Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin

Author, Columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine

A woman with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a purple blouse, drop earrings, and a delicate necklace, poses against a plain light background.

Gretchen Rubin is one of today’s most influential and thought-provoking observers of happiness and human nature. She’s known for her ability to distill and convey complex ideas with humor and clarity, in a way that’s accessible to a wide audience.

She’s been interviewed by Oprah, eaten dinner with Daniel Kahneman, walked arm-in-arm with the Dalai Lama, had her work written up in a medical journal, been the subject of a “The Talk of the Town” piece in The New Yorker magazine, and been an answer on the game show Jeopardy!

She’s the author of many books, including the blockbuster, New York Times bestsellers The Four Tendencies and Better Than Before. Her book The Happiness Project has sold more than one million copies, been published in more than thirty languages, and spent more than two years on The New York Times best seller list, including at #1.

In her books, she draws from cutting-edge science, the wisdom of the ages, lessons from popular culture, and her own experiences to explore how we can make our lives happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative.

5 min
Happiness begins with concrete, manageable steps. But it must take on a more transcendent aspect as well.
3 min
For one year, Gretchen Rubin tested the wisdom of some of history’s leading experts on happiness, including Aristotle and John Stuart Mill. Did their advice hold up?
20 min
A conversation with the author of “The Happiness Project.”