Author Guide · Happiness · Habits
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Gretchen Rubin was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal and a clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at the US Supreme Court when she decided she would rather be a writer. Her first books were about power, money and Winston Churchill. Then, in 2009, came The Happiness Project: a year of monthly resolutions, from going to bed earlier to being sillier, tested on her own life in Manhattan and reported on a blog she started as one of the resolutions. It became a #1 New York Times bestseller, and her books have since sold more than 3.5 million copies in more than thirty languages. This guide covers her ten key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 key books · 2000–2025 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Gretchen Rubin’s best-known books are The Happiness Project (2009), Better Than Before (2015), on habits, and The Four Tendencies (2017), her framework of Upholders, Questioners, Obligers and Rebels. Start with The Happiness Project; the books after it take one part of that year and look at it more closely.
Where to Start with Gretchen Rubin
If you want her defining book
→ The Happiness Project (2009) — the year-long experiment that started it all.
If you want to change your habits
→ Better Than Before (2015) — habits matched to the person, not one system for everyone.
If you want to understand how people respond to expectations
→ The Four Tendencies (2017) — the four types, and how to work with each.
If you want something short to dip into
→ Secrets of Adulthood (2025) — her ideas condensed into brief principles.
10 Gretchen Rubin Books, in Order
Power Money Fame Sex
Her first book, written after she left law: a tongue-in-cheek manual on how to get the four things in its title, illustrated with examples of people who pursued them, from history and public life.
Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill
A short biography in forty chapters, each looking at Churchill from a different angle: as a hero and as a failure, as a writer, a husband and a father, through his drinking and his depressions. The form lets her set contradictory views of the same man side by side.
Forty Ways to Look at JFK
The same forty-angle method applied to John F. Kennedy, separating the president from the myths that grew around him after his assassination in 1963.
The Happiness Project
With a good marriage, healthy children and a successful career, Rubin still felt something was missing, and set out to enjoy the life she already had. Each month of one year she took on a new set of resolutions — going to sleep earlier, tackling a nagging task, bringing people together, being silly — and tracked which ones worked, alongside her reading of philosophers and research on happiness. It became a #1 New York Times bestseller; a tenth-anniversary edition followed in 2019.
Happier at Home
A second, shorter happiness project, run over a school year from September to May and focused on home: her possessions, her marriage, her children, her time and her New York neighbourhood.
Better Than Before
Rubin’s book on habits argues that no single method works for everyone. She sets out strategies such as monitoring, scheduling and accountability, and distinctions such as abstainers, who do better giving something up entirely, and moderators, who do better with a little. It is the book in which she first introduced the Four Tendencies.
The Four Tendencies
A whole book on the framework from Better Than Before: people divide by how they respond to outer expectations, such as a deadline at work, and inner ones, such as a New Year’s resolution. Upholders meet both, Questioners meet only those that make sense to them, Obligers meet outer but struggle with inner ones, and Rebels resist both. Chapters cover how each type works, parents, marries and is best managed.
Outer Order, Inner Calm
A small book of short, practical ideas for clearing clutter at home and at work, built on the argument that for most people, order in their surroundings makes it easier to feel calm and in control.
Life in Five Senses
Rubin spends a year paying deliberate attention to sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, with experiments such as a daily visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to see whether noticing the physical world more closely makes life happier. Like her earlier books, it became a New York Times bestseller.
Secrets of Adulthood
Published on 1 April 2025, a collection of short, aphorism-style principles drawn from her research on happiness and from her own difficulties, aimed at readers facing indecision or a big change in their lives. The title comes from the running list of “Secrets of Adulthood” she has kept since The Happiness Project.
In What Order to Read Gretchen Rubin
Her books do not continue a story, but they build on each other. The Happiness Project lays out her method — resolutions tested on her own life — and the later books each take one thread from it and expand it: home in Happier at Home, habits in Better Than Before, personality in The Four Tendencies, the senses in Life in Five Senses.
Read Better Than Before before The Four Tendencies, since the framework first appears there. The three early books, two of them biographies, are a different kind of writing and can be read at any point or skipped.
A reading path
1. The Happiness Project (2009)
2. Better Than Before (2015)
3. The Four Tendencies (2017)
4. Life in Five Senses (2023)
5. Secrets of Adulthood (2025)
Everything Else Gretchen Rubin Published
Beyond the 10 key books: 1 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Collaboration
1
1 book · 2006
- 2006Profane Wastea book with the artist Dana Hoey about destroying or squandering valuable things
The years · 1965–2025
Quick facts about Gretchen Rubin
- Known for
- Gretchen Rubin is known for turning her own experiments in happiness and habits into bestselling books and for the Four Tendencies framework of how people respond to expectations.
