Episode Highlights

• Gretchen’s circuitous path towards professional writing
• Why there are “four tendencies” of human nature and not “four types”
• Understanding how the four tendencies makes your work and relationships better
• Using your tendencies to help move your career forward
• Learning the nuances of the tendencies as well as when categorization is doing more harm than good
• Techniques for narrowing down your tendency if your feel torn between defining yourself as more than one
• Knowing how your personal ways of sharing information can shut off other tendencies from having healthy motivation

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• Gretchen Rubin

About Guest

Gretchen Rubin is the author of several books, including the block-buster New York Times bestsellers, Outer Order, Inner Calm, Better Than Before, The Happiness Project, Happier at Home, and The Four Tendencies. She has an enormous readership, both in print and online, and her books have sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide, in more than thirty languages. She makes frequent TV appearances and is in much demand as a speaker. On her weekly podcast Happier with Gretchen Rubin, she discusses good habits and happiness with her sister Elizabeth Craft. Rubin started her career in law and was clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when she realized she wanted to be a writer. She lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters.

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Transcript

Zack Arnold: I’m here today with Gretchen Rubin, who’s the author of several best-selling books, which have sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide. This includes the New York Times bestsellers Outer order, inner calm, better than before. The happiness project, happier at home. And the real reason that we’re here today is to discuss the four tendencies, which is the indispensable personality profiles that reveal how to make your life better, and by the way, other people’s lives better too. So, Gretchen, as I expressed to you offline before we started this conversation. I don’t think I’ve ever been more nervous or excited to have an author on my show in the history of doing almost 200 episodes. So, thank you so much for being here today.

Gretchen Rubin: Oh, it’s my pleasure. I can’t wait to dive in. Thanks so much for having me on your show.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, so I’m super excited, and the reason is because I was introduced to the Four Tendencies framework in your work about two years ago when I went to an event, and I had not heard of your work beforehand, which I almost.. it’s funny, I feel guilty for that, and I shouldn’t, but I’m like, oh, how did I not know about this before? But as soon as I started listening to you talk about these four tendencies, there were so many little conflicts, either in my personal life, and my conflicts with my kids, with my wife, or conflicts with myself or in my job, that it was like, oh my god, I’m starting to understand myself better over the last 60 minutes of this presentation than I have in the previous 38 years of my life. I have to learn more, so of course I dove into the entire book, and then as I started to really consume it and started to share it with fellow colleagues and share it with people in my coaching program, they were expressing the same level of clarity, and the way that I describe the four tendencies, I’m sure it’s going to be, you know, different than the way that you describe it, but being in the film industry, I tell people that you’re going to feel like Neo in the Matrix,

Gretchen Rubin: Ah,

Zack Arnold: Who can read it for the first time and understand human relationships, it’s so cool once you actually start to be able to read the matrix as it comes to these tendencies.

Gretchen Rubin: Oh, that’s so.. that’s slow. Great to hear. I’m so happy that it’s struck such a chord with you and was so clarifying. That’s fantastic.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that I don’t either talk about it or recommend it to someone.

Gretchen Rubin: Well, thank you.

Zack Arnold: Absolutely, So.. I, of course, want to jump right into the tendencies, but at the same time I think it’s important for people to understand the origin of it, and not just the origin of the tendencies, but understand more about you, because you have a very circuitous path to get to the place of being a best-selling author. So I want to understand just a little bit more about you and your journey, and how you came to this point of saying, “Huh, there’s this thing, and I need to learn more about it.

Gretchen Rubin: You’re right, I did have a circuitous path. I started my career in law and went to law school, and I was actually clerking for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court when I realized I actually wanted to be a writer. I had the idea for what became my first book while I was clerking and became very preoccupied with learning and taking notes, and that’s something that’s happened to me throughout my life. I will get very interested in a subject, and I really want to go deep, deep, deep into it, but this was the first time where it was sort of all consuming, and it was, and it became the book Power, Money, Fame, Sex: A User’s Guide, which is like the opposite of The Happiness Project, and that was my first book, and so I just started working on that, and, and read it, researching it, and writing, and taking notes. I finally thought, well, this is the kind of thing a person would do if they were going to write a book. And then I thought, well, you know, I can write a book, and so I literally went to the bookstore and got a book called something like How to Write and Sell Your Nonfiction Book Proposal, and followed the direction, so that’s how I got into writing, and you know, all my books really are about human nature in one way or another, and my book, The Happiness Project, which was the book where I think a lot of people became aware of me as a writer, because my other books, that was actually my fourth book, so I was a good example of somebody who was perceived to be an overnight success, even though I had been working very hard for 10 years. The happiness project got me really, really focused on just sort of the larger issue of happiness, and, and really, that has been that’s that’s a very vast subject, and I’ve been sort of looking at different aspects of happiness ever since as an aspect of human nature. So, like, I wrote a book better than before that was all about. Habits, because, as you know, habits have a very important role to play in making our lives happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. So, it was like, how do we make and break habits? Like, I need to figure that out. And it was when I was writing that book that I started to know, notice patterns and behavior that I couldn’t really explain, that I felt like no one was really grappling with kind of different perspectives and different challenges that to me seem to fall into these very distinct patterns, and after immense intellectual toil, it really was the hardest intellectual thing of my life. Was I identified these four tendencies and sort of understood how the role that the four tendencies play in human nature. A polder, question, or Blige, or Rebel, what your tendency has an enormous influence on kind of how you see the world and how you operate most effectively. So, I was studying human nature, that got me into habits, that got me to the, that helped me recognize the four tendencies.

Zack Arnold: I want to give a warning and a disclaimer to everybody listening, before we go forwards, that, like I mentioned, you will become Neo in the Matrix, and this is your last chance to take the right pill, because once you understand what an obliger, an upholder, a questioner, and a rebel are, you are never going to see yourself or other people the same way again, ever. And I do not say that lightly, because I see it happen with everybody, including myself, where it just becomes this vision that you have, and what I want to go into first is this idea of, oh wait a second, all people don’t belong in buckets. This isn’t Myers Briggs. I hate being typecast into a certain thing. So talk to me about why these are the tendencies and not the four types.

