Try Habit Stacking To Make New Routines & Rituals Last
Starting any kind of new habit or routine is a challenge. Try habit stacking to streamline the whole process.
For any significant improvement in your life, the goal is to be building up a consistent habit. How you go about that simple thing varies widely depending on who you are reading this advice on.
Some will just pump you full of motivation and inspiration to get things done.
Others will give you challenges or tough love or pull you up by your bootstrap tactics.
In those kinds of instances, I feel they fall short and often suggest the person doing those things is tone deaf to people’s situations. In the end, I opt for more practical approaches to building up habits.
In many cases it’s more like a mindset to develop over time and strengthen that “can do” attitude. However there are times where I’ll find specific systems that can be very helpful.
Some will argue that developing systems is better than habits and I agree with that sentiment. But this particular idea — habit stacking — kinda takes the best of both worlds.
Developed by self-help author S.J. Scott in his book Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less, he is pretty straightforward with what this system is and how easy it is to build up. The core idea is this:
Find any regular habit that you are doing right now and build a new habit on top of it.
The argument for this is that the habits that you’re already doing are pretty strong. And those habits can be treated as a foundation for more habits. And this building-like analogy is pretty sound. When you have a strong foundation, it’ll be easy to stack habit after habit on it.
Currently, there aren’t any direct studies that show how effective this is — such is the case with most productivity or habit building strategies. However a behaviour scientist named B.J. Fogg, PhD, director of the Behavior Design Lab at Standford and author of Tiny Habits, has offered support to this concept. Especially since he’s been working with James Clear, author of Atomic Habits.
Habit stacking also gets more credibility as clinical psychology Melissa Ming Foynes, PhD argues that this makes sense because it’s a type of implementation intention. Implementation intention is simply a plan of when and where to do something.
Why this strategy works so well is that the existing habit you are already doing is the cue to do the next habit.
It’s not so different from your existing morning routine where your brain just goes through a subroutine of things that you do on auto pilot. Habit stacking is essentially tapping into that function of our brain once a habit sticks.
By extension of this, you can achieve goals over time by making the base habit that goals demand into an automatic action over time.
So How Does Habit Stacking Work?
Getting into the finer details it’s worth going back to the foundation of the building analogy. As a foundation in terms of habits, it’s something that you do automatically without thinking.
For example, many of us first thing in the morning go to the bathroom. It’s something we don’t think about. We just do it.
The reason it’s gotten to that state is because of a particular kind of brain chemistry that we have. In essence, when we go through a morning routine or set of habits, our brain is firing particular neurons that get us to do those actions. Over time, those start to work very quickly and efficiently.
So when you start adding other habits or steps into an existing system, you’re already well on your way to implementing it without a second thought.
All of this comes back to the old habits that we have are the trigger that gets us to do the new ones we built or want in our lives.
Another way to look at this is habit stacking is a method of tricking your brain into adopting new habits through existing ones. This phenomenon might be why implementation intention tactics are more effective than just setting yourself a goal.
In the case of goals, you’ve got to tap into willpower, grit, or motivation to get it done. A lot of that stuff is what’s pushed by some of the more tougher self-improvement gurus. But the problem is those tactics fall short because those aspects are fleeting and can easily be squashed through things like stress, fatigue, or just about any external factor in your life.
The other strong point about this strategy is rhythm of new actions leading into habits.
Some strategies might involve arguments like slipping the habits into the cracks and periods of respite in your life. That or you might set reminders or somethings. The problem with these strategies is that they interrupt the flow of your day. They create a “starting cost”.
Even if the habit is easy like doing 10 push ups or writing a line in a gratitude journal, or practice some daily meditation for a few minutes, those things can still interrupt the pacing of your day. It makes it harder to stick to them.
But starts costs can all be combined together when you habit stack. Through this method you’re reducing the heft of the costs as well as the frequency.
No longer are you having to wait for a special time to do something. You just run through this sequence that is easier to flow through.
Considerations To Make When Stacking New Habits
As great as this strategy is, you do have to make some considerations. Every person’s life is different. And while there are many great habits out there, each person is unique and might find some useful and others a waste of time. Even if they take very little time to do.
