Gretchen Rubin has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 1 narrator, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 359 ratings. The most-rated is The Four Tendencies.
The Four Tendencies
Summary
In this groundbreaking analysis of personality type, best-selling author of Better Than Before and The Happiness Project Gretchen Rubin reveals the one simple question that will transform what you do at home, at work, and in life. During her multi-book investigation into understanding human nature, Gretchen Rubin realized that by asking the seemingly dry question “How do I respond to expectations?” we gain explosive self-knowledge. She discovered that based on their answer, people fit into Four Tendencies: Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels. Our Tendency shapes every aspect of our behavior, so using this framework allows us to make better decisions, meet deadlines, suffer less stress, and engage more effectively. More than 600,000 people have taken her online quiz, and managers, doctors, teachers, spouses, and parents already use the framework to help people make significant, lasting change. The Four Tendencies hold practical answers if you’ve ever thought: People can rely on me, but I can’t rely on myself. How can I help someone to follow good advice? People say I ask too many questions. How do I work with someone who refuses to do what I ask - or who keeps telling me what to do? With sharp insight, compelling research, and hilarious examples, The Four Tendencies will help you get happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. It’s far easier to succeed when you know what works for you.
©2017 Gretchen Rubin (P)2017 Random House Audio
The Happiness Project
Summary
Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. "The days are long, but the years are short," she realized. "Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter." In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project. In this lively and compelling account of that year, Rubin carves out her place alongside the authors of best-selling memoirs such as Julie and Julia, The Year of Living Biblically, and Eat, Pray, Love. With humor and insight, she chronicles her adventures during the 12 months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Rubin didn't have the option to uproot herself, nor did she really want to; instead she focused on improving her life as it was. Each month she tackled a new set of resolutions: give proofs of love, ask for help, find more fun, keep a gratitude notebook, forget about results. She immersed herself in principles set forth by all manner of experts, from Epicurus to Thoreau to Oprah to Martin Seligman to the Dalai Lama to see what worked for her - and what didn't. Her conclusions are sometimes surprising - she finds that money can buy happiness, when spent wisely; that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that "treating" yourself can make you feel worse; that venting bad feelings doesn't relieve them; that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference - and they range from the practical to the profound. As an added bonus, this recording includes a sampling of Gretchen's podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. In this episode, "Choose the Bigger Life", Gretchen and her sister, Elizabeth Craft, discuss happiness, good habits, and whether Gretchen is going to get a dog.
©2009 Gretchen Rubin (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
Better Than Before
Summary
The author of the blockbuster New York Times best sellers The Happiness Project and Happier at Home tackles the critical question: How do we change? Gretchen Rubin's answer: through habits. Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life. It takes work to make a habit, but once that habit is set, we can harness the energy of habits to build happier, stronger, more productive lives. So if habits are a key to change, then what we really need to know is: How do we change our habits? Better Than Before answers that question. It presents a practical, concrete framework to allow listeners to understand their habits - and to change them for good. Infused with Rubin's compelling voice, rigorous research, and easy humor, and packed with vivid stories of lives transformed, Better Than Before explains the (sometimes counterintuitive) core principles of habit formation. Along the way Rubin uses herself as guinea pig, tests her theories on family and friends, and answers listeners' most pressing questions - oddly, questions that other writers and researchers tend to ignore: Why do I find it tough to create a habit for something I love to do? Sometimes I can change a habit overnight, and sometimes I can't change a habit no matter how hard I try. Why? How quickly can I change a habit? What can I do to make sure I stick to a new habit? How can I help someone else change a habit? Why can I keep habits that benefit others but can't make habits that are just for me? Whether listeners want to get more sleep, stop checking their devices, maintain a healthy weight, or finish an important project, habits make change possible. Listening to just a few chapters of Better Than Before will make listeners eager to start work on their own habits - even before they've finished the audiobook. Bonus feature: includes a full episode from the author's podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin in which she discusses how to build happier habits into everyday life.
©2015 Gretchen Rubin (P)2015 Random House Audio
Outer Order, Inner Calm
Summary
New York Times best seller In this lovely, easy-to-use guide to decluttering, the beloved author of The Happiness Project shows us how to take control of our stuff - and, by extension, our lives. Gretchen Rubin knows firsthand that creating order can make our lives happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. But for most of us, a rigid, one-size-fits-all solution doesn't work. When we tailor our approach to suit our own particular challenges and habits, we can find inner calm. With a sense of fun, and a clear idea of what’s realistic for most people, Rubin suggests dozens of manageable tips and tricks for creating a more serene, orderly environment, including: Never label anything “miscellaneous.” Ask yourself, “Do I need more than one?” Don’t aim for minimalism. Remember: If you can’t retrieve it, you won’t use it. Stay current with a child’s interests. Beware the urge to “procrasticlear.” By getting rid of things we don’t use, don’t need, or don’t love, we free our minds (and our shelves) for what we truly value.
©2019 Gretchen Rubin (P)2019 Random House Audio
Happier at Home
Summary
In the spirit of her blockbuster number one New York Times best seller The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin embarks on a new project to make home a happier place. One Sunday afternoon, as she unloaded the dishwasher, Gretchen Rubin felt hit by a wave of homesickness. Homesick - why? She was standing right in her own kitchen. She felt homesick, she realized, with love for home itself. “Of all the elements of a happy life,” she thought, “my home is the most important.” In a flash, she decided to undertake a new happiness project, and this time, to focus on home. And what did she want from her home? A place that calmed her, and energized her. A place that, by making her feel safe, would free her to take risks. Also, while Rubin wanted to be happier at home, she wanted to appreciate how much happiness was there already. So, starting in September (the new January), Rubin dedicated a school year - September through May - to making her home a place of greater simplicity, comfort, and love. In The Happiness Project, she worked out general theories of happiness. Here she goes deeper on factors that matter for home, such as possessions, marriage, time, and parenthood. How can she control the cubicle in her pocket? How might she spotlight her family’s treasured possessions? And it really was time to replace that dud toaster. Each month, Rubin tackles a different theme as she experiments with concrete, manageable resolutions - and this time, she coaxes her family to try some resolutions, as well. With her signature blend of memoir, science, philosophy, and experimentation, Rubin’s passion for her subject jumps off the page, and listening to just a few chapters of this audiobook will inspire listeners to find more happiness in their own lives.
©2012 Gretchen Rubin (P)2018 Random House Audio
Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill
Summary
Warrior and writer, genius and crank, rider in the British cavalry’s last great charge and inventor of the tank - Winston Churchill led Britain to fight alone against Nazi Germany in the fateful year of 1940 and set the standard for leading a democracy at war. Like no other portrait of its famous subject, Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill is a dazzling display of facts more improbable than fiction, and an investigation of the contradictions and complexities that haunt biography. Gretchen Craft Rubin gives listeners, in a single volume, the kind of rounded view usually gained only by listening to dozens of conventional biographies. With penetrating insight and vivid anecdotes, Rubin makes Churchill accessible and meaningful to twenty-first-century listeners with 40 contrasting views of the man: He was an alcoholic, he was not; he was an anachronism, he was a visionary; he was a racist, he was a humanitarian; he was the most quotable man in the history of the English language, he was a bore. In crisp, energetic language, Rubin creates a new form for presenting a great figure of history - and brings to full realization the depiction of a man too fabulous for any novelist to construct, too complicated for even the longest narrative to describe, and too valuable ever to be forgotten. Includes a bonus PDF with additional resources. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2004 Gretchen Rubin (P)2019 Random House Audio