Gretchen Rubin: Well, you know, it’s interesting because some people, as you say, really resist the idea of categories, and people will say, well, if you define me, you can find me, but in my observation, it’s very handy to have shorthand, to have a vocabulary to describe how people see things differently, because especially when differences kind of fall into patterns, where if I use one term, I can, I can explain a lot. One of the things that’s different about this framework is that you know something like Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram or a lot of other kinds of personality types try to really give a whole picture of a person, they really try to explain kind of a lot about you. This is just one thing, and we’ll get into it, but it’s just one aspect of your nature. It’s very, very significant. It has a lot of consequences, but it’s one very narrow thing, so we don’t know your tendency. If you’re a polar question, rebel doesn’t tell you there’s a lot of things it doesn’t tell you about somebody, and sometimes people will be like, well, all rebels are creative and narcissistic and rebellion, but I’m like, no, no, no, no, like we only know one thing, we know an important thing, but we only know one thing, and so I think that it’s not, it’s very specific, and so I think that’s that’s why it’s a tendency, and also if you, as we get into it, the tendencies they run into each other, so you can, you can sort of be there’s a continuum, so it’s not like each four is completely separate, they’re all part of a continuum of human nature, and it’s very actually turns out it’s very easy to pinpoint pretty precisely where you fall on that continuum, and that tells you a lot about yourself, and also how you might relate to other people, either more effectively, or maybe with more conflict, or frustration.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think in the context of this interview, there are so many different areas where we can see the strengths and weaknesses of each, how they apply to your lives, but I’m very aware that we only have an hour to get through all this, and I think it’s first of all, the, you know, first and foremost, for anybody, it’s understanding your own tendency and how you can use that to maybe, you know, stick with better habits or make better decisions, or whatever it is, but I think also the second area that I want to go into a little bit later in the call would be understanding how it makes me a better creative collaborator, that’s one of the areas where I have just.. it’s like this giant exponential learning curve, where I went from being a pretty good collaborator to being amazing at collaboration, because I knew how to meet everybody’s tendencies in the middle, even if their tendencies weren’t the same as me. So, I think first it’s a matter of understanding, well, what are the four tendencies? How does this help me? But then, how does it help me collaborate? Because we could go down many rabbit holes for hours about personal relationships and raising your kids, and you know we may tangentially go there, but I think that in general the takeaway is how does this help me understand habit formation and better behaviors, because I’ve talked to James Clear about habit formation, I’ve talked to Cal Newport about the process of deep work. I’ve talked to David Allen about how to get things done. I’ve talked to Jay Papasan about how to find your one thing, but I feel like the glue that holds all of it together is understanding how do I actually consistently follow through. Yeah, I discovered the four tendencies of, like, aha, there’s the super glue for all of it. I must find Gretchen.

Gretchen Rubin: Good,

Zack Arnold: Right? Yeah, so let’s just start with the basics. What are the four tendencies?

Gretchen Rubin: First of all, if some people like to take a quiz that will, like, spit out an answer, and so if you want to take a quiz, you can take this quick free quiz, it’s quiz.gretchenrubin.com More than 2 million people have taken this quiz, and it will give you an answer, and it’ll give you like a little report of kind of explaining. So you can take the quiz that said a lot of people don’t need to take the quiz. I will just describe it briefly, and we’ll talk about it, and people will have a very clear sense of what, who they are, and probably who a lot of people in their lives are, not to mention Game of Thrones characters, which I can go deep into the Game of Thrones analysis if we have time for that, because,

Zack Arnold: Or the houses of Hogwarts too, if we want to go there. Right.

Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, yeah. Well, I will say this. Sometimes people try to map the houses of Hogwarts onto the four tendencies, but you cannot do that. And I have three words for you: that is Hermione, Fred, George – they’re not the same tendency, but they are definitely Gryffindor. So, the Hogwarts does not map, but we can do Game of Thrones. Oh, we can do Parks and Rec. We can. There’s.. we can do real people.

Zack Arnold: It’s funny, I’m watching Parks and Rec right now, and that’s all I’m thinking about, is what is each person’s tendency, and it’s pretty obvious. So, yeah, I’m doing that right now.

Gretchen Rubin: It’s pretty obvious once you do it. So, so here they are. So, there, as we said, it’s a polar question of Blades or Rebel. And what this is looking at is how you respond to expectations, which sounds really boring, but ends up being very, very significant, so we all face two kinds of expectations: outer expectations that come to us from others, like a work deadline or a request from a friend, and then we have inner expectations, what we expect from ourselves. I want to keep a nearest resolution, I want to get back into meditation, and so, depending on how the combination in which you meet or resist outer and inner expectations, that’s what makes you your tendency. So, first are upholders, and upholders readily meet outer and inner expectations. They meet the work deadline, they keep the New Year’s resolution without much fuss. They want to know what other people expect from them, but their expectations for themselves are just as important. So, their motto is discipline is my freedom. Then there are questioners. Questioners question all expectations. They’ll do something if they think it makes sense. So they’re making everything an inner expectation. If it meets their inner standard and seems justified, they’ll do it, no problem. If it fails their standard, they will push back. They typically resist anything arbitrary, ineffective, unjustified. They always need to know why. And so the motto of questioners is I’ll comply if you convince me why. Then there are obligers. Obligers readily meet outer expectations, but they struggle to meet inner expectations. And I got my first insight into this when a friend said to me, I don’t understand it. I know I would be happier if I exercised, and when I was in high school, I was on the track team, and I never missed track practice, so why can’t I go running now? Well, when she had a team and a coach expecting her to show up, she had no trouble going, and but when she’s trying to go running on her own, it’s a struggle, and what we find for obligers is that to meet an inner expectation, like getting back into meditation, obligers must have outer accountability. That is the way they meet inner expectations, by plugging in forms of outer accountability. That is just crucial. And so the motto of Obliger is, you can count on me, and I’m counting on you to count on me, and then finally the rebels, rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. They want to do what they want to do in their own way, in their own time. They can do anything they want to do, anything they choose to do, but if you ask or tell them to do something, they’re very likely to resist, and typically they don’t like to tell themselves what to do, like they don’t want to sign up for a 10am spin class on Saturday, because they’re like, I just want to wake up on Saturday and see what I feel like doing, I don’t, I, and the fact that somebody is expecting me to show up is just going to annoy me. So, the motto of the rebel is, you can’t make me, and neither can I. So, those are the four, and of the four, obliger is the biggest tendency for both men and women. That is the biggest one. You either are an obliger or you have many obligers in your life. And the smallest tendency, that’s a small tendency, and my tendency, the upholder tendency, just slightly larger. Those are the two smaller tendencies.

Zack Arnold: Well, one of the things that I find so interesting and somewhat humorous was your discovery when you were doing this. Like, wait, you mean I’m the eccentric one, yeah, and the one that’s.. I’m not the majority. What are you talking about, right? So, talk to me a little bit more about your discovery of being an upholder.

Gretchen Rubin: Well, I mean, that’s.. you’re exactly right. I mean, because I remember, like, when I finally came up with this, and I mean, like, the sweat was pouring down my face, it was so hard, and I go into my husband, and I’m like, oh my gosh, you know what? I realized I’m part of this like extreme fringe personality type, and he’s like, “You think like he was that surprised? And the fact is, when you talk to upholders, it’s like I say to them, “Don’t you get the sense that other people are not like you? Like, if you get a bunch of upholders together, they all start muttering, like, “Why can’t other people just get their stuff done? Like, what is the problem? And it’s interesting for me, because a lot of times when you talk to people who are kind of like experts, or, or giving advice, a lot of times they’re upholders. I’m like, yeah, anything works for you, because upholders are just really good at execution. They, they’re great at things like to-do lists and schedules, and setting priorities, and following through. That’s what they’re really good at. There’s negatives to being upholders, definitely. There’s limitations. And weaknesses, but one thing they’re good at doing is executing. When I was writing the happiness project, people would say to me, “Well, how did you get yourself to do all those things? How did you get yourself to follow all those resolutions? And I would say, “Well, I thought they would make me happier, so I tried them, and then if they did make me happier, I just kept doing them. And people would look so puzzled, and they would say, “But how did you get yourself to do them? And I was like, I don’t understand your question, like, what, what, what, why, I don’t, why, and now, and then I understood. Oh, okay, that’s because most people are not upholders, and so a lot of things became clear to me, many, many, many, many things became clear to me when I understood many people are not like me, you know, I’m coming from a very particular place, all of us, each of us is coming from a particular place, and many people in the world do not see things the way that we do,

Zack Arnold: Which much that’s got to be impossible. How can everybody else on the planet not have the exact same lens and filters? Like, what?