With that in mind, here are some things to consider.
Specificity
Habits have a sort of themeing to them in that some will work better with others. The reason for that is that your brain will be able to spot the old habit and know exactly how to act on the new one in response.
The idea is to flow from one action to the next and there should be very little interruption between the foundational habit and action. For example, if you want to wash your face more often, do so after you brush your teeth.
That’s easier than saying you’ll meditate after you tuck the kids to bed for the night. It’s specific but any parent knows it’s not always easy for kids to immediately fall to sleep and that can interrupt your habit.
Brevity
The idea with habit stacking isn’t about stacking a massive action or something too involved. As much as we want to be ambitious, I’ve learned time and again to move mountains you need to do the small actions first. We easily get overwhelmed, stressed out, and give up.
Even if you have the most rock solid foundation to stack habits onto, what’s more reliable is a habit that takes little to no time rather than something that takes a long time.
For example, I’ve been wanting to get to the gym more and I’ve had periods where I just don’t show up. That’s because I know my workout takes an hour or so to do. On top of the fact I’ve got to shift gears a lot from writing to immediately going to the gym.
Even something like a 30 minute exercise routine can be difficult to do if you’re running late or you’re like me where you might have other things you’d rather do.
This is where brevity comes in because it’s easier to say “I’ll jog for 30 seconds in one place” or “I’ll do 10 push-ups after breakfast” than “Let’s go to the gym for an hour-long workout.”
When stacking habits, you’re more or less building a building out of legos — brick by brick with precise instructions.
Also with brevity, you don’t want to be stacking too many either. Similar to to-do lists while it’s effective, it can be a point of stress if you’re listing off every tiny little thing you want to do in a day.
Attainability
Brevity can inherently make something easier to do, you still want to consider other elements of making something accessible. For example, if you’re someone who stays up late into the night for whatever reason, it might not be a good idea to habit stack something to your morning routine.
The reason being that even if this habit would take seconds or a few minutes to do, you still might be rushing through your morning and forget about it.
Another thing is attaching a habit to something that fluctuates a lot. Like my failed attempt of getting the gym after I finish writing. With my writing being all over the place, it’s hard to be doing that habit at a time that I like.
The idea with this consideration is to look at the habits that are more ingrained. For example, most peoples morning routines could be a good spot if you are plenty rested and have a lot of time in the morning and aren’t in a constant rush. Others it might be in the evening or afternoon.
Another aspect to consider is having contingency plans because even with those solid consistent habits, life can throw stuff at us. In that case, some contingency plans is finding some kind of compromise. For example, if you can’t seem to focus and you’re trying to develop a meditation habit, you could supplement it by simply taking three deep breaths.
It’s not the exact same thing as what you wanted, but it’s close enough that the brain will register the habit.
Similarity
Again with the themeing, this is important because our brain likes singular focuses. If you’ve ever tried actual multitasking, changing from one task to another, or got distracted by something unrelated to what you were doing, then it’s clear you’re not able to switch very well.
In the case of habit stacking, you want everything to be pretty focused on one theme.
I always argue with those morning routine articles that not everyone is going to willingly write in a gratitude journal, drink some green juice, do yoga, go for a half hour jog, wake up at 5 am, meditate, and read a book for 30 minutes. Sure some of us could manage a few of those things but no one would upend their morning routine right now to adopt all of that.
Realistically, you need to have things flow into one another. For example, if you’re meditating, it’s easier to then get into doing some yoga or pushups since your meditative stance might be similar to a yoga pose or getting you close to a push up stance.
It’s easier to do that than to read a book or write in. gratitude journal after you’ve made your green juice. You’ve got to move from the kitchen to an entirely different room and while that’s not a big deal at first, it can be difficult long term.
Aside from bad habits, the good habits are up in the air and are subjective based on your own life. But what makes them important is how easy or difficult they are to implement into your existing lifestyle.
The idea of habit stacking is effective because it’s already accounting for your lifestyle. And when you make those considerations, you’ll find which habits are best stacked where and how many is enough.
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