Several thoughtful readers emailed me to let me know that this morning, on the Kathie Lee & Hoda hour on The Today Show, Hoda gave a big shout-out to The Happiness Project. Terrific!

If you want to watch the discussion, it begins at about 2:30.

A very nice surprise for my morning. Thanks to everyone who wrote to make sure I didn't miss it.

One of the most challenging—and most helpful and fun—tasks that I've done as part of my Happiness Project is to write my Twelve Personal Commandments. These aren't specific resolutions, like make my bed, but the overarching principles by which I try to live my life.

It took me several months to come up with this list, and it has been very useful for me to have them identified clearly in my mind. It's a creative way of distilling core values.

To get you started as you think about your own commandments, here are my Twelve Commandments:

1. Be Gretchen.
2. Let it go.
3. Act the way I want to feel.
4. Do it now.
5. Be polite and be fair.
6. Enjoy the process.
7. Spend out. (This is probably the most enigmatic of my commandments.)
8. Identify the problem.
9. Lighten up.
10. Do what ought to be done.
11. No calculation.
12. There is only love.

So how do you come up with your own list?

Consider phrases that have stuck with you. When I look at my Twelve Commandments, I realize that five of them are actually quotations from other people. My father repeatedly reminds me to “Enjoy the process.” A respected boss told me to “Be polite and be fair.” A good friend told me that she’d decided that “There is only love” in her heart for a difficult person. “No calculation” is a paraphrase of my spiritual master St. Therese (“When one loves, one does not calculate”), and “Act the way I want to feel” is a paraphrase of William James.

Aim high and fight the urge to be too comprehensive. I’ve found that my commandments help me most when I review them at least daily, to keep them fresh in my mind, and to do this, it helps to keep the list short and snappy. I suspect that Twelve Commandments is too much. Maybe I only need two, “Be Gretchen” and “There is only love.”

Think about what's true for you. Each person’s list will differ. One person's commandment is to "Say yes," another person's commandment is to "Say no." You need to think about yourself, your values, your strengths and weaknesses, your interests.

I've written about commandments in the past, and it's fascinating to read other people's commandments. For instance:

Do stuff.
Talk to strangers.
Stay in touch.
Make haste to be kind.
Dig deep.
Less is more.
Smaller.

Have you identified some of your own personal commandments? What are they? Please consider posting them. It's so interesting to see what other people identify.

* I'm a huge fan of my friend Erin Doland's terrific blog, Unclutterer—"daily tips about getting and staying organized." Useful and funny. Who knew that clutter could be funny?

* Want a happiness quote in your email inbox every morning? Sign up for the Moment of Happiness. Subscribe here or email me at gretchenrubin1@gretchenrubin.com.

A new Secret of Adulthood:

I'm really having fun with the site Pinterest, which allows you to pin the images that interest you onto a board (get it? "pinterest"). Check out the site, check out my boards. If you'd like to get an invitation to join, just email me at gretchenrubin1@gretchenrubin.com, and I'll send you one.

* Sign up to become a Super Fan, and from time to time, I’ll ask for your help. Nothing onerous, I promise! I so appreciate the support and enthusiasm of the Super-Fans.

Yesterday I video-posted about the Pigeon of Discontent, "I can never get to bed on time." A few readers rightly pointed out that while I emphasized the importance of having a "bedtime," I didn't address the challenge of actually getting yourself to turn off the light when it's time for bed.

That's a very important question. Since I've started my Happiness Project, I've become more and more convinced that sleep is vital to happiness and energy. (Here are fourteen tips on getting more sleep.)

If you want to get more sleep, but have a hard time getting yourself to turn out the light, try these strategies:

1. First things first: give yourself a specific bedtime. Most adults need 7-9 hours of sleep every night, so take a look at your wake-up time, and do the math. Even if you don't regularly go to bed at your bedtime, knowing, "Well, it's midnight, so I'm two hours past my bedtime" might help prod you to bed.

2. Don't wait until you feel sleepy to think "Hey, maybe it's about time for bed." It's all too easy to keep yourself alert and busy way past the time that you should be asleep. If you insist that you're quite wide awake at 1:00 a.m., test yourself: sit in a dim room with your head back for five minutes. How does it feel? Are you still wide awake? Along those lines...

3. Stay away from the internet for at least an hour before your bedtime. Television, too, but I think the internet is even more apt to make me feel artificially wide awake. I used to try to go through my emails one last time before bed, to get a jump on the morning, but I realized that this stimulating activity made it much harder to go to sleep.

4. Don't drink caffeine for several hours before your bedtime.

5. Remind yourself how great it feels to wake up naturally, before the alarm goes off, without that sickening jolt into wakefulness. Then, when you're surfing the internet at 11:30 p.m., ask yourself, "Am I making a good trade-off?" I was recently talking to a group of medical students, and one guy protested, "But if I go to bed at 11:00, I won't have time to watch some TV before bed." I asked, "Is watching that block of TV so fun that it outweighs the pleasure of getting enough sleep?" (I don't know what he decided.)