Gretchen Rubin: Right, I mean, it’s like it’s so hard to remember. People can see things, they can have different values, they can have different perspectives. I mean, it’s funny how hard that is to keep in mind, even though we intellectually know it’s true. It’s just very hard not to just assume, like, well, of course, the situation is what the situation is. It’s like, no, it’s not, it’s what we think it is.

Zack Arnold: Well, and that’s what I love about this so much, is it’s not like I had the discovery, oh wait, people are different than me. It was, oh, now I understand how I get it. I see what they’re seeing, but I also understand how they’re seeing me, and that was really the biggest thing. But before kind of diving deeper into it, I think one of my favorite things that you have in the book is basically to understand these four tendencies, is asking how do you get each one to change a light bulb.

Gretchen Rubin: Oh, right, yes, so an upholder will change, and a questioner needs to know why to change it. You know, I’m sorry, I can’t really remember that.

Zack Arnold: So, yeah, so how do you get an, you know, whatever tendency to change the light bulb, and the upholder is, well, he’s already changed it. The questioner, why would I need to change that light bulb anyways? The obliger will, duh, you ask them to change it, and the rebel will say do it yourself.

Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, right.

Zack Arnold: As soon as I read that, I’m like, okay, yeah, this all makes more sense. And I think, and I’m sure that you can speak to this a lot more than I can, because you’ve talked to millions of people and spoken about this, and you know, done book tours, but I find that as soon as you talk about these tendencies, and I, in probably 30 coaching calls, I said, “Let me walk you through this, and just exactly like you said, it’s about in our expectations versus outer expectations. Here are the four types, and I always see the same thing, which is, “Oh, I think I’m this one. Oh, but wait, no, I’m kind of that one, but I’m kind of that one too. Oh God, I don’t know, like one of them seems to be more dominant, but am I only 1am? I another? Like, how do I figure it out? So, what are some.. you know, obviously you have the quiz, and I want people to go to the quiz, and I’ll provide a link to it. But just off the top of your head, if somebody’s listening to this, they’re in the car, they don’t want to jump on their phone, don’t want to go on the quiz. How can we help them get a little bit closer in a couple minutes?

Gretchen Rubin: Okay. Well, often an Obliger will say, I don’t know if I’m an Obliger and a Pullter, but I’m really good at meeting out our expectations, but I can’t meet inner expectations. I’m like, well, that is the definition of an obliger. The question is, obligers and upholders are the same, and that they both readily meet outer expectations. So, the question is, can you readily meet inner expectations, meaning if you make a new, how do you feel about New Year’s resolutions? So ask yourself right now in your mind, say, How do I feel about New Year’s resolutions? Upholders will typically say, I like New Year’s resolutions, I like making resolutions, I feel good about resolutions. Questioners will say, I kind of object to New Year’s resolutions, because if there’s something that’s important to me, I’ll just go ahead and do it. I’m not going to wait for january 1, because that’s an arbitrary date. Obligers will often say they don’t like New Year’s resolutions. They often feel very discouraged. They’ve often given up making New Year’s resolutions because they failed so often in the past. And rebels will either say they totally reject New Year’s resolutions because they never want to chain themselves in that way, and so they kind of, they’re just not interested, or they really embrace them as sort of a challenge, like, you know, what my cousin said he didn’t think I could run a marathon in 2019 and you know, watch me. So, starting on January one, I’m training, and I’m going to draw, you know, it’s like the challenge, it’s the proof. You think that I can’t go without alcohol for a year, I’ll show you. So, sometimes they kind of embrace the challenge of it, and I’ll show you of a New Year’s resolution, but typically they don’t like New Year’s resolutions because they feel like they’re too, like they, they’re, they feel like they’re too chained, they’re a chain, or they’re too confining, so that, so that, so thinking of how you answered that is a tip off. That’s a good question. People who feel very, very strongly that they’re, they’re what they’re part of each, that is a sign that you are a questioner, because questioners will do whatever makes sense. So, like, I was talking to a high school student who said, “Look, I’m a mix, because look, if I have an assignment from a teacher I respect, I do it, no problem. So I’m in a folder, but if I have an assignment from a teacher that I don’t respect, I just refuse to do it. So then I’m a rebel, and I’m like, “No, you’re 100% questioner, because a questioner’s question is, “Why should I listen to. To you, if I respect you, I’ll do it. If I don’t respect you, I want it’s like, why would I? And questioners think everybody in the world thinks that, or should think that way. Everybody should be thinking, well, why should I do this? But I’m like, but they don’t, and that’s what makes you a questioner. So it’s funny, upholders, obligers, and rebels see more easily how they are different from other people. They feel it. Rebels feel what it is to be a rebel. Upholders feel what it is to be an upholder. Obligers are like, why is it that I can’t have self-care? Questioners just are like, why doesn’t everybody just do what makes sense? But the fact is that that’s just not how other tendencies approach things, and so I really do think that most people will fall squarely within one tendency. Now, each tendency, sort of, you can have a flavor of an overlapping tendency. So, like, as an upholder, I’m like an obliger, and that we both meet readily meet outer expectations, but as an upholder, I also overlap with questioners, because we both readily meet inner expectations. And so, some upholders are more on the obliger side, and some upholders are more on the questioner side, so there is a continuum, and they are, you can see differences of people within a tendency, but they still are part of that core tendency, and as I said earlier, like we could line up 50 questioners, and depending on how ambitious they were, how analytical they were, how creative they were, how introverted or extroverted they were, how adventurous they were, what their values were. They would all look very, very different from each other. But if you said to them, hey, will you do x for me, they would all answer at the same time, why should I? Because that is what it is to be a questioner, that they would all share their response to expectations, but even the, even if many aspects of their nature were very different,

Zack Arnold: Well, as a questioner myself, yeah, I can attest to the fact that that can create a lot of friction in relationships, because one of the strengths of being a questioner is that you love to gain knowledge and analyze things and go deep, and at the same time all people hear from you is the word no, as opposed to no, no, I’m fine doing it, but I just want to understand more about the process, and I think this was before I had learned about the four tendencies. Maybe it was after, but I have a former supervisor of mine that’s also a very good personal friend, which can be both good and bad, because it means we’re a lot more honest with each other when we work together. Yeah, she said to me once, she’s like, you know what, you are amazing to work with until I ask you to do something, and then you drive me crazy.

