Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany. One rainy afternoon on a city bus, she realised that she wasn't as happy as she could be. In danger of wasting her days – always yearning for something more, waiting for problems to miraculously solve themselves – she realized her life wasn't going to change unless she did something about it. On January 1, she embarked on her Happiness Project, and each month she pursued a different set of resolutions: to get more sleep, quit nagging her husband, sing in the morning to her two young daughters, start a blog, imitate a spiritual master, keep a one-sentence journal. She immersed herself in everything from classical philosophy to contemporary psychology to see what worked for her-and what didn't. Illuminating yet entertaining, profound yet compulsively readable, “The Happiness Project” is one of the most thoughtful and prescriptive works on happiness to have emerged from the recent explosion of interest in the subject. Filled with practical advice, sharp insight, charm, and humor, her story will inspire readers to navigate their own paths to happiness.

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. Publishers Weekly

Author Biography

Gretchen Rubin is the author of several books, including the bestselling Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill and Forty Ways to Look at JFK. Her daily blog, www.happiness-project.com, ranks in the prestigious Technorati “Top 5K” and appears on Slate and the Huffington Post. Rubin started her career as a lawyer, and she was clerking for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor when she realised she really wanted to be a writer. She lives in New York City with her husband and two young daughters.