's just something about it to just. And then I was in Japan, and I was having some. I was with a guide, and I mentioned this, and she looked at me and she said, it's very Japanese.
- [63:31]
Jimmy Soni
That does. It sounds.
- [63:33]
Gretchen Rubin
It's very Japanese story with that cultural context.
- [63:35]
Jimmy Soni
Like, that sounds Japanese.
- [63:36]
Gretchen Rubin
It sounds Japanese. And because the reader herself is in Japan. And this is. We have this thought, but. So that was an interesting example where to us, this was just like, oh, interesting insight from a listener and response. And like, we're just like, we. We have these all the time. And then it was just like. It just reverberated for years. And so sometimes you just don't know. And I think for, like, for creative people, this is why sometimes it's good to just, like, throw a lot of ideas out there, because you don't always know that you've hit a deep seam, because, like you said, there's so many rabbit holes that you're going down all the time. You know, sometimes it's really. It's really illuminating to think, like, oh, this is an idea that people are really. That, like, somehow is really striking a chord.
- [64:14]
Jimmy Soni
It's also one of the reasons why I tell people, whether they are authors or just readers, to write in. Like, to tell the person who created the thing what specific things stood with you. Like, I just have a default habit now if I walk around the world.
- [64:29]
Gretchen Rubin
Do you really do that with books you read?
- [64:31]
Jimmy Soni
With books I read with statues.
- [64:32]
Gretchen Rubin
I walk by.
- [64:33]
Jimmy Soni
I remember I walked by Jane's Carousel in Brooklyn, and I was so. My daughter was riding it a lot. And I remember thinking, this is a really nice carousel, and it's nicer, and I could get in trouble for this, but it's nicer than the Bryant park, the Sea Glass, the Central park one. It's the nicest carousel in New York. It's very beautifully maintained. And so I started doing going down the rabbit hole. And I remember thinking, I was like, my habit is like, I'll find it, find the creator, write them some kind of note so that they know this
- [64:59]
Gretchen Rubin
is such a lovely practice.
- [65:00]
Jimmy Soni
And it just became a default thing. But what's great is I Know how I feel when I get those notes. And so I wrote to Jane of Jane's carousel. One thing led to another, we became friends, and then I ended up doing the coffee table book with her about Jane's carousel. Because of that note. All because of that note. So I always tell people, if something strikes you, like, if it enters your life's conversation in some way.
- [65:21]
Gretchen Rubin
Yes.
- [65:22]
Jimmy Soni
Let the person know.
- [65:23]
Gretchen Rubin
That is really nice.
- [65:24]
Jimmy Soni
You and I don't have any sense of what's working or what's not.
- [65:26]
Gretchen Rubin
We don't. We don't.
- [65:27]
Jimmy Soni
We have vague sense, but not really a correct, concrete sense.
- [65:29]
Gretchen Rubin
Okay. And here's what I would add. There's so much AI slop of all these, like, AA agents, like, saying all of these flattering things that it's like, can I tell the difference between somebody who's faking it and somebody who's actually, like, resonating with 100. I can change. Or even, like, people are like, I. I loved your recent podcast episode where you talked about. I'm like, yeah, that's fake. Because I can tell when somebody's really, you know, says, like, oh, I was thinking, you know, we have this. But you can just sort of tell the difference in terms of, like, how people are saying, you know, for 2026, one of the items that I wanted to do was to rate and review podcasts and books more. Because as somebody who's a creator, I know how much it matter. It just matters for the. For all these things, it really matters to people, and it's gratifying. And. And I haven't even really been keeping up with that as much. And you're going way beyond that, which is to actually track down the content information. But that's so much more meaningful.
- [66:22]
Jimmy Soni
It is. It's also. It's not that hard to do. So here's how I was.
- [66:26]
Gretchen Rubin
The way I think about it is sharpen your gaze.
