Blog Posts by Gretchen Rubin

I love coming up with different schemes-and here's a new one. I was thinking about the mental energy required by the different tasks of my life, and it struck me that this energy could be divided into four categories, in descending order of mental demand:

1. Contemplative energy-planning, deciding, creating, inhibiting (holding myself back from saying, doing, or thinking something), setting priorities, making transitions

2. Engagement energy-talking to other people, reading or observing with my critical faculties

3. Audience energy-watching or listening passively

4. Habit energy-mindlessly executing a habitual behavior

One conclusion: when I feel too tired to do anything except Level 3, I should probably be in bed.

To be satisfying, watching TV or checking Facebook should feel like Level 2 activities, not Level 3. Watching Homeland is a different experience from flipping through the channels. True, occasionally Level 3 is just what I'm in the mood for, but I

One of my very favorite resolutions is my resolution to Cultivate good smells. I'm obsessed with the delights of the sense of smell.

Loving beautiful fragrances quickly leads to a greater appreciation of perfume, and I'm now a perfume fanatic.

So you can imagine my delight at visiting the Museum of Arts and Design's exhibit, The Art of Scent 1889-2012. The exhibit present twelve pivotal fragrances in history of scent.

I visited it for the second time last night, and had the chance to hear the brilliant Chandler Burr, organizer of the exhibit, explain why these particular perfumes were chosen. Jicky, Chanel No. 5, Drakkar Noir, Angel, Light Blue, L'Eau D'Issey, Osmanthe Yunnan, Untitled…such intriguing scents.

You might think, "How do you exhibit a perfume?" The room is spare, with a wood floor and white walls. Along the walls are twelve depressions; you lean your head into a depression, and a puff of perfume rises up.

It was such a pleasure to experience these

The "broken windows theory" of policing holds that when a community tolerates minor examples of disorder and petty crime, such as broken windows, graffiti, turnstile-jumping, or drinking in public, people are more likely to commit more serious crimes.

As a law-enforcement theory, it's controversial, but whether or not it's true on a city-wide level, I think it's true on a personal level.

My "broken windows" are the particular signs of disorder that make me feel out of control and overwhelmed.

• Unsorted mail
• Messy stacks of newspapers
• Shoes in odd places
• Cluttered counters
• Dirty dishes scattered around the apartment (for my husband, as he often emphatically reminds me, dirty dishes left overnight are broken windows; for me, as long as the dishes make it into the sink, life feels under control)

From what I've observed, people's other "broken windows" often include:

• Staying in pajamas or sweats all day
• Eating food straight from the container

One of the things that surprises me most about happiness is the degree to which, for most people, outer order contributes to inner calm. More, really, than it should.

In the context of life of a happy life, something like a crowded coat closet or an overflowing in-box seems trivial-and it is trivial-and yet I find that I get a disproportionate charge of energy and good cheer from clearing clutter. An orderly environment makes me feel more in control of my life, and if this is an illusion, it's a helpful illusion.

Even people who thrive on a little chaos tend to have a limit, and enjoy orderliness to some degree.

However, there's a group of people who seem oblivious to clutter. They don't appear to see it at all.

Now, I'm not talking about people who can stand to see dirty dishes scattered around, because they know if they wait, a spouse will collect the dishes (perhaps complaining all the while; see these facts about shared work). Very often, people in a couple or in

Happiness interview: Mike Vardy.

I got to know Mike Vardy through his work on LifeHack and Productivityist, "the blog for productivity enthusiasts" (and aren't we all productivity enthusiasts?). He has a new book, The Front Nine: How To Start the Year You Want Anytime You Want, about how to create a path to success on your own terms. (The title and the book make use of the metaphor of golf.)

This is a subject with a lot of relevance for happiness, so I was interested to hear what Mike had to say.

Gretchen: What's a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?

Mike: It is the act of writing that fuels everything else that I do. It gives me the opportunity to spend quality time with my family, it gives me the opportunity to earn a living, and it gives me the opportunity to lead out all of the creativity I have stored within myself. The reason it makes me happier every time out is because I'm getting better and better at it every single time I put words to

An appreciation for art is one of the transcendent values of life, and a great source of happiness, but like many transcendent values, it can sometimes be hard to wedge into your ordinary day.

Here are some tips for getting some visual art into your daily routine, without spending a lot of time, energy, or money.

1. Check out art books from the library. Art books are very expensive, but at the library, you can enjoy as many as you want, for free.

2. Here's a brilliant suggestion from a reader: When she's at a museum, she buys postcards of her favorite works of art. She keeps a big stack of these masterpiece postcards, and from time to time, puts a new bunch in the sun visor of her car. When she's stuck in traffic, she pulls them out and looks at them.

3. Enjoy picture books. We tend to look at picture books only when we're around very young children, but picture books can be such a source of joy. I wrote a series of posts for the New York Times Motherlode blog about

I love teaching stories-parables from the Bible, Zen stories, paradoxes, Aesop's fables, koans. That's one reason that I now use my weekly video to tell a story.

One such story is the story of "Buridan's ass." In it, an ass stands between two identical piles of hay, and unable to find a reason to choose one pile over the other, dies of hunger.

I know this story well, and I was struck by how absolutely perfectly it applies to Geoff Dyer's description of his struggle to decide what book to write next, as set forth in his fascinating book, Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence. Dyer writes:

Happiness interview: Pamela Druckerman.

I first heard about journalist and author Pamela Druckerman when her book Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting came out-it really struck a chord with many parents.

Now she has a new book, Bébé Day By Day: 100 Keys to French Parenting, which hits the shelves next week. I find lists irresistible-and lists of 100, even more irresistible.

I was very interested to hear what she had to say about happiness.

Gretchen: What's a simple activity that consistently makes you happier?

Pamela: Reading a good book. Whenever I do this, I'm amazed that I don't do it more often.

Also, knowing - and naming - the little things that make me happy, makes me very happy. When I think of something I like, I try to jot it down somewhere. Then inevitably, I lose track of it. The other day I came across a slip of paper on which I'd written simply, "the word 'shimmy.'" A list I wrote last year included