Why habits matter more than discipline | Atomic Habits book review

The book has all these little gems and they're just tucked into this tiny little perfect package and that's part of it being atomic. Tiny little minuscule atoms combine and it can change everything right. Keep watching to find out what book I'm talking about today. Hey y'all it's Kyla DiNagno and you're watching Kyla's Reading Day. So today we're talking about the book Atomic Habits. I do not have the book here in front of me. I usually like to show it to you guys, hold it, play around with it. I couldn't get it. The book is flying off the shelves. But I was lucky enough to catch it on an audio book download from the Columbus Public Library, and I listened to it.

So Atomic Habits is the name of the book. The author of the book is James Clear. The genre of the book is nonfiction. The theme of the book is self-improvement psychology business, OK? So I'm three hours into reading the book and I have a light bulb moment. Kyla, you've been doing this one thing. It's been detrimental to you. You need to stop. You haven't wanted to stop. Here it is plain. Plainly you're listening to and you got to make the change. And that thing is working in bed. I was always the person who said I never want a TV in my bedroom. I hear that it affects your relationship. You don't talk as much to your spouse, all this stuff. Okay. Well, that has not happened. For me, having a TV in the bedroom means trying to multitask and really being unproductive at everything. So I would go to bed, I have my lap tray, I sit there, I'm working, and I'm trying to watch TV. And then I'm like, okay, I can't focus on that, let's turn to the food network. Oh, okay. And so I either find myself missing the show and rewinding it while I'm trying to edit a video, or I'm editing the video and then I have to rewatch the entire episode again on TV because I missed that. completely unproductive sit up until 1 30 in the morning exhausted when the kiddo's up at 7 in the morning to get ready for school and eat breakfast and all this stuff we would take the kiddo to daycare come back home i would sit on the couch with the news why i just I just started to enjoy TV. I had never been a really big TV watcher, but then I started to really enjoy it. And so I had it on everywhere. And so I started reading the book and I was like, I'm not doing it again. That night I decided I wasn't taking it upstairs. The next day we took the kids to daycare. I came back home and I was like, okay, where am I going to work? Well, I have this. This is a whole desk. I have typewriters to remind me that I'm supposed to be working. This is my working space. This is not just my YouTube corner. This is literally your office. Why aren't you using it? We also have this awesome living room space that isn't being used during the day because the kiddo's at school, my husband's upstairs working in his office, and this space is just here. It's a beautiful table that we bought for Thanksgiving. I'm sitting here.

I can do my book outlines. I can write my notes. I can be on the computer when I need to. So the next day, the kiddo goes to bed and I'm like, oh, you know, I want to edit ahead, right? Oh, I'm changing my habits. Let's work ahead. Let's go upstairs. I could not walk upstairs with my laptop in my tray just that quick, right? Atomic habits. They will make you think about the things you're doing and you will make a change just that quick. And I was like, no, you said you were never taking it upstairs again. You are never doing it. And that's it, period. James Clear says, one purpose for one room. When he was working in an apartment, you didn't have that luxury. You were kind of working wherever you had to be. I've certainly done that. We came from a two bedroom apartment, living room space was office, co-working this and that, feeding, all the stuff. But we moved into a house in September 2022. I literally have the space to designate areas for work. I literally have the space to designate areas for sleep. So I'm reading the book and then I get to my quote, the quote that meant a big deal to me and I wrote it down. So the mark of whether you're made for a task is not whether you love it, but whether you can handle the pain that comes along with the task better than other people. That was such a breath of fresh air to me because I am a podcaster.

I love podcasting. I love talking to guests. I love finding guests. I love researching them. I love recording. I love editing. And people come to me and they say, hey, Kyla, can you talk to me about podcasting? Hey, I'm going to start a podcast. Can you tell me how? And I'm going through these calls and talking to them and they're like, oh my God, it's so much work. I'm like, no, it's fine. It's fine. Here, here, use a worksheet that I have. Oh, I can't do it. It's too much work. I can handle the pain of it because this is a task that I'm willing to do. And I always thought, well, everyone gets there, right? Everyone does it. And that's what James Clear talks about in the book. Like, in order to get into a flow state, you have to enjoy what you're doing. For me to sit down and edit a video that is an hour and 20 minutes, get it down to about 32 minutes, and just be working for four hours, you forget to eat, you forget to drink, you forget all this stuff, you can deal with the pain of it, right? And this book, Atomic Habits, made me feel really grateful for my life. I just passed the one year anniversary of being fired from a job. And that was very, very hard for me. I was like, okay, I went to law school. I'm not practicing as a lawyer. I'm not even working in a law firm anymore. Who am I? Well, I can be whoever I want to be, but I have to have the habits, the atomic teeny weeny, weeny, weeny, tiny, small habits in place. It made me really happy to read the book and be like, OK, some of my habits work, some of them don't. So since you're already watching, go and subscribe to the channel. I talk about nonfiction books like Atomic Habits.

I talk about fiction novels. I talk about children's books. I talk about books. I love books. Okay so go on and subscribe and keep watching as I talk about atomic habits. There are four things that James Clear says are really important for making a habit and establishing a new habit. It was make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. Okay and so for me the big focus was make it easy. So I've been telling myself that I was going to exercise. I'm like, you have this house, you have a garage, pull the car out of the garage, jump rope, pull it back in, that's it. Easy. It's not easy. I haven't done it. I was never going to do it. So now, I told myself, I told my husband, we're gonna take the kid out to daycare, we get back, we're gonna pull the car on the driveway, I'm gonna go into the garage, while it's empty, jump rope for a minute. And I've done it, I've done it for the last five days, okay?

So here's some clips of me jumping rope, all kinds of different outfits. Most of the time, I'm grumpy, because I'm like, ugh, I don't want to do this, it sucks. But I keep telling myself, Kyla, it's just one minute. And so, it still sucks. It sucks every single day. But I'm going to keep doing it, because it's just one minute of my entire day. But for me, make it easy mint. Don't even have to worry about moving the car. Do not even pull the car into the garage. It's completely empty. it's cold outside it's raining that has nothing to do with you jump rope then go get the car and move it in okay so that has really helped me as well like the book has all these little gems and they're just tucked into this tiny little perfect package and that's part of it being atomic tiny little minuscule atoms combine and it can change everything, right?

So one of the challenges in the book, James Clear asked you to write down your daily habits and then mark whether they are good, bad or neutral. So I'm listening to the book. I'm like, I'm not going to do that. I don't care. My habits are fine. I get my work done. But I'm also a rule follower. I'm a lawyer. And I was like, OK, we're going to do it. So I did it. And seeing it on paper, most of my day is work focused or neutral. the things that were bad were really bad. I don't know and I don't know when it switched but thank god I was able to switch it back. So Atomic Habits. Would I reread this book? Yes. I am going to put Atomic Habits in the special list of books that I will reread every single year along with the book Big Magic. I absolutely read that every year. In fact it's time for me to pick that back up. So thank you for hanging out with me today as I discuss the book Atomic Habits. Again, I'm going to list it here on the screen. I could not get a copy of the book. The library is all sold out. And now that I've read it, I might buy it. OK, so get in the comments. Talk to me. Have you ever read the book Atomic Habits? Do you believe that your habits need to change? Because I'm here to tell you, whether you don't need to change them, whether you need to change all of them, write them down, see it in plain view, and then let that be the deciding factor. Okay?

More next time. Bye.