- [66:29]
Jimmy Soni
Oh, absolutely. And the other thing is you. You know, you. You, like, everybody lives a life where you try, I think, on balance, to, like, leave the world. Hopefully, hopefully, you live your life this way, like, a little bit better. A little. Just a wee bit better.
- [66:43]
Gretchen Rubin
Right.
- [66:43]
Jimmy Soni
And you can do that in a lot of ways. You can raise your kids well. You can do creative work. You can just be a human. You can volunteer. And I do think that, like, this is my way of the karmic scales.
- [66:52]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah.
- [66:53]
Jimmy Soni
Like, I need to keep them in balance. And, you know, my work requires a lot of borrowing on karma from other people, whether it's editors investing in you or like time away from certain friends or. I kind of think of this as like my way of restoring the karmic scales.
- [67:06]
Gretchen Rubin
But.
- [67:06]
Jimmy Soni
But then the other part of it is, like, it's not a long exercise. You know, I finished a book a couple weeks ago, and it took me, what, a minute or two of Googling to find the person's contact info. I had two sentences that I wanted to say to them because there was one chapter that really stood out to me. Drop it and drop a note. Send it off. It's not like I'm not like laboring over this for years and years and years. This is just very quick.
- [67:26]
Gretchen Rubin
But keep it easy.
- [67:27]
Jimmy Soni
But keep it easy. And also it then sort of puts you in the position of, I'm never. I may never have contact with that person again ever again. But they know that something that they spent years on had some kind of effect in the world. I think that's one of the things that, you know, it's.
- [67:43]
Gretchen Rubin
It.
- [67:44]
Jimmy Soni
You. You do spend years of your life on these projects. And like, I'm sure, especially when your first few books came out, anytime anybody wrote you, it was like the greatest. It was the greatest moment ever, right?
- [67:53]
Gretchen Rubin
It really was.
- [67:54]
Jimmy Soni
And you. And by the way, I think you can be world famous and these things and still affect you, right? Like, you can have fans galore, but it's somebody identifying something specific in your work that still makes a massive difference. A massive difference.
- [68:06]
Gretchen Rubin
No, I think that's really true. And I think there is something about putting out those. Like the appreciation for people's efforts. Yeah, yeah.
- [68:16]
Jimmy Soni
And I would say that it extends as well as I said to physical things or like a product you really love or. It doesn't have to be a book. It doesn't have to be some. In some work of art. It can be something very, very simple. I also find the other effect of this. It gets you to find the origin story of the thing itself. So you. Because you look at something and you're like, I really like that. You have to then go dig and figure out how did this thing come into being, Right? And for people who love rabbit holes, that's like. That's catnip, you know, there's nothing like that feeling. How did you just. Because I want to be conscious of your time. How did you go from JFK and Churchill to the Happiness Project? What is the origin story? The kind of, you know, pre story on that.
- [68:58]
Gretchen Rubin
I have been. I know exactly when and where it happened. So I was finishing up. It was probably just after first pass with my JFK book. So I had this. And at that time, because writers didn't have all this other stuff that we were doing, there is kind of a period of inactivity because you can no longer actively edit, as we were saying, and they've ripped it out of your cold hands. And the book hasn't been published yet. So there's kind of this. And for me, it was. So I just sort of had this open time in my head. So it was during that period, and I was stuck on the crosstown bus on 79th in the pouring rain. It was going really, really slowly, and I didn't have anything to read or distract myself with. And I just. I looked out the window and I thought, what do I want from life anyway? And I thought, I want to be happy. But I. And I thought, well, but I don't spend any time thinking about whether I am happy or if I could be happier or, like, what is happiness anyway? And I thought, well, I should do a happiness project and figure all this out. So. And I instantly became super interested in the idea of happiness. So I ran to the bookstore and the library and got a giant stack of books. Stoics, you know, novels, nonfiction, research. This was right at the time when sort of the positive psychology movement was just getting going. So there was a lot of interesting research that had just kind of emerged at that time. And at first it was just. For me, it was just like, what do I think? What could I do to be happier in my own life? But as I got into it, like, I just. My note taking, my research got deeper and deeper, and there were so many things that I wanted to learn and so many things I wanted to try in my own life that I thought, oh, maybe this could be my next book project.
