One year ago, I read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear and it made a great impact on my life.
And actually, the very first video I made on this channel, was about the lessons I learned from that
book. But I thought, it might be interesting to see how am I living now - a year later. Am I still
using some of the advice I read in Atomic Habits and how? So, if you're interested, keep watching.
Hi, it's Mariana. Welcome to my channel where I talk about productivity and productivity systems,
reading and note-taking strategies and different ways how you can achieve
your goals. If you are new, consider subscribing. It has been a year since I read the book Atomic
Habits but there are few things that I keep coming back to. Firstly, it is that I understand
why some habits are easy for me and why with some habits, I'm really struggling. The second thing
is, I tell myself very often “winners and losers have the same goals”. Setting goals is important,
no questions, you need to know where you're going but many people set their goals but only a few of
them really achieve them and those people that achieve them, are those people that understand
how to create habits that are going to support those goals. So, they create routines, they
shape their environment so that it supports their habits. And the third thing is, when I want to
create a new habit, I keep asking myself “How can I make it as easy as possible? How can this habit
be the first choice, the easy choice?” When I read the book, my life was a chaos,
my daughter was just four months old and it was a time when I finally started to feel like myself. I
started to think about what I want to do, how I can get my life back to normal and organize it.
So, it was a great time to read that book because - and I always talk about it on my channel - any
change in your life, a big change, it's a great opportunity to revisit your habits and introduce
new habits making sure that the habits you have are good habits, maybe getting rid of some of
the habits, it's a great opportunity to do so. And James Clear talks a lot about an environment and
how environment shapes your actions so I really am trying to think about the environment I am
creating for myself and for my family. So, for example, we: my husband and I really pay
attention to what we are eating and instead of buying whatever there is and then being tempted
every day here at home, we made the choice that we are going to buy only good things in a shop. So
how we do it is, we go to the shop once a week and we buy you know good things, meat, eggs, oats,
rice, fruit and veggies and that's basically it. We don't really buy any processed food or
sweets and treats etc. We make the choice once a week to buy only good things and then all the
other days in the week, we have very easy choice because we can't really eat crappy food because
there is nothing but good food in our house. One thing that I mentioned in the video I made
a year ago was that I wanted to spend less time on social media and I identified that the reason
why this is happening, why I'm spending so much time on social media, is because
there are times when it's just the easiest thing to do is to grab the phone and check social media.
You know, when I was breastfeeding, waiting for something etc., so how I battled it was,
I had with me also my e-reader so I could actually grab the e-reader and read a book
and if I wanted to reach out to my phone what I did there was, I put all the social media
apps and the distraction apps into a folder kind of like far away so I had to click few
times before I got to it. And as the main app that I had on my home screen, as the only app
was the app called “Drops” that I use for learning Russian. So that if I take the phone,
the easiest choice is to click on that app and learn Russian instead of spending time on social
media. So how does it look like now? Am I still spending a lot of time on social media? No and
the main reason is, like, I have now a full-time job, I post two videos on YouTube every week,
I train 10 hours a week of CrossFit and I have one-year-old daughter so I have quite a lot on
my plate and I simply don't have the time to spend on social media. But there are still times, when I
could be tempted, for example, on my commute. I'm sitting in a bus for 40 minutes so that's a lot of
time that I'm spending that I could be tempted to be on social media. So how I'm battling it,
I just don't use mobile data. I don't have a plan that supports mobile data so I need a
wi-fi to actually access social media. And there is no wi-fi on the bus. So, what am I doing else?
I'm listening to an audio book or to a podcast. Way better way of spending time in my opinion.
In the video last year, I also talked about mastering entry points and how it is
important for me to do a certain routine to have a productive day. Well, I've learned something over
the last year, and it is actually mentioned also in the book, but you know it always helps if you
live through it yourself. And it is that if you do a certain behaviour for a certain amount of times,
you no longer need a willpower or motivation to do that. It just becomes part of you. It becomes your
identity. And that happened to me with several things. I can give you an example of exercising.