- 1965
- Born in Kansas City, Missouri
- Born
- 1965, Kansas City, Missouri, where she grew up
- Education
- Yale; editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal
- Law career
- Clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; counsel to FCC chairman Reed Hundt
- Podcast
- Happier with Gretchen Rubin, with her sister Elizabeth Craft
- Sales
- More than 3.5 million copies, in more than thirty languages
- Lives
- New York City
The red mark is 2009: The Happiness Project, the book that made her name.
How Gretchen Rubin Writes: Experiments on Herself
Rubin’s basic method is the self-experiment. In The Happiness Project she draws up resolutions, keeps a chart, and reports month by month what worked and what did not, including the resolutions she failed. Happier at Home and Life in Five Senses repeat the structure on a narrower subject, so the books read partly as memoir and partly as manual.
She reads widely around each subject — philosophers, biographies, scientific studies — and quotes them, but her conclusions come mainly from observation of herself, her family and her readers rather than from her own research. Her habit of sorting people into types, such as abstainers and moderators or the Four Tendencies, comes from that observation, and much of it is shared with readers on her blog and podcast.
The early books show a different side of the same instinct: her biographies of Churchill and Kennedy break a life into forty short angles rather than one narrative. She is one of the writers in Authors like James Clear, as the habit writer who matches the method to the person.
Watch
Gretchen Rubin on getting through life transitions
Meghan Keane talks with Gretchen Rubin about her book Secrets of Adulthood and getting through life transitions, at a Sixth & I event on 1 April 2025. From the official Sixth & I channel.
Frequently asked questions about Gretchen Rubin’s books
How many books has Gretchen Rubin written?
Eleven books under her name. Ten are the key books on this page, from Power Money Fame Sex (2000) to Secrets of Adulthood (2025); the other is Profane Waste (2006), made with the artist Dana Hoey. She has also published companion journals and calendars for The Happiness Project.
What are Gretchen Rubin’s books in order?
Power Money Fame Sex (2000), Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill (2003), Forty Ways to Look at JFK (2005), The Happiness Project (2009), Happier at Home (2012), Better Than Before (2015), The Four Tendencies (2017), Outer Order, Inner Calm (2019), Life in Five Senses (2023) and Secrets of Adulthood (2025).
Where should I start with Gretchen Rubin?
The Happiness Project (2009). The later books each develop one part of it. If your interest is habits, start with Better Than Before (2015) instead.
What is Gretchen Rubin’s most famous book?
The Happiness Project (2009), the account of a year of monthly happiness resolutions, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller and was reissued in a tenth-anniversary edition in 2019.
What are the Four Tendencies?
Rubin’s framework, introduced in Better Than Before (2015) and expanded in The Four Tendencies (2017), for how people respond to outer expectations, such as a work deadline, and inner ones, such as a resolution. Upholders meet both, Questioners meet only expectations they agree with, Obligers meet outer but not inner ones, and Rebels resist both.
Is The Four Tendencies based on science?
It is based mainly on Rubin’s own observation and on what readers told her, rather than on peer-reviewed research. Rubin trained as a lawyer, not a psychologist, and presents the framework as a practical tool, not a validated personality test.
Should I read Better Than Before or The Four Tendencies first?
Better Than Before (2015). The Four Tendencies first appear there, as one of several ways to understand why a habit strategy works for some people and not others; The Four Tendencies (2017) then gives the framework a whole book.
Was Gretchen Rubin a lawyer?
Yes. She studied law at Yale, where she was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal, clerked for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at the US Supreme Court and served as counsel to FCC chairman Reed Hundt. She decided to become a writer while clerking.
Does Gretchen Rubin have a podcast?
Yes: Happier with Gretchen Rubin, which she hosts with her sister, Elizabeth Craft.
Is Gretchen Rubin still alive?
Yes. She was born in 1965 in Kansas City, Missouri, and lives in New York City. Her most recent book, Secrets of Adulthood, was published on 1 April 2025.
Footnotes
- Gretchen Rubin — Goodreads author page
- Gretchen Rubin at the Brattle Theatre — Harvard Book Store, 2025
- The Happiness Project, tenth anniversary edition — Indigo
- Gretchen Rubin: Secrets of Adulthood — New York Theatre Guide
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The days are long, but the years are short.”
— Gretchen Rubin, one of her “Secrets of Adulthood”
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