- [70:33]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
- [70:34]
Gretchen Rubin
And then I've sort of been writing about happiness one way or another ever since. And it's funny because I don't know about you for titles, but for me, titles either come right away or extremely slowly. And people, many people, said, you shouldn't call it the Happiness Project because that sounds like homework. Nobody likes to do it. And I was like, but I love homework. I love. No, I love a project. Homework for long periods of time. Seriously, give me a course. I'll sit down. I love a curriculum. But I was like. But I was like, it. Just from the very first minute I had this idea it was the Happiness Project. Yeah. Yeah.
- [71:10]
Jimmy Soni
That's great.
- [71:10]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah.
- [71:11]
Jimmy Soni
Did you have trouble selling it at all, or was it a pretty easy sell after? Because you said JFK didn't do well.
- [71:16]
Gretchen Rubin
No, it was not an easy sell. First of all, like, I was talking to people about it and they didn't get it. Like, somebody's like. Because I was like, oh, yeah, I kind of mentioned Benjamin Franklin. Because if you're talking about, you know, he's, you know, OG in this. In this space.
- [71:28]
Jimmy Soni
No, he is. He's the Godfather.
- [71:29]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah, he's the Godfather. And they would be like, well, maybe you should do thing where like, you like, follow all of Benjamin Franklin's rules. And I'm like, no, this was a time when like doing sort of what. What you could dismissively call stunt fiction was like, it was. Or stunt nonfiction was. Was. Was more and more. And so kind of the.
- [71:50]
Jimmy Soni
The more august name. Right, Was the gonzo journalism.
- [71:53]
Gretchen Rubin
Exactly, exactly. Right. And so, yeah, everything just keeps being reinvented. Auto fiction, it's like, yeah, they've been doing that for a long time. No, so first people didn't really get it. And that's part of why I thought, like, I think I just have to write a lot of it because people aren't understanding. And this wasn't me like officially pitching it, but just more me like casually talking to smart people in. To sort of pick their brain. And they just. They were just weren't responding the way I thought that I thought that they should in my vanity. So I basically wrote a huge thing and then my edit, My agent was just like, yeah, it's not good. And then I wrote it again and my agent was like, yeah, I'm sorry, is just still not good enough. And then. And then I kind of figured out how to break it. And then. And then that's when I went out. And then there. There was a reasonable amount of interest, but not like, not like w. Like wild enthusiasm. Right. By any means.
- [72:41]
Jimmy Soni
Not enthusiasm commensurate to what the book eventually became. No, right?
- [72:44]
Gretchen Rubin
No, not at all.
- [72:45]
Jimmy Soni
Because that's your best known, you know, for sure.
- [72:47]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah, I mean, it was. Yeah, it was number one. It was on the list for two years. Right? Yeah, no, it was. It was. No, Nobody, nobody. But the one thing that I had done so I had a blog that I had been doing for years, a daily blog, and I did it because when I was writing the book, one of the arguments that I was testing, because it was all a test on me, all self experiment, was novelty and challenge, make people easier. And I had thought, well, I'm not that kind of person. Maybe that's true for most people, but I like familiarity and mastery. But I had to test it for, for the purposes of the book. So I decided I would start a blog because I'm like, this is novel, this is challenging. I don't know tech, I don't write for deadlines. I've never been a journalist is going to be really hard and, and, but I'll do it and just sort of report and I thought oh, I'll do it for a month. But then it really, really worked. And so I was fortunate in that at that time, not that many people had done something like that, which is to create an audience for a book before the book was published. And they use it as a way to try to get people interested in a book. Now of course pre order campaigns are like, you know, huge thing and people are constantly talking about this thing. But at that time it wasn't as common. And I didn't do it strategically and cleverly. I did it accidentally and for my own reasons. It just sort of ended up that way. But I think that was something that made, that really helped.