A lot of people are surprised when they hear that I exercise six times a week for hour or
two. You know, I started exercising on December 3rd, after taking a break after my daughter was
born. And since then, I've exercised six times a week. I missed I believe two sessions because I
was sick and one session because we went away for a trip. So, one year of exercising and I missed
three sessions. Do I have a crazy willpower or crazy external motivation? Like no,
it just is part of who I am. I am not you know talking to my husband like oh are we going to
go today to CrossFit or no? Like no, it's like the same way if you don't discuss whether we are going
to eat dinner tonight or not, we are just going to eat dinner, right? So, we are also going to
exercise today. I don't use any habit tracking, I don't put exercise clothes next to me, so it's all
ready. And you know, I don't use any entry points. I don't need to. It would actually be
a waste of time using a habit tracker and the same goes for other things. You know, I talked about
how I use certain routine to make sure that I am productive that day, that I'm working
on my YouTube channel. I don't need it anymore. Again, it would be a waste of time. This is now
who I am. But I still consider entry point when I'm introducing new habits because it's such a
great way to ensure that you actually do those habits regularly and that you repeat them
enough of time so it can become your identity. So are there any habits that I'm struggling with?
Oh yes, oh definitely yes! I don't want that this video would portray my life as something,
you know, perfect. No definitely not, there are habits I need to work on.
One of the things I'm really disappointed in, is my reading habit. It's something that you
know I started really strong this year after I read the book and it was going really well but
I am no longer reading as much as I would like to. And the reason is - and again it all comes back
to the book, it's about the environment and the way how we create, you know, this support system
for our habits. So, what I did when I started introducing this reading habit was, I attached it
to an already existing strong habit. At that time, it was breastfeeding. I would be breastfeeding for
hours in a day so I was like - good idea is to read books. And it was a really good idea.
You know, I got two or even three hours a day of reading which was amazing but now my daughter is
way older and I breastfeed for a very short time in the morning and in the evening. It's not even
enough to open the book and you know get into it. So, I don't do it. And now the reading habit,
stand habit that doesn't have this support habit, the strong habits that it was attached to. So,
it just keeps being pushed away, especially as reading is quite a time-consuming activity. As I
mentioned I try to read or listen to audiobooks on my commute but I work from the office only
twice a week so that's not so much either. So, this is definitely something that I need to
work on. And I know that Atomic Habits, the book, has the tools. I just need to think about
a little bit more and see where can I find a good time to kind of put there this habit and do it.
So what's next? That's a very good question. It's been two months since I started the full-time job
and that definitely spiced things up because not only that I am trying to do everything I was doing
before but now I also have the full-time job that you know kind of takes a lot of time. So, I am
very conscious about my habits and I try to keep an eye on what's going on so that the good habits
are not slipping away and I can like save it if I need to. And as our daughter is getting older,
we also try to introduce good habits to her and good habits for us as a family,
so we can support her growth and you know learning etc. And we want to make sure that those new
habits become really part of our identity the same way as CrossFit is. Because it's very very easy to
do those habits that are part of your identity and it's quite challenging to manage new habits.
There are a lot of great tools that Atomic Habits explains but it's still way more challenging than
just you know having it as your own identity. So, is my life better after reading Atomic Habits?
I don't know, like I was pretty organized and very productive before my daughter was born so I don't
know, maybe, I would be in the same place even if I would not read Atomic Habits. But I believe,
I am now more in control of my life because I understand the psychology of habits
and how to create them. And I think that I got back into being myself after reading
the book Atomic Habits because I read it and because I understood how to use it.
Thank you for watching, let me know down below: Have you read Atomic Habits? And if so,
are you still using the lessons you learned from this book? Like this video if you enjoyed it,
subscribe if you are new. I really would like to get the thousand subscribers very soon and
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