Gretchen Rubin: Yes,

Zack Arnold: She knows I’m always going to follow through, but I always fight back, wanting to understand. Well, is this the best time to do what? If we did it this way instead, they’re like, could you just do it?

Gretchen Rubin: Yes,

Zack Arnold: Right. And I, she’s an obliger on steroids, she goes out of her way to help everybody else and put their needs first, and has a very difficult time meeting her own inner expectations. So, one of the connections that we have is she’s always coming to me with issues with her self-care and with health, like, why is it that I keep stopping exercising? I’m like, you know, you need to find a workout group or a buddy, and once she does that, she starts to get into it, but she really kind of put the questioner in a bumper sticker form for me, and one of the things that I made a joke about on the show before, and I tell my clients a lot, is that one of the discoveries that I made, and this is going to kind of help us transition into understanding how to use this. It’s one thing to just see it, be like, oh, that’s really cool, I’m this, I’m xy or z, but the power is understanding how to use it, and for me it was in being able to take the path to a more fulfilling career. I now understand very well about myself that I’m amazing at collaborating with people. I am horrible at working for people. So, when I go into an interview, it’s not just about me trying to talk about here are my character traits, here’s why I’m a good fit. I interview them to understand what are your expectations of me and my time, and one thing that I found at first when you did the test, and that kind of asking about the New Year’s resolutions, when I was in that live speech, and you said, How do you respond to New Year’s resolutions? And immediately in my head it went, it just seems so arbitrary, and then two seconds later you’re like, you’re probably thinking the word arbitrary, and I’m like, whoa, how did you do that? What a magic trick, right? So I always thought to myself, oh, I’m clearly a questioner on steroids. I was saying that for a long time, but the further I dug into this, and the further I worked with people, I realized I’m actually very much a combination of a questioner and a rebel. So what I would actually like to do, because I think this is going to be really helpful for my audience, specifically, because I think a lot of people that work in my field, just statistically, first of all, that most of them are going to be obligers, because that’s just statistically across the board, but I think with my work, a lot of the best people are questioners, because we’re a good fit for this job, because we want to question, is there a better way to tell the story, could we find an even better music cue, could we find a different transition, as opposed to you got a boss, whatever you want. Like, I don’t work well with people, they want me to be an operator. Just press the buttons and cut the scene that I want. That doesn’t work for me. But if it’s all about whose idea in the room is the best idea, not you’re the showrunner and I’m the editor, there for I defer to you. That’s how. Me find the right people and be better at my job.

Gretchen Rubin: Yeah,

Zack Arnold: But it’s really about understanding how can I harness the power of this. So, what I want to do, because I think a lot of people might have similar tendencies to me, I want to do just kind of a bit of a tangent, maybe for like five minutes, and I want you on the fly to see if you can help me understand if I’m more dominantly questioner, rebel, or if I’m just completely off track, because I think a lot of people are going to identify with this, so my belief is I’m very strongly questioner with a tendency to be rebel, but I’m starting to think it’s more like 5545

Gretchen Rubin: Well, I mean, I will say, like someone like Steve Jobs, that’s pretty much what he was, he was a questioner who leaned very strongly to rebel, so when, if you are like this, is what I would predict, seeing if you’re a questioner who leads to rebel. So, a questioner, the difference you’re exactly right, questioners and rebels overlap. There’s a deep affinity between questioners and rebels, because they both resist outer expectations. The difference, and why I think you were right to analyze yourself as a questioner is that the fundamental question, the fundamental mindset of the questioner is why should I, why should I? If you can tell me why, I will do it, if you can show me why, if you can convince me why, if you can, if I, if I can see it, then I will execute. Why a rebel is you can’t make me a rebel, is like pushing back and saying you can’t make me, you’re not the boss of me, you can’t tell me what to do. And so, like, let’s say you have two little kids who won’t do their homework, then they’re like, they’re not doing their book report. The questioner is thinking, this is a dumb assignment, this is a big waste of my time. You know, I read the book, why am I going to write out this, but like, like, no, I’m not going to do that. It’s like, what a waste of time. You’re an idiot, that’s what the questioner child is thinking. The rebel child is thinking, you’re not the boss to me, you’re my teacher, but you can’t make me do it. I don’t want to do it. I’m not going to do it. But when you have a questioner who’s tipping to rebel, who’s leaning towards that rebel side, that’s when you start seeing more pushing back towards things that could be conceived of as arbitrary, but like questioners who tip to a puller, who’s like my husband, it’s easier for them to accept things like speed limits, things like five garments to a dressing room. Questioners who tip to rebels often really don’t like that kind of thing, because to them that feels arbitrary. It’s like you’re telling me what to do, and I don’t think it makes sense, because I’m a good driver and you’re a bad driver. Why are we both driving 70 miles an hour? That doesn’t make sense. They very much more need to be convinced, and they can, they might like really resist everything until they are proved to be right. And that’s why questioners who took the rebels often will want to work for themselves. I know a Westerner who works for herself, because she said, “I just never trust other people’s judgment. I don’t think they do their research. I don’t think they think things through. I don’t feel comfortable like any.. like I.. in the end, I.. it’s like it’s like it’s me and very few people who I think really like know their business, and so I can’t.. I can’t do what they say. I gotta.. I’ve got to make all the decisions because I have to, because I know that I do it, and I talked to somebody else who she divorced her first husband, married somebody else, and they’re both very serious questioners, and she said, well, to me it’s a huge relief, because most people, I feel like I wouldn’t even trust them to do something like pick a tent to buy, because I’m like, I don’t know if you did your research, she said, but my husband, I know that he questions the way I do, and if he makes a judgment, then I can trust it, and so he, like, cuts my work in half, because he has the level that I have, but you know, other people, I don’t listen to them so much, because I don’t know that I don’t, I don’t really, I mean, maybe I don’t trust them, maybe I don’t, I don’t respect their authority, I really have to trust my own judgment first, and it is that quest for like constant betterment, you know. They always are looking for the edge, the hack, the efficiency, the new way. You know, I’m not going to change for change is sick. I’m not going to change because corporate tells me to change. If you can show me that this is a better way, I’m totally on board with that.

Zack Arnold: So, dare they say they might create a program called Optimize Yourself, because they feel that there’s always a better way to do something, right?

Gretchen Rubin: 100% yeah. Hack that, exactly, exactly. And then, like, that kind of hacking, they tend to love, they love to customize. Questioners love to customize. If you say, “Oh, this is the way you do it, they’re like, “I’m going to tweak that, because I think, I think I know how to make it work better for me, you know, so yeah, so that’s very,

Zack Arnold: That’s me every Sunday afternoon when I do meal prep. Oh, this looks like a great recipe, but how can I change it?

