The Problem
Your life lacks the routines that make other people productive
You want to exercise regularly, floss your teeth daily, drink more water, de-clutter your home or office, and live a happier, more productive life. But things get in the way, and most days your routines collapse before you've finished your first cup of coffee.
Struggling to stick to good habits can be a huge roadblock to productivity and a joy-filled life. Many of us know that healthy routines can lead to improved focus, consistency, and success, but when we try to add too many new habits at once, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
Habits that are challenging to establish may fall by the wayside, leaving us with a lack of progress and a flurry of missed goals. Without impactful daily routines, dejection sets in, and we end up in a cycle of frustration, trying again and again to build routines that work.
The Hack
Create productive routines by stacking habits
What's the solution to your eroding daily routines? Habit stacking. This technique helps you piggyback a new habit onto one you already do consistently. The term "habit stacking" was popularized by S.J. Scott in his book Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less.
The concept took off when James Clear wrote about it in his wildly popular book, Atomic Habits. Scott introduced the concept as a way to bundle small habits together into a routine, making it easier to incorporate multiple positive actions into daily life.
The principle behind habit stacking is simple: attach a new, desired action to an existing habit so it becomes part of an automatic routine. For instance, if you want to start journaling each morning, try doing it immediately after a habit you already have in place, like opening your journal after pouring that first cup of coffee. Over time, you’ll associate the smell of coffee with journaling, which will encourage you to stick with the new habit.
One of the simplest ways to create a healthy routine using habit stacking is doing something immediately after your feet hit the floor when getting out of bed in the morning. For example, your feet hit the floor and you:
- strike one of your favorite yoga or tai chi poses.
- pick up one or two pieces of clothing on your floor (a great habit for messy kids).
- take a vitamin (you'll need the vitamin and water on your nightstand).
- meditate for 60 seconds.
- recite an affirmation; something like, "I'm grateful for another day."
- deep breathing exercises, which can be paired with meditation (now, you're stacking two habits on top of getting out of bed).
Repeating this pattern reinforces the connection between the two habits
What you can do tomorrow
Like the 2-minute-rule Hack we shared here, habit stacking is a super simple strategy for improving productivity. Here are three ways to get started with habit stacking and the creation of new routines.
- List existing habits: Write down as many simple daily habits as you can think of (e.g., brushing your teeth, getting out of bed, making breakfast, looking at social media, to name a few). Make the list as long as possible. This will make it easier for you to choose which habits are the best ones to stack. These will be your anchors that help you create new routines.
- Choose one new habit to stack: Decide on a small, achievable habit. NOTE: this is not a habit on your list; rather, this is something new that you want to become part of a daily routine. Make sure it’s simple, like reading for five minutes; this will ensure consistency. Also, be sure it's part of a routine that's important to you. If you hate reading so much that it feels like a chore that you'll likely ignore in a few days, choose something else--something important enough to stick with.
- Pair and Practice: Attach the new habit to an existing one--this should come from your list. For example, if you want to sit less and move more (something that will help you live a longer life), consider adding a simple movement to an existing habit. For example, when you pick up your device and open Facebook or click on an article in your newsfeed, the new habit can be something as simple as getting into plank position for 10 seconds, or striking one yoga pose, or standing on one leg for 5 seconds--a tremendous way to improve balance. Repeating this pattern reinforces the connection between the two habits, the existing one (opening your device) and the new one (some kind of simple movement).
Have fun with it
Building daily routines isn't everyone's idea of fun. They often include mundane activities, such as household work like dishes and laundry or some kind of exercise (not everyone enjoys cardio and strength training). Habit stacking can help you create routines that are indeed fun.
One member of our team dislikes exercising and hates commercials on TV. He used habit stacking to create a routine that eliminates viewing commercials, while getting some much-needed cardio.
Share your opinion about habit stacking in our comment feature or on X, using the hashtag #hacklearninglife.
He watches football from a comfy recliner. Instead of suffering through long, boring commercial breaks, he jumps out of his chair during timeouts and jogs laps in his family room and kitchen for the two- to three-minute commercial breaks.
Over the course of a three-hour game, he reports getting up to 3,000 steps, or nearly two miles. "While I enjoy walking outside, it's sometimes difficult to hit my step goal," he says. "Especially Sundays, when I'm inside watching the game. Using my jog-during-commercials routine, I not only get a lot of steps in, I challenge myself to cover more ground during each break, which is actually fun."
Notice the habit stacking and new routine here? The existing habit is sitting while watching TV. The new habit is getting up when a commercial pops up. The new Sunday routine is jogging up to two miles during a football game. Pretty cool, right?
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Resources
Habit stacking is mentioned in both Hacking Life After 50 and Small Wins Big Health.
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