- [74:09]
Jimmy Soni
I want to bring things kind of wind things to a close. But I, you know, we talked a little bit about your writing habits. You write in the mornings.
- [74:15]
Gretchen Rubin
Well, I write all day, but I write hard things morning.
- [74:18]
Jimmy Soni
And so how do you, yeah, how do you structure your creative life now? Like what's, what is a typical week a day and then a week kind of in your life look like.
- [74:26]
Gretchen Rubin
So in my dreams I'm a Benedictine monk and like every day is exactly the same and like I know exactly what I'm doing at 10am every single day. But it's not like that because now I have a pot. I have podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, I have newsletter, I have a newsletter in Klaviyo, I have a newsletter on LinkedIn and I have a newsletter on Substack. All of which are different. I do social media, I have products, I do speaking. So I, so the one thing that I, I go to the Met every day. Life in five, part of my creative practice. So as much as I would love to have a very routinized life, I can't because it's just like, it's just, it's constantly, I have to constantly shift things around and I think that's one of the reasons like why I like to do my hardest reading first thing in the morning is from 5:30 to 9. Rarely changes like I, except for walking my dogs, that is very much, I can count on that. And then everything else, it's like I may or may not be able to do it. I might not be able to do it until 4pm, by which time I'm not at my best. I might only have an hour. Instead of having a big block, one thing I have learned to do is not to have a big block. I think when you're. When you're starting out in writing, you're kind of like, I have to have a whole day or I have to have half a day. And now I'm like, I have all kinds of writing tasks, and some of them I can do if I am just sitting down for a few minutes.
- [75:52]
Jimmy Soni
So does the morning time always go to the biggest, most important project? Is that what you try to do?
- [75:56]
Gretchen Rubin
Yes, that's what I always try to do.
- [75:58]
Jimmy Soni
And do you miss that? Like, do you. Do you miss it when you're on the road? Do you sort of give yourself breaks? Or is it seven days a week?
- [76:02]
Gretchen Rubin
I try to do it seven days a week. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because it is just so precious to me. Yeah. Yeah.
- [76:08]
Jimmy Soni
Look, I'm.
- [76:08]
Gretchen Rubin
But I'm rigid. Yeah. You know, I'm rigid in the same way.
- [76:11]
Jimmy Soni
And honestly, I feel off on the days I don't have that.
- [76:14]
Gretchen Rubin
It doesn't feel like. It doesn't feel like a treat. Yeah.
- [76:17]
Jimmy Soni
It feels like the way I described it, friends. It's like if I don't have that time in the morning where I'm doing a. Whatever the creative or editorial or writing task is, that's the most important. It feels like I didn't brush my teeth.
- [76:26]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah. No, that's such a good analogy. Exactly.
- [76:29]
Jimmy Soni
Something is off.
- [76:30]
Gretchen Rubin
It's not that it's really a big deal or that it matters in any kind of way or that anybody else cares, but you just feel off.
- [76:36]
Jimmy Soni
You just feel off.
- [76:37]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah.
- [76:37]
Jimmy Soni
And then those grooves, they get to be the place I'm happiest.
- [76:41]
Gretchen Rubin
Right.
- [76:41]
Jimmy Soni
Is like, when I'm in that particular group. Have you ever tried to change up the schedule or has this been the schedule for time immemorial?
- [76:49]
Gretchen Rubin
I haven't always been able to get up this early. And when I had little kids, of course, I had much less control over my mornings. So then I. But at that time, I had fewer other commitments. You know, I didn't always have the podcast. I didn't always have the newsletters. I didn't have it just. I feel like as a writer, the kinds of work that you might do just as part of your ordinary writing life have really expanded. So I feel like I was fortunate that when my kids were younger and they were taking Up a lot of my sort of unpredictable time and predictable time. Yeah, I was just more focused.