Gretchen Rubin: Yes, because

Zack Arnold: I have to be different. I can’t just do the recipe that everybody else does. It has to be a little different. It has to be me, which kind of leads me to this idea of the strengths or the weaknesses, or even more importantly, the values, and that’s actually one of the values of the rebel is authenticity, right. So, it was when I started reading about that, I’m like, oh, that’s actually a lot more me than I thought, because I was thinking, well, I’m not a rebel, I did all my homework growing up, and I was valedictorian in my high school class, and you know, Phi Beta Kappa University of Michigan, like, how could I possibly be a rebel, but then I realized it literally gives me a. Hit in my stomach to do things the way that other people do things. If I haven’t customized it and I haven’t made it authentic to who I am, I just feel like, what is the point of this if somebody else is already doing it, which can be both a strength, but it can also be a weakness, depending on the circumstance.

Gretchen Rubin: Well, and you’ve pointed out something very important, which is that sometimes people make an assumption that rebels can’t succeed, and the fact is, rebels can do anything they want to do, and so some rebels really want to be. They want to make a lot of money, they want to have a lot of power, they want to have a lot of influence, they want to have put their creativity out in the world. They, many, many, many people who are rebels are highly, highly successful because that’s what they want, but they’re not doing it because you told them to, they’re not doing it because they’re supposed to, they’re doing it in their own way, in their own time, and so they put their rebel spin on it, and then some rebels don’t, and then you can’t make them, you know what I mean, and it’s like you, they’re not going to do it just because you tell them to, and so for a rebel, it’s interesting, the rebel tendency is the most different from the other three, I think it really, if you’re dealing with a rebel, either you’re the rebel or you’re dealing with a rebel in your life, it really is helpful to understand their perspective, because they really do see things and respond to respond to things in a way that can be hard for the other tendencies to understand, and actually the other tendencies will often interfere and make things worse, the more like you know an obliger and a puller might be like, well, you know what, I see that you’re not meeting your deadlines, so like let’s have a weekly check-in meeting, and like every day I’m gonna like call you up and see how it’s going, and we’re gonna have some accountability and some oversight, and I’m gonna give you a best practices page, and you can follow that, that’s gonna streamline your procedure, that is the worst part, but terrible ideas if you’re dealing with a rebel, because a rebel wants to do their own work in their own way, like the more you’re trying to control them, the more you’re gonna ignite that spirit of resistance, and they’re going to delay and they’re going to procrastinate and they’re going to, they’re not going to do it. If you’re just like, you know what, you’ve got the chops to do this, like it’s due in two weeks. You know the client, we, if we’re going to keep this job, we got to keep the client happy. It’s due in two weeks. Let me know if you run into any roadblocks. I cannot wait to see what you come up with. You and your team always, it’s like I love seeing what you guys can do, blow me away, and you just walk away, and you’re like, if you do it all the night before, like, okay, that’s fine with me.

Zack Arnold: Well, and I think that what you, what you’ve alluded to is that once you can recognize your own tendency, or even if you don’t recognize your own tendency, the assumption is, well, if you’re struggling with something that I struggled with and overcome, here are the ways that I overcame it, and that should work for you, right? And that’s where the conflict comes from, because you’re thinking, why can’t you overcome something I just did the same way, and that’s what I was doing. I kept using logic. Well, the reason that you can’t do this is because of this, and this, and this. So, I would use this resource in this strategy, and people come back and say, I don’t get it, none of this works for me, and like, why the hell doesn’t it work for you, right? So, there’s even a little bit of that rigid upholder in me as well,

Gretchen Rubin: Because questioners feel like if I give you the research, if I show you the data, that will be compelling, that will, that is what is going to inspire your behavior, is you understanding why. So I’m going to send you a link to 10 different studies, and that is going to convince you, and it’s like, no, it doesn’t, it doesn’t work for the other tendencies, that’s just it, does it’s just not what resonates with them, but and then the questioners are baffled because they’re like, look at all this, like, why, why are you all acting in a way that just makes no sense at all, it’s like, well, it just, it makes sense if you understand the tendencies,

Zack Arnold: Well, and it’s funny because you just described basically the first year of my first podcast platform, which is me standing on a soap box, sharing the information, saying, What is wrong with you people? Don’t you see it all right in front of you? Why are we living this way? Why do we treat ourselves this way in this industry? Look at the results of this, look at the research. Let’s just all change together. Okay. All right. Good. Done. And then all of a sudden I got all this pushback. I’m like, whoa, where is this coming from? And I realized that it wasn’t about here’s all the information you must have. It I reversed it, and I said, I want all of you to talk to me. I want to understand where your challenges are. What it is that you know is stopping you from getting where you want to in your career. Why can’t you follow through with your healthy behaviors? Like, why do you always burn out when you see it coming? And then, as I started to bring all this information in, I’m like, oh, wow, there’s, there’s a lot going on here that goes beyond just not having the research, yeah, and that’s when I started to dive much deeper into human psychology and behavior, which is how I ended up finding your work and realizing, oh, now this makes a lot more sense, but the first step was really just listening, like, yeah, oh, okay, as opposed to here’s what you need to do, and here’s how I can prove it, because I’m a questioner, that’s my tendency, right? That’s that’s exactly what I’m going for, but there are weaknesses to that, and there are weaknesses to all four of them that I wanted to just very briefly go through, and for me that weakness is analysis paralysis. Yeah, like you said, if you’re gonna, you know, go buy something like go buy a tent online, and a perfect example that comes up that shows the difference between me and my wife. My wife is an Obliger, she’s a teacher, she won LAUSD Teacher of the Year, she’s up for LA County Teacher of the Year, she is an Obliger, and then some. And I remember our microwave broke, and she just went out and she bought a microwave and she brought it home, and like, did you look online at any of the models? Or look at the very, she’s like, no, I just want to bought a microwave, and I was just like,

Gretchen Rubin: Yeah,

Zack Arnold: What do you mean, you just bought

Gretchen Rubin: It, that’s such a great example,

Zack Arnold: It drove me crazy, and like, but then I thought, I’m like, oh, but the difference is, we have a microwave that works, had she put that task on my list, it would have taken me a week, and we’d probably have the better option, but we needed a microwave now, so that analysis paralysis happens with my health, where, like you said, I can meet my own inner expectations, like right now. For the last year and a half, I’ve been training for American Ninja Warrior, but it’s not because I’m on a holder and I just say I need to exercise, therefore I should exercise. It was I need to justify, well, should I be doing HIIT training on Monday or HIT training on.. oh, but wait a second, this article said the cardio should be this many times per week, but crap, I need to do have to do grip strength. Ah, crap, I’m just gonna watch Netflix instead, because it’s easier.

