The Four Tendencies
It’s easier to become happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative when you find the way that’s right for you.
Created by Gretchen Rubin, the Four Tendencies framework is designed to help you know yourself better, understand others, and create the life you want.
Understanding the Four Tendencies Framework
We all face two kinds of expectations—outer expectations (meet work deadlines, answer a request from a friend) and inner expectations (keep a New Year’s resolution, start meditating). Your response to expectations determines your “Tendency”—that is, whether you’re an Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel.
Knowing your Tendency can help you set up situations in ways that make it more likely that you’ll achieve your aims. You can make better decisions, meet deadlines, meet your promises to yourself, suffer less stress, and engage more deeply with others.
More than 3 million people have taken this short, easy quiz and discovered their Tendency.
Whatever Your Tendency, You Can Learn to Harness its Strengths
Whether you’re an Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel, you can learn to harness the strengths and counterbalance the negative aspects of your Tendency to achieve your aims.
In these interviews, Gretchen Rubin talks with notable people from each Tendency about the Four Tendencies framework, and how they’ve found success in ways that work for them.
Watch the interviews with the Four Tendencies:
Applying the Four Tendencies
Learn more about the Four Tendencies framework and get practical tips to become happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative, in the ways that work for you.
The Four Tendencies and Habit Formation
- Want to Change an Important Habit? Tips for Upholders, Questioners, Obligers & Rebels.
- A Deep Dive into the “Four Tendencies” Personality Framework
- Do You Face These Common Problems in Happiness and Habits? Here’s Your Answer!
The Four Tendencies and Work
- What’s the Best Tendency to Hire?
- What’s the Right Mix of the Four Tendencies in a Team?
- Tips for Using the Four Tendencies at Work [PDF Download]
The Four Tendencies, Family, and Sweethearts
- Self-knowledge Can Help You Strengthen Your Romantic Relationships
- Tips for Using the Four Tendencies with Spouses and Sweethearts [PDF Download]
- Can My Four Tendencies Personality Framework Help Explain Patterns of Family Estrangement?
The Four Tendencies and Children
- Trying to Manage Children’s Schoolwork During COVID-19? My “Four Tendencies” Personality Framework may help.
- Back to School: How to Help Your Children (and You) Form Good Habits.
- Tips for Using the Four Tendencies with Children and Students [PDF Download]
The Four Tendencies and Healthcare
- A Fitness Trainer Explains How She Uses the Four Tendencies to Help Her Clients to Succeed.
- How a Health Coach Harnessed Her Rebel Tendency to Lose 40 Pounds and Boost Her Energy.
- Tips for Using the Four Tendencies in Healthcare [PDF Download]
Famous Examples of the Four Tendencies
- Podcast Episode 220: Why We Should Deal with Something Negative Right Away, an Airport Hack, and Examples of the Four Tendencies in Fiction and Life.
- Want to Read Books that Show Examples of the Four Tendencies? Revealed!
- Check Out These Examples of the Four Tendencies in Movies, TV Shows, & Books. Send More Examples!
- In Honor of “Game of Thrones” Season 8, I Apply My “Four Tendencies” Framework to the Principal Characters.
