Own The Day, Own Your Life
Rating: 5/5
To own your life begins with building the momentum that comes from owning a single day. Own The Day, Own Your Life is the perfect guidebook for optimizing your day through health, productivity, and well-being/relationships. I had listened to Aubrey Marcus on his and other’s podcasts before but never read any of his blog posts or other writing. I was impressed by his conversational yet polished writing style and his ability to be both motivational and humorous. This book reads like a how-to manual on getting through the day as a human being. From the first moment, you open your eyes to the last minute before you drift off to sleep at night, Own the Day has got you covered.
If you are already well-versed in the realm of self-improvement books or have a dedicated fitness regimen, much of what you read in Own the Day will be an overview (albeit, a well-written one) of things you likely already know. However, Aubrey is into some funky stuff when it comes to human optimization, so you’ll still learn a few things that will surprise you.
For anyone who doesn’t feel their life is in full control or is looking for a place to start for habits and routines that will improve your health and well-being, this is a great book to start with and will leave you motivated to achieve more.
The Four Tendencies
The Four Tendencies - Gretchen Rubin
In The Four Tendencies, Rubin expounds upon a framework for how people respond to expectations that she first explored in Better Than Before. The four groupings are broken up as follows:
- Upholders - accomplish both internal and external expectations.
- Obligers - accomplish external expectations but struggle with internal ones.
- Questioners - accomplish internal expectations but need to know the reason why to accomplish external expectations.
- Rebels - do what they want to do. Struggle with internal and external expectations.
This book can help to make sense of different people and how books with a "one size fits all" solution to any problem are not going to work for everybody. As a coach or someone who teaches or tries to help other people with problems, this book can be really useful for communicating effectively. It can also be useful for anyone who is struggling to accomplish things in their own lives and maybe doesn't know what type of Tendency they fall under. Once you've better realized how you consistently respond to expectations you will be able to better structure your life and the strategies you use to improve your life.
Better Than Before
Better Than Before - Gretchen Rubin
“Self-measurement brings self-awareness, and self-awareness strengthens self-control”
Better Than Before offers an important framework for coming to better understand your ability to set and achieve goals and how to address others you are trying to help. Gretchen developed the Four Tendencies framework which is a very valuable starting point for figuring out how to help yourself and others.
Before diving recklessly headfirst into any goal, it helps to know yourself and your tendencies first so that you can set yourself up as best as possible for long-term success. Better Than Before is a meditation on Gretchen's Upholder tendency primarily but does offer insights into the other tendencies as well as a great starting point. Her subsequent book on the topic, The Four Tendencies dives into all the tendencies further to identify how best to help yourself or other that fall into the other categories.