Gretchen Rubin: Yeah, analysis paralysis is a big issue, because it’s like that desire for information makes it hard to move forward or to make a decision sometimes, because you’re like, there’s just more and more and more information. So that’s why, if you’re, if you’re a questioner and you aren’t meeting an inner expectation. The advice is always to look and see, have you really decided what’s best? Because if you haven’t decided what’s best, you’re probably just kind of spinning out, because you haven’t really got that clarity that you need. Another problem that some questioners have, I’d be curious if you run it. It sounds like you have run into this, is when people say they ask too many questions, and they’re seen as being sort of either stubborn or being bottlenecks, or like, or sometimes if you have a defensive boss, or you know, defensive partner, whatever, like, they feel like, well, you’re, you’re not, you don’t trust my judgment, you’re undermining my authority, because you keep asking me why, where the question is like, I just want to know why you picked the software. Just tell me why. Like, they don’t mean it in a, like, an undermining way, but to somebody who’s thin-skinned, they’re like, “Why? Like, you just.. I just am telling you what to do. Like, why are you always questioning me? So that can also be a problem for questioners sometimes. Children often have that problem with adults, is they’re like they’re seen as being impertinent, when in fact they’re like, why should I learn that multiplication tables? They mean that quite sincerely. I can look it up on my phone. Why should I memorize it? It’s like, you should give them an answer to that. They don’t mean to be cheeky. They literally just want to know. Tell them the answer, and then they’ll do it.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and unfortunately for my wife, she not only has a husband who’s a questioner, but she has a son who’s also a questioner and a daughter who’s a rebel, so we have a lot of friendly conflict in the house, but what I found is that it’s easier to be able to speak to each of them in different ways, because I understand that for my son, he’s a questioner like me, so I just need to give him logic and justifications. Here’s, like, for example, just this morning I had a conflict where the two of them were in the house, and my wife was out doing something work-related, and I wanted them to clean the living room and clean the kitchen. So, for my son, it was here, all the reasons why it’s important that we clean this up, and here you know the expectations that I have, and all this. But then, with my daughter, it was all right. So, here’s the deal: we need to clean. So, your option is you can either clean, and you can help clean up, or you cannot help clean, but then dot that right, so I was giving her information, I was giving her a choice, but then she had a consequence to each, and oddly enough, they both immediately stood up, and they just started cleaning the house for me, right, and I want people to be able to apply that logic to working in a collaborative environment with others, so now that we’ve gone through, here’s how I can kind of identify myself. You can go through a quiz, but you can’t just work with somebody else that you maybe don’t feel we’re very comfortable with, and say, “Hey, let me sit you down for five minutes and send you a link to this quiz. So, if I’m working with people and I want to be able to identify their tendency, so I can help meet their expectations, and vice versa. How do we start to really dig into the matrix now,

Gretchen Rubin: So there are some tip-offs. So, with questioners, you are looking for people who are objecting to things as being arbitrary, people who ask a lot of questions, people are very interested in data, people are interested in efficiency. That’s when you’re going to see the question, or where you do feel like it’s all about, I need to explain why, and that’s how you’re going to get on board. Whenever people are complaining about self-care, whenever they are complaining about boundaries, that is a tip off that you’re dealing with an Obliger. Also, who is the person in this team that everybody goes to when they need a favor, they need somebody to go the extra mile? That person’s probably the Obliger. Obligers feel like they’re being taken advantage of, and they are everybody exploits obligers, and it’s on all of us to learn to be more fair and not to take advantage of obligers, because they can have obliger rebellion, which is when they, you know, explode, because obligers are the ones who are the most likely to help out. So, if you’ve got most people are on two committees and one person’s on five committees, okay, that person is probably the obliger, if one person’s always taking the night shift, because other people don’t want to take the night shift, that person’s probably the obliger. So, in a way, they’re like great, they’re the rock of the world, they match up the most easily with the other three tendencies, they’re like the type O, and they are often the ones who are the ones that we go to, because they are the ones who help out, and that’s why they’re so invaluable to have this leader. And team team members, rebels, you know, a rebel pretty quick, because rebels, they’re like they’re gonna do what they want to do, you know, they’re not going to do it because you told them to, and they will often do things like not go to mandatory staff meetings, you know, or like they will, if they’re your boss, they might suddenly change the priorities, they might throw, throw out the count, like, oh, we had these three meetings set for Wednesday afternoon, but now I’ve decided I want to do something else once afternoon, so cancel my meetings. They often will do things like, like, as you said, they want to be self-starters, they want to be working for themselves, because they don’t like to work for other people. Often they will go into, like, sales, because it’s like, whatever you need to do to make a sale, you can do, you know, there’s a lot of, like, you can do your own work in your own way, as long as you perform, but interestingly, some rooms are very attractive to working for any areas of high regulation, like the police, the clergy, the military, high regulation companies, because they kind of need something to push against, they feel like if they don’t have structure, they might kind of spin out or be paralyzed, and so they need structure. So, rebel, if you’re collaborating with a rebel, you might see somebody who, who doesn’t really take direction very well, but might be very helpful in that they think outside the box, they come up with unconventional solutions, and they’re sort of like doing their own thing. And then an upholder, you’re gonna, you’re gonna know that it’s an upholder, because it’s somebody, upholders are very, very good at execution. They’re very good at things like to-do lists and schedules. They can seem rigid, so if you have somebody that you’re working with, where you feel like, you know, this person, we need a lot of flexibility in our workplace. Okay, an upholder often is not good at flexibility. They’re not good at ambiguity, like, where it’s not clear what does success look like here. It’s not clear, okay? That can be really distressing to an upholder because they’re like I want to know what’s expected of me because I don’t really understand or like when it’s not clear what the rules are like upholders don’t do well where you’re supposed to kind of like play fast in some some work areas you’re supposed to kind of play fast and loose with the rules that’s kind of the expectation is that you’re not going to totally follow the rules upholders tend to not do very well on that, because they’re very much like, like, I remember I was at a wedding, they give us a card and said, like, go to the bus at 5:45pm to go to the go to the service, and I ran into the bride’s mother, and the bride’s mother said, “Oh, they’re actually going to leave at six, and I was like, “But the card says 545, and she’s like, “Yeah, but we don’t need that much time, so we’re just gonna leave at six. And I was like, but there’s a card, and the card says 545 so I feel like you can’t just like walk around and change that now. I mean, like, come on, we’ve all committed to 545 It was like, to me, it was like a rule of nature. So you can see in your collaboration that the strengths and the weaknesses are very complimentary, you know? Somebody’s really going to keep everybody on track, but maybe not be so flexible, and somebody might be really, really focused on efficiency, but maybe that’s going to slow everybody down, and somebody is going to be great to like pitch in when they need help, but then they’re going to burn out and have some resentment, some anger, and that’s going to be a problem, and then there’s some people who are just going to do what they want to do, and that’s that can be great, and it can also be a huge pain if somebody won’t do what you ask yourself, but they all, they work together. We need all of these on our teams, because they all are very complimentary.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and what I find, and I don’t want to speak in absolutes, but I do feel fairly confident in speaking close to an absolute, is that in the specific collaborative environment of Hollywood, what I found now that I’m able to really read these tendencies, and generally it takes less than five minutes once you start to really play the game of, oh, what’s this person’s tendency? It doesn’t take long. It’s not like you need to do deep research and three weeks later it dawns on you. It happens really, really fast.