- [77:29]
Jimmy Soni
But when do you read? If you read?
- [77:32]
Gretchen Rubin
I love to read. This is a huge question in my life. It is a huge mystery because I read books. Like, at the end of the month, I have the stack and I post a picture of it. And these are the books that I read. And I see that I read books. I'm always like. I feel like I'm never reading. I'm constantly fighting to find more time to read. My favorite thing is the same day book where I, like, start and finish a book in the same day.
- [77:53]
Jimmy Soni
That's where my.
- [77:53]
Gretchen Rubin
So delicious. I have to do a lot of work for. If I'm doing work for reading, I'll do that during a workday. Kind of like at the end of the day when I'm tired. If I'm just reading for pleasure, then I feel like I have to read it in sort of my leisure time. But. And I feel like I'm not reading nearly enough. For the podcast, we always have a challenge tied to the year. So 25 for 25 is read. 25 and 25. So you had to read 25 minutes a day.
- [78:16]
Jimmy Soni
Oh, 25 minutes.
- [78:16]
Gretchen Rubin
Minutes a day. Yeah. Okay, that. And that was. Yeah. I just. I don't know. How do you get enough reading done? It's. It's something that's very easy to push to the bottom. You have to fight for it.
- [78:29]
Jimmy Soni
You have to fight for what I do, you know, part of it, I think. And this is sort of occupational hazard. I re. I. I am reading always, somewhat opportunistically. If I'm in the middle of a book project, I'm reading things that are tied to the thing I'm writing. So I feel like it's. It's real work. Right. So then I always have a reason.
- [78:46]
Gretchen Rubin
Does that feel different? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like. That's a different category.
- [78:50]
Jimmy Soni
For years, when I actually had talked to a friend about this the other day, that I. At one point I lost the ability to read for pleasure. I was like, because you write books and you're obsessed with books and you're working on books all the time, and all of a sudden I wake up and I'm like, I don't actually enjoy reading anymore. So I had to go back and start with fiction again and, like, revive my, like, childhood love of reading and wonder. The wonder of discovery. I lost all of it because it was all so utilitarian now.
- [79:14]
Gretchen Rubin
Exactly.
- [79:14]
Jimmy Soni
And then I would say Like I try to do, if I'm going on vacation, I try to take only novels and I'll, like, read stuff that has nothing to do with work. Right. But it's actually hard. It's actually hard to carve out. There was a period where I was trying to do 15 to 20 minutes every morning before anything else that lasted for several months. And I finished a bunch of great books in that process. But it's a challenge. I will find that. Actually, one thing that's helped is my daughter has 30 minutes of required reading time every day for school. School. I just read side by side.
- [79:41]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah, that's a great.
- [79:41]
Jimmy Soni
So it's like. That makes it actually very, very easy.
- [79:43]
Gretchen Rubin
Right. Because you have that accountability.
- [79:45]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah.
- [79:46]
Gretchen Rubin
One thing a friend of mine told me, and I've completely followed this, is that when she's traveling for work, she reads for pleasure. So she never tries to work on a plane or, like, review a document or something. It's like, if you're traveling for work, you just read for fun. And she's like, that way, you know that you have that time and it's just the most delicious. I love reading on airplanes because you're just so focused.
- [80:06]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah, no, I finished. I finished a number of books on airplanes that I wouldn't have finished in any other form or. Because you always feel like you're robbing Peter to pay Paul.
- [80:12]
Gretchen Rubin
Right.
- [80:12]
Jimmy Soni
It's like, do you work on the substack or do you read. Do you work on X or do you read? Right. And I find that the other. The other bit, for me, it much more. It's much more around choosing books. If it's in project mode, I'm choosing books that I have to read anyway. Hopefully they're enjoyable. But if I am, I try to portion out vacation time and choose my books there so that it's pure pleasure.
