Try Stacking Habits to Be More Productive
Forming bad habits is easy, but developing good habits is surprisingly difficult, even though most of us crave routine to some degree . Fortunately, there is a way to use your natural inclination to routine to create and maintain a new habit. This is called habit stacking, and you can think of it as sticking a new habit onto an existing one.
What is a Habit Stack?
Habit overlay occurs when you tie a desired change in behavior to an existing routine. Theoretically, in this way, what you find difficult to stick to simply becomes part of your larger chain of habits. Think about what you already do every day: brush your teeth in the morning and evening, make coffee in the morning, walk your dog at lunchtime, etc. During any of these activities, you can add a second necessary task that will help capitalize on what’s happening along with your existing routine.
The concept was popularized in 2017 by S. J. Scott, who wrote Habit Build: 127 Small Changes to Improve Your Health, Wealth, and Happiness . It has since exploded, and other psychologists have added their own support for the practice. Science Agrees: Building a routine is the key to overall health and well-being , and our brains are primed to find a routine. Once you have one habit neurologically fixed, it’s much easier to build others around it.
How to start with accumulating habits
There are many ways to build a stack of habits, but first you need to identify the challenges you are struggling with. For example, if you know you need to sort email every morning but tend to put it off once you log in for work, keep that in mind as a possible candidate to add to the stack.
Once you’ve determined what you want to do but don’t, determine what you do , whether it’s taking a 3:00 p.m. daily break to browse social media or washing dishes after every meal. Study each and find ways you could stack less sticky tasks on top of them. If you often forget to call your mom, add this to the washing up. If you need to sort through your email, do it while you’re having your morning coffee.
The trick is to figure out what things can fit together. You can’t answer the phone while you’re running at the gym, but you can probably do it while you’re driving to work. You cannot practice while brushing your teeth, but you can practice deep breathing.
Once you’ve identified what habits might be forming, write down your plans somewhere, such as on a Google doc: “I’ll be answering my emails every morning by 10 while I’m eating breakfast” – and for the first few days, actively check them out. to make sure you stay on top of them. Eventually, they will become habitual, just like the activities you paired them with.