Gretchen Rubin: It’s very blatant. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: And what I have found is that almost every single editor that I know is either an obliger first or a question or second, and that I think that’s one of the reasons that burnout is such a huge part of my program, because so many people come to me saying I’m so burned out and working such long hours, and in my mind I’m thinking, well, if you know that working such long hours is poor for your health, and you have all this information, why aren’t you just working less hours and telling your bosses, and like, why is that so hard, but then I realized, oh, it’s because they feel obligated to, because the culture makes them feel obligated to put in those hours, because everybody else does, and I want to do what I’m told and meet that outer expectation. So I feel that almost all editors are either an obliger or a questioner, almost every single director across the board, probably no surprise here, rebel. All of them show up late, don’t want to take notes, don’t want to listen to suggestions. They’re still great collaborators, great storytellers, and great at what they do, but they just walk in the door and they have rebel all over them. And then, when it comes to most producers, I find that most of them are obligers, which is interesting. Some of them rebels, but for the most part, the writers and producers are obligers, which I found really, really interesting, because I thought I would see a lot more questioners, and maybe it’s because I just haven’t worked with enough people, but I work on various TV shows, and you know, work with 1020, 30 writers over the course of the last couple of years, and I found that that really is very much kind of, again, it’s not absolute. It seems pretty consistent through all the stuff that you’ve done, talking to your sister. Do you find that that’s fairly accurate?

Gretchen Rubin: Well, you know, I don’t know, because I haven’t, like, been enough in that, like, seen enough people in that role, other than her. She’s an Obliger, and you know, Obliger is the largest tendency for both men and women. So, whatever, wherever you are, there’s probably, like, anybody’s like, they’re most likely to be an obliger, because there’s just a big group of people, and so you’re always probably likely to see obligers popping up. If for obligers who have burnout, what they might be edging up into is obliger rebellion, which is when obligers meet, meet, meet, meet, and expectations, and then suddenly they snap, and they’re like, “this I won’t do, and sometimes it’s small and kind of funny, like I’ve heard from many obligers who will sit in their cards in order to be deliberately late for work as a form of obliged rebellion, which is like a small thing, but they’re doing it on purpose because they’re like you’re trying to make me do things, but you can’t make me, it’s this, they’re tapping into the rubble, but then sometimes it’s huge and explosive, like you’re dead to me. This is over. This is finished. I’m divorcing you. I’m ending a 30 year friendship. I’m quitting this job and going to work for a competitor today, and you can’t fix it, and you can’t make it better. It’s like it’s like a volcano exploding, and it happens when obligers feel taken advantage of, exploited, ignored, neglected. And so it’s really important because obligers really can be so valuable and because it’s the right thing to do, I think all about the rest of us need to be on the lookout for examples when we’re taking advantage of obligers because we don’t want them to fall into blister rebellion with that deep resentment and burnout that they very often feel from the weight of outer expectations and it’s interesting what you say about rebels because here’s the thing that you’ll see with rebels. If rebels have a partner, if they have a romantic partner, if they’re a founding team, if they have like a number two that they’ve worked with over and over and over again, almost always that person is an obliger, almost always. And there’s kind of a set of special circumstances that can kind of account for when they’re not, but that is that is the most common pattern that you see of the tendencies pairing up. If one person is a rebel, they’re probably with an obliger, and so I wonder if you see that with their directors, like that, the people around them, they’ve surrounded themselves with obligers.

Zack Arnold: Well, and I think that that’s why I see the combination of so many producer director teams, where the producer is obviously the obliger, because they work so well together.

Gretchen Rubin: Well, I didn’t even think of that. That’s exactly right. Well, then that’s predicts that that exactly accounts for what you observed.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, again, it’s not absolute, but it’s pretty consistent, and the majority of people that I work with in my program are on the editing side, because they relate to me in my journey, but I have had some directors. I think every director that I’ve worked with, I would classify as a rebel, and essentially every editor that I’ve worked with is either Obliger or Questioner. There’s one that maybe is an upholder, but I think that the rigidness, like, because a lot of times, like, you have this idea of the engineer, like, no, this isn’t the way that you do it, you must do it this way, right? Like the tech guy, but that’s not the upholder, that’s because they’ve justified why their way is best, and that’s why there’s so much customization and talk about workflows, and I don’t think it’s any surprise that I become, you know, a workflow expert on customizing things and making them digital and more efficient and more effective, like that’s the foundation of what I do, and when I read, oh, questioners love to find efficiencies, I’m like, yeah, that’s kind of what’s going to be written on my tombstone. Was this the most efficient way to do this, right? Yeah, and why? Right, that would be the other keyword,

Gretchen Rubin: Right? Right, and the thing is, you know, sometimes people like really focus in on one thing, like, oh, I’m rigid, therefore I’m in a folder, and like, well, other people could be rigid too, you really have to look at, like, kind of the whole like the kind of the spirit of the upholder, which I think is what the quiz is good, because it asks you a lot of different questions, because sometimes like I remember saying to somebody, oh, a lot of times some questioners really have trouble with traffic regulations, they really object to traffic regulations, and somebody said, well, I’m not a questioner, I don’t object to traffic regulations. I’m like, well, for some idiosyncratic reason, maybe you don’t care about traffic regulations, but you could still be a questioner. It’s not like it’s not like there’s things where it just, like, you know, one little thing makes you, like, takes you out. But I think the kind of the way you describe yourself, these are all the kinds of things that would really appeal to a question, or that would really, like, be like, feel really good, and really satisfying, and really like, ah, this is what I want to dig into. And, of course, with your career, that’s what you want. You want something where it’s like it feels right, like it feels like, oh, this is like I like working this way. And if it’s, if it’s out of step, like, for example, you know, some people love being in a place for, like, we’re a team, we’re team players, like, it’s all about the team here, we’ve got a great corporate head, great vision, and we’re here to like bring that vision to life as a team, you know, you as a questioner, you might be like, I don’t know if that’s gonna,

Zack Arnold: No, thank you, does that work for me, nothing against the team, but I’m not a good team member, I already know that,

Gretchen Rubin: And again, it’s not that it’s a bad. Bad workplace, it’s that it’s not a good fit for you, and like you said earlier, you want to go in there knowing like certain kind of things I’m going to be admired for and praised for and valued for. In another workplace, everybody can be rolling their eyes at me and thinking that I’m a problem, and I want to get, and so you know, like I know an obliter who said, who always says, look, I want a tough boss, I want somebody who sets high standards and holds me to the standards, and I like deadlines and supervision. I like that kind of structure, and it’s like other people would not want that kind of structure. She thrives in that kind of structure. So there’s a workplace where things are set up that way, like get yourself there, because then you are, that’s just going to feel right, and you’re going to do your best work, so it’s not that one is right, one is wrong, it’s just that it’s a fit, and it sounds like for you, you have really understood how to fit yourself to the work in a way that you feel like you are really able to excel and to and to dive into your strengths, and that is a good feeling, that’s when we feel good, that’s when we feel like we’re, we’re like we’re in our stride. If there’s a mismatch, it can be, it can, it just can be grit, you know? Maybe it’s not a big deal, but you know, maybe, maybe, and maybe it does become a big deal, maybe it does become a bad fit.