- [80:35]
Gretchen Rubin
Pure pleasure. Yeah. I think people don't. Don't sometimes expect enough. Like, put down a book that's not good, find something that's really good. Then what I often do is I'll pick a book. I'll pick something to read for the summer to give my summer theme. So, like, I had a summer of Proust, because I had never read all of Proust. I had a summer of rereading because I love to reread. And there were a bunch of, like, sort of difficult books that I wanted to reread, like the Varieties of Religious Experience. I'm like. I'm like, when am I going to reread that? So I'm like, okay, I'll have a summer when I just reread these books. And then my summer this year, which will start June 1, is the summer of Virginia Woolf's Diaries. Because I love Virginia Woolf. She's my favorite author, but I have never read her diaries, which are extensive. And I'm like, when am I going to get around to that? Like, I had to turn it into sort of a project. So that's what I'm going to. So that's. So I will often do that with the summer if there's something that I kind of want to tackle.
- [81:26]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah, that's how you'll tackle it.
- [81:28]
Gretchen Rubin
Yeah. Okay.
- [81:29]
Jimmy Soni
So one of the ways we all. Infinite Loops episodes end with this question, which is, you're made emperor for a day. Which, by the way, I actually think you'd make a great emperor.
- [81:39]
Gretchen Rubin
Oh, thank you.
- [81:40]
Jimmy Soni
If you ever decide to campaign for that office, let me know, because you'll have my support. And you. You. You have a magical microphone. You're allowed to share two ideas that everybody in the world will wake up and those two ideas will be implanted in their minds, and they will. They will believe that they are their own. Right. They're not coming from Emperor Gretchen. They're coming from their own psyche, and they will live, live by and adhere to them. What. What are those two. You're somebody that's thought about this question extensively.
- [82:06]
Gretchen Rubin
Well, I've never thought of it in this. This. This iteration. Couple of ideas, I would say, know thyself and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I think that can go pretty far.
- [82:19]
Jimmy Soni
Yeah. So on the know thyself, that's been your life's work, right?
- [82:22]
Gretchen Rubin
It's on the temple of Apollo, Adelphi. Yes. Yeah.
- [82:25]
Jimmy Soni
Is that. Is that you. Is it fair to say that your work is kind of an extension of that question?
- [82:30]
Gretchen Rubin
Yes, I think that's a. I think that's. Yes.
- [82:32]
Jimmy Soni
And I think that's why it has resonance. Like, it's. It's why even.
- [82:35]
Gretchen Rubin
It's a great challenge of our lives. Yeah.
- [82:37]
Jimmy Soni
And in the intro to Life in Five Senses, you write about how this is. Like, these books are very personal for you.
- [82:42]
Gretchen Rubin
Right.
- [82:42]
Jimmy Soni
But that one seems to be the most personal. You have this kind of moment, and I won't spoil it, because I think people should go check out that book. But you have a moment that leads you down these rabbit holes. It's about knowing yourself. And the other one is do unto
- [82:56]
Gretchen Rubin
others as you would have them do unto you. And you can quibble and you can say, well, but sometimes they don't want you to do unto them. They want you to do unto them the way they want it to be done unto you. I was like, start from there. Start from there.
- [83:06]
Jimmy Soni
Amazing. Well, Gretchen Rubin, you remain. You are one of my favorite authors. I love your work. I want everybody to check it out. Where can people find you? And just give us. Give us the list so that we have ruben.com.
- [83:18]
Gretchen Rubin
it's all. Everything's there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [83:20]
Jimmy Soni
Okay.
- [83:20]
Gretchen Rubin
Oh, this is such a pleasure.
- [83:22]
Jimmy Soni
Thank you for coming on. Thank you for taking the time to do this wonderful work. And until next.
- [83:27]
Gretchen Rubin
Until next time.