6. Get ready before bed well ahead of time. I realized that, perversely, I often put off going to bed because I was too tired to take out my contacts, brush my teeth, and get changed. Now I get ready earlier in the evening. Side benefit: once I do these things, I'm less likely to head to the kitchen for a snack. On a related note...

7. Create a bedtime ritual, and do it at the same time every night. Maybe you fix yourself a cup of herbal tea, maybe you read in bed, maybe you do an evening tidy-up. By doing the same thing every night, you will cue yourself to start heading to bed.

One bit of folk wisdom that I heard when I had very young children was that "Sleep begets sleep." I found that to be true of my children, and also of myself. I sleep better when I'm well-rested than when I'm over-tired.

How about you? Have you found any effective strategies for coaxing yourself to bed on time?

* There's a lot of terrific material about fitness, health, and happiness on Greatist—"choose better, be a greatist."

2012 Happiness Challenge: For those of you following the 2012 Happiness Project Challenge, to make 2012 a happier year -- and even if you haven’t officially signed up for the challenge -- welcome! Each week, I post a video about some Pigeon of Discontent raised by a reader. Because, as much as we try to find the Bluebird of Happiness, we're also plagued by the Pigeons of Discontent.

For the first month of the Pigeons of Discontent videos, my friend Maria helped me out. This was a fun experiment, but we couldn't really get that format to work properly, so I'm switching back to doing the videos solo.

This week's Pigeon of Discontent, suggested by a reader, is: "I can never get to bed on time."

Give yourself a bedtime.

See the happiness mug on the table beside me? That was a birthday present from my sister a few years ago. She finds great happiness-related gifts.

If you want to read more about this resolution, check out…
A secret to more happiness and energy? Give yourself a bedtime.
Fourteen tips for getting more sleep—and why it matters.
A fundamental secret to happiness? Get enough sleep.

I hope you enjoy the new format. It's still evolving, so bear with me while it's taking shape.

You can post your own Pigeon of Discontent at any time; also, from time to time, I'll make a special call for suggestions.

If you're new, jump in right now, sign up here. Studies suggest that by taking action, like signing up for this challenge, will help you keep your resolutions. For the 2012 Challenge, each week I'll post a video for you to consider, and you can check out the archives of videos here.

* I never know what I'm going to find on Kirtsy.

* Want to get my free monthly newsletter? It highlights the best of the month’s material from the blog and the Facebook Page. Sign up here or email me at gretchenrubin1@gretchenrubin.com.

Partly as an intellectual discipline, partly for fun, I often push myself to answer tough, conclusory questions, such as "If you had to pick just one thing, what's the key to happiness?" or "What are the ten most common myths about happiness?"

The other day, I asked myself: If I had to state the central challenge of living a life of happiness, in a single sentence, what would it be? This sentence, I decided, would be a good candidate:

As Flannery O'Connor observed in a letter, "Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better."

How about you? What's your suggestion for a one-line summary?

* On the BMW Guggenheim Lab, Jon Cotner writes about the Spontaneous Society, a walk he leads through New York City neighborhoods, in which participants try to promote friendly exchanges among strangers. Interesting.

* Want a happiness quotation in your email inbox every morning? Sign up for the Moment of Happiness. Subscribe here or email me at gretchenrubin1@gretchenrubin.com.

“Familiarity does not breed contempt. On the contrary the more familiar it is the more rare and beautiful it is. Take the quarter in which one lives, it is lovely, it is a place rare and beautiful and to leave it is awful.”
-- Gertrude Stein, Paris France

* Join the happiness conversation on Facebook and on Twitter (@gretchenrubin).

Just about anyone who has ever put off a troublesome task is familiar with one of my Secrets of Adulthood: Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination.

When there’s some chore you just don’t want to tackle, every other chore seems alluring. As a friend told me, “My apartment is never cleaner than when I have a writing assignment due.”

In Roy Baumeister and John Tierney’s fascinating book, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, they suggest the “Nothing Alternative” to this problem. That is, if you want to get yourself to do something, make the alternative to that task to do nothing.

This rule was inspired by the habits of writer Raymond Chandler. Chandler set aside at least four hours each day for writing; he didn’t force himself to write, but he didn’t let himself do anything else. He wouldn’t let himself read, write letters, write checks—nothing. He summed up: “Two very simple rules, a. you don’t have to write. b. you can’t do anything else. The rest comes of itself.”

When I read this, I realized that I’d been following this rule without giving it a name. When I want to do the difficult work of original writing, I often work outside my apartment, in a library a few blocks away. This gets me away from the temptations of the internet, and it also forces me to accept the “nothing alternative.” I say to myself, “I’ll stay here for two hours,” and then I’m stuck. If I’m not writing, I’m just sitting there. Sure, sometimes I jump up and go look for a book in the stacks, but that doesn’t take long. I end up writing just to pass the time. At home, by contrast, there’s no end to the useful tasks that I can find to occupy myself.