Zack Arnold: Well, the idea is that I want to make sure that I’m setting myself up for success and not failure, and that is, of course, the bigger picture. What’s my career choice? But it’s also, who are my collaborators? What kinds of shows am I working on? What do the projects look like? More importantly, this is the aspect that so many people miss. What does the lifestyle of this project and working with these people look like? And what’s the process? Because everybody’s saying, oh, I would love to win an Oscar, I’d love to win an Emmy, but are you willing to go through that process, and does it align with your goals? Because ultimately, I don’t want people to just be successful, I want them to have a fulfilling career and meet their own definition of success. It’s not just about, well, I have all these accolades, it’s yeah, but did you enjoy the process and you get excited about going to work and know that it’s the right fit, and you have to know the right questions in order to make that happen, and for me understanding these four tendencies has made it so much easier for me to find the right collaborators and the right projects, which leads me to the million dollar question, I don’t like my tendency, how do I change it?

Gretchen Rubin: You know, it’s it’s funny when people don’t like their tendency, because every each of these tendencies has strengths and weaknesses, each has, you know, each includes people who have been wildly successful and also big, big losers, and I think that each of the tendencies, it’s not that one is better or worse, or one is happier or healthier, more productive or more creative, but it’s that when you know your tendency, you can figure out how to make the most of it and how to offset the weaknesses, so when you look at the people who are the most successful, or the happiest, or the most creative, or whatever, I don’t think it’s that they are of a particular tendency. I think that it’s they figured out how to create the environment that allows them to get the life they want and to have the career they want. So, if you’re an obliger, for instance, because a lot of times obligers say they don’t want to be blinders, all you need is outer accountability, and outer accountability is not hard. It’s very easy to find ways to plug in outer accountability. I, this app, the better app, it’s a free app, people can join, and it’s all about the four tendencies and habits and happiness and stuff. And there are a lot of obligers kind of trade ideas and kind of ingenious solutions for how do you create outer accountability for things where maybe you need a little bit of imagination to figure out how you would plug that in, but it’s like it’s fine once you have battery capability, you can do anything you want. So, what’s the big deal? And then questioners, it’s like, okay, well, like you see where your pitfalls are, you have analysis paralysis. Okay, what are some solutions for analysis paralysis? One is limits, I’m going to visit 510, 10 stores, but not 1010, stores. One is trusted authority. I trust these people. If this software is good enough for them, I’m going to trust their judgment. I don’t have to do my own research, because I know these people do their own research. I can trust them. It’s deadlines where we’re going to make a decision by Friday. After that, it’s not efficient. Like, at a certain point, you just have to make a decision and do your best and learn from, and learn, and maybe we make a decision, and we, and we pivot later, but if we just keep delaying, that’s not efficient. So, you know, like any exercise is better than no exercise. So, by Friday, I’m going to pick, I’m going to pick a regimen, and I’m going to stick to it, and then I’ll learn from the experiment. Okay, that’s like, okay, you got, if you’re, if you’re bugged by the fact that you have analysis paralysis, now you’ve got tools and tips to fix it, so I don’t think it’s, you know, is it possible to change our own nature? I kind of don’t think it is possible, or if it is possible, it’s very, very, very difficult. And to me, it’s like, don’t change yourself. There’s nothing wrong with you. Any frustration you’re feeling, many, many other people have felt the same frustration, and they’ve come up with solutions that you can learn from. So don’t worry about fixing yourself or changing yourself, there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just like, figure out another way to achieve your aim. There’s a lot of ways to achieve our aims. If something’s not working for you, it doesn’t matter if it worked for me or worked for your sister-in-law or works for your boss, if it’s not working for you. Okay, try something else, because there’s a lot of ways to achieve our aims.

Zack Arnold: Well, as a questioner, I’m already thinking. Out all the justifications for making this interview run a whole lot longer than it should, because I really want to keep going, but I also realize I’m talking to an upholder, and we have reached our time, and I know that upholder tendency will win out over the questioner analysis and justification. So, I wanted to make sure, and thank you so much for your time being here today. But before we go, it’s very important that the questioners, the obligers, the rebels, and the upholders all know how to get more information about you, and there’s so much material. Where’s the easiest place for me to send my audience?

Gretchen Rubin: So, at gretchenrubin.com is my website, and you can learn all about my books, and you can read sample chapters, and listen to audio clips, and get all kinds of one pagers and nutshells, and there’s tons of posts there about all different, I just wrote a post recently about anger and the forward tendencies, like how your four tendencies, it comes out in different kinds of anger, so there’s all kinds of stuff there, Game of Thrones, if you want to read my analysis of Game of Thrones character, there’s a whole post there, so that’s a great thing, I have a podcast, which I do every week with my sister Elizabeth, who’s a showrunner and CV writer in Los Angeles, and that’s called Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and that’s wherever you listen to your podcasts. And I’m on social media, my tag is Gretchen Rubin, and I love to connect with people. If you’re interested in the Four Tendencies, I do have a Four Tendencies online course for people who like to learn from an online course more than reading a book, because I’ve got a whole book called The Four Tendencies, and there’s also a workshop, if you want to teach a workshop, like in your workplace, or you’re a healthcare professional, and want to tell people about it, there’s a workshop, there’s a lot there on the four tendencies. Yeah, so, but basically, gretchenrubin.com I have a monthly newsletter you can sign up for if you want to. I got a bunch of stuff, more stuff than anybody would ever want, but go to gretchenrubin.com and that will be your, that’s a good springboard to everything else.

Zack Arnold: Awesome. Well, all the upholders, I’m counting on you to go to gretchenrubin.com It’s the best thing for you, for all the questioners, I promise. There’s a whole bunch of answers why, and make you learn so much more. For the obligers, you know, we’re, we really would like you to do that, and we would like to hear back from you, and we’d like to know you showed up, and for the rebels, go, don’t go, you might get information, you might walk away and not have any information, if you don’t go, whatever you want, right?

Gretchen Rubin: Yeah,

Zack Arnold: So that gives a very brief inclination to how you can crawl into the mind of anybody, read the Matrix, and get him to do what you want to do, right, that’s not what it’s about. So, anyway, thank you so, so much for being on the show. This is.. I know you don’t realize it, because you basically responded to my first email, which blew me away. But in my mind, it has been like a year and a half long process to make this happen. So, and well, it’s funny, because I’ve just built this up so much in my mind, like, oh my god, she’s.. she’s not actually going to respond to my email, she’s got this huge podcast, and she’s got all these best-selling books.. like, who am I? Like, just I was taken over by imposter syndrome, which I never am, because I reach out to all these other big authors. There’s just something about this that I just kept building up and kept building it up, and I’m like, screw it, I’m just gonna email her and see what happens, and like, a day later would love to. I’m like, really, that’s all I had to do. But anyway, it says a lot about your character, and I really, really appreciate it. So, thank you so much for being on the show.

Gretchen Rubin: Well, I so enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Episode Credits

This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared and published by Elyse Rintelman. The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).