Sal Habit stacking is a powerful technique for creating positive habits by linking them to existing habitual behaviors. By capitalizing on the automatic processes that drive our daily routines, habit stacking makes it easy and intuitive to establish new healthy habits.
Using Automatic Cues to Your Advantage
You probably have very strong habits and connections that you take for granted each day. For example, your brain is probably very efficient at remembering to take a shower each morning or to brew your morning cup of coffee or to open the blinds when the sun rises. These types of automated behaviors provide an opportunity to introduce new habits without much conscious effort. When building new habits, you can leverage the connectedness of behavior to your advantage through habit stacking. Rather than willingly a new routine from scratch, identify a current daily habit and “stack” the new behavior on top. This pairs the new routine with an obvious cue that is already anchored in your habitual repertoire.
Meditation After Brushing Your Teeth
For instance, if you want to develop a consistent meditation practice, you could pair it with your teeth brushing ritual. “I will meditate for 10 minutes immediately after brushing my teeth each night before bed.” Brushing acts as a built-in reminder to meditate since you are cued once that task is complete. Soon brushing will automatically cue meditation without extra motivation.
Reading Before Bed Instead of Scrolling
Similarly, if you want to replace mindless phone scrolling with reading, you could habit stack it with your nightly bathroom routine. “After using the bathroom last thing at night, I will read one chapter of my book instead of getting in bed with my phone.” Going to the bathroom serves as the prompt to pick up your book rather than your device.
Exercise During Commutes
Commuters can also benefit from habit stacking. For example, “Every time I get in the car to drive to or from work, I will complete 10 minutes of an online exercise class on my phone.” Commuting automatically cues a mini workout without disrupting your schedule. Before long, getting in the car will motivate exercise instead of idle scrolling.
Putting Keys in the Fridge
Of course, not all of our daily rituals make sense obstacles for new patterns. The key is choosing cues that follow each other logically. One amusing example of an illogical stack would be “every time I put my keys in the fridge, I will do 10 pushups.” Refrigerating keys serves no purpose as a pre-routine. Stacks must feel intuitive if they are to stick.
Starting Small and Building Gradually
When stacked properly, new habits gain momentum from automated behaviors almost effortlessly. However, it is still best to start small, tackling one new routine at a time. Introducing too many changes simultaneously risks overwhelming your self-control. Build gradual successes upon gradual successes through minor habit stacking instead of massive overnight transformations. Sustainable change happens incrementally through consistency over time.
Habit Stacking for Higher Goals
While utilizing small daily actions as hooks, habit stacking also helps achieve loftier goals. For instance, if saving for a down payment, consider automatically transferring $25 from each paycheck to savings along with your other regular bank deposits. Paired with an existing routine, it’s easy to seed larger future goals through micro-actions repeated over the long haul.
Finding the Right Fit
The beauty of habit stacking lies in its flexibility. By assessing your unique daily patterns and opportunities, you can get inventive tailoring new behaviors to fit naturally wherever they may serve as the right follow up action or trigger. Take some time to thoughtfully observe how existing habits progress throughout each day. Note automatic behaviors with potential as stacking platforms to help worthy new patterns find footing in your life. Subtly altering routines can reap big rewards with persistence.
Sustained Change Through Compound Growth
Mastering the art of habit stacking allows positive changes to compound over time through networked habits that reinforce one another. Rather than fractured resolutions, new patterns weave seamlessly into everyday flows, thus becoming much harder to abandon. Sustained growth happens gradually but assuredly by consistently tweaking routines toward optimal behaviors through stacked automation. Our days belong to the habits we have nurtured, so stacking strategically paves the path toward transformations which last.
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