The Happiness Project

by Gretchen Rubin

Overview

Traditional Chinese edition of The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. In Traditional Chinese. Annotation copyright Tsai Fong Books, Inc. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062154873
Publisher:	HarperCollins Children's Books
Publication date:	06/13/2016
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.84(d)

About the Author

I'm the author of the New York Times bestsellers "The Happiness Project," “Happier at Home” and “Better Than Before.” I write about my experiences as I test-drive the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about happiness, habits, and human nature. My next book will hit the shelves in summer 2017: “The Four Tendencies: The Surprising Truth about the Four Hidden Personality Types That Drive Everything We Do.”

Find out your Tendency—are you an Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel?—when you take the free quiz at GretchenRubin.com.

Subscribe to my award-winning weekly podcast “Happier with Gretchen Rubin” (more than 1 million downloads each month) and hear my sister and I discuss strategies and tips for how to make your daily life happier. I also created an app to help people harness the power of the Four Tendencies. Learn more at BetterApp.us or search the app store for “Better Gretchen Rubin.”

My previous books include a bestselling biography of Winston Churchill, "Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill,” and one of John Kennedy, “Forty Ways to Look at JFK.” My first book, “Power Money Fame S..: A User's Guide,” is social criticism in the guise of a user's manual. I wrote “Profane Waste” in collaboration with artist Dana Hoey. I've also written three dreadful novels that are safely locked away in a drawer.

Before turning to writing, I had a career in law. A graduate of Yale and Yale Law School, I clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. I live in New York City with my husband and two daughters.

 

Editorial Reviews

Starred Review.

Rubin is not an unhappy woman: she has a loving husband, two great kids and a writing career in New York City. Still, she could-and, arguably, should-be happier. Thus, her methodical (and bizarre) happiness project: spend one year achieving careful, measurable goals in different areas of life (marriage, work, parenting, self-fulfillment) and build on them cumulatively, using concrete steps (such as, in January, going to bed earlier, exercising better, getting organized, and "acting more energetic"). By December, she's striving bemusedly to keep increasing happiness in every aspect of her life. The outcome is good, not perfect (in accordance with one of her "Secrets of Adulthood": "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good"), but Rubin's funny, perceptive account is both inspirational and forgiving, and sprinkled with just enough wise tips, concrete advice and timely research (including all those other recent books on happiness) to qualify as self-help. Defying self-help expectations, however, Rubin writes with keen senses of self and narrative, balancing the personal and the universal with a light touch. Rubin's project makes curiously compulsive reading, which is enough to make any reader happy.
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Publishers Weekly

For this chatty and intriguing little book, Rubin, a lawyer-turned-writer (Forty Ways To Look at Winston Churchill), undertook a yearlong quest for happiness. A "Resolution Chart" with specific activities for each month (e.g., "Ask for help") helped her define happiness and become happier with her very good life, as did interesting facts from her scholarly research (though there are no footnotes or formal bibliography). Peppering the text are quotes from a vast array of people who have considered happiness, including Aristotle, St. Thérèse, and Viktor Frankl. VERDICT This whole process might have come off as frivolously self-centered but for the excellent points Rubin highlights. Although the excerpts from her blog (www.happinessprojecttoolbox.com) begin to feel like filler, librarians will particularly like how she loves her local library, and self-helpers will be fascinated by her process.—Margaret Cardwell, Memphis, TN

Library Journal

Practical and never preachy . . . the rare self-help tome that doesn’t feel shameful to read.

Daily Beast

For those who generally loathe the self-help genre, Rubin’s book is a breath of peppermint-scented air. Well-researched and sharply written. . . . Rubin takes an orderly, methodical approach to forging her own path to a happier state of mind.

Kim Crow

Packed with fascinating facts about the science of happiness and rich examples of how she improves her life through changes small and big The Happiness Project made me happier by just reading it.

Amy Scribner

An enlightening, laugh-aloud read. . . . Filled with open, honest glimpses into [Rubin’s] real life, woven together with constant doses of humor.

Terry Hong