So if you often find yourself procrastinating by working, try making yourself do nothing.

How about you? Do you procrastinate by working—by cleaning, organizing, answering emails, cruising the internet doing “research,” making plans, or the like? Has the "do nothing" alternative worked for you?

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

* My friend Laura Vanderkam told me about the blog Wandering Scientist, and I've really enjoyed reading it.

* Want a happiness quotation in your email inbox every morning? Sign up for the Moment of Happiness. Subscribe here or email me at gretchenrubin1@gretchenrubin.com.

In The Levity Effect: Why it Pays to Lighten Up, Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher make an interesting argument that “levity” is an extremely effective tool for helping people to work better. An atmosphere of light-heartedness, it turns out, helps people pay attention, eases tensions, and enhances a feeling of connection.

When I read this, I thought, “Well, levity would be tough for me, I’m not particularly funny, and I’m not particularly outgoing.”

But what the authors mean by “levity” is really a sense of lightness. It's less about being funny and more about being able to have fun and see the humorous side of everyday situations—especially difficult situations.

Ah, I thought, I’m trying! The Ninth of my Twelve Commandments is “Lighten up." When I posted sticky notes with key phrases all around my office and apartment, the one I put in the master bathroom read, “Tender and light-hearted.”

Gostick and Christopher include a quiz about workplace levity. Looking at it, I realized that most of my workplaces included these elements, which I’m sure contributed to the positive experience I had everywhere (except for the summer I worked as a waitress at Dos Hombres Mexican restaurant, and zoikes, I did not like that job).

For example, I’d assumed that the atmosphere around the Supreme Court would be serious, thoughtful, and grand. And it was. But in her chambers, Justice O’Connor incorporated several goofy aspects that made it a lot of fun, too. Each Halloween, she required her clerks to decorate elaborate pumpkins, and birthday celebrations were always a big deal, and she took the clerks on a yearly outing (we went fishing). And that sort of thing really did make a difference.

How does your workplace measure up? Take Gostick and Christopher’s quiz:

New employees are made to feel welcome
Meetings are positive and light
We have fun activities at least once a month
It’s common to hear people laughing around here
I can be myself at work
We have a lot of celebrations for special events
When brainstorming, we like to have fun
My boss is usually optimistic and smiling
Customers would call us fun to do business with
I have a friend at work who makes me laugh
We have a good time together

Does your workplace have "levity," according to this quiz? Do you think it matters?

This is a great list for home, too. For my next book, Happier at Home, I tried several resolutions that were meant to try to bring more levity into my apartment. For instance, I tried to under-react to problems, and it really did help.

How about you? Have you found that an atmosphere of levity and good humor makes a difference to your workplace or home? Have you found any good strategies to keep things fun and light?

* It's fun to look around Laughing Squid, which "features interesting art, culture, and technology from around the web."

Assay: Recently, when I was rereading Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, I was very struck by this observation about the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire:

The death of Guillaume Apollinaire at this time made a very serious difference to all his friends apart from their sorrow at his death. It was the moment just after the war when many things had changed and people naturally fell apart. Guillaume would have been a bond of union, he always had a quality of keeping people together, and now that he was gone everybody ceased to be friends.

The "quality of keeping people together" seems an important and rare attribute, and although it doesn't come naturally to me, I'm trying to do a better job of it myself, and also to appreciate more the work of the Apollinaire-ish types whose efforts benefit me.

This quality has been on my mind since the sad occasion of a memorial service of a friend. I knew her in a work context, but at the service, I realized from the tributes of her college friends that, along with many other wonderful traits, she had the "quality of keeping people together" from that time.

My sister is this way, too, and from watching her in action, I know how much energy and time it takes to act like glue, to make the efforts that allow people to stay close.

Who coaxes people into showing up to the reunion? Who remembers everyone's birthdays, and insists that everyone get together to mark the occasion? Who plans the promotion celebration? Who organizes the group wedding gift? Who keeps track of everyone's addresses? Who sends out the group emails? It doesn't sound very hard—until you're the one doing it.

And although it's a lot of work, it's all too easy for people to take these efforts for granted, or not to realize how important one person is to the strength of a particular web of relationships. In fact, that person might well be teased for these efforts, and instead of people being appreciative and cooperative, they might act jaded and superior to such gung-ho antics.

Ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree: one of the keys—perhaps the key—to happiness is strong relationships, and the often unsung work of such folks to keep up a "bond of union" makes a tremendous difference to everyone in their circles.

How about you? Do you have the "quality of keeping people together"? Do you feel that your efforts are appreciated? If you don't naturally play this role, have you found strategies to work at it?

* I love cruising around Parent Hacks—which "collects and shares parents' tips, recommendations, and bits of wisdom—their hacks—so we can all benefit."

* Want a happiness quotation in your email inbox every morning? Sign up for the Moment of Happiness. Subscribe here or email me at gretchenrubin1@gretchenrubin.com.