Habits play an important role in our everyday lives. Fostering good habits will lead to a successful and effective life both physically and mentally. In contrast, ritualising bad habits may lead to failures or dissatisfaction. It is essential to build positive habits to achieve your goals. If you want to change-up your routine, adjustments to your everyday life, even small changes, can make a big difference. Each and every habit has an impact.
What is Habit Stacking?
Habit Stacking or Habit Chaining are the coined terms used to define building new routines into existing habits. The process involves grouping together small activities into your day-to-day routine. This creates a new memorable regime by using things you already do, to remind you to do something else (for example, brushing your teeth before bed). The strategy works by introducing realistic and practical habits into your day to eliminate our good ol’ friend procrastination. We’ve researched useful information from some amazing books such as Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes by S.J. Scott (worth a read!).
“Habit stacking uses those strong connections to create new habits, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle.
The Habit Stacking formula
The habit stacking formula is: After/Before [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].
For example: After I make my morning coffee, I will journal for 10 minutes. Then, after you have mastered the basic formula, you can create larger habit stacks such as: After I make my morning coffee, I will journal for 10 minutes. After I journal for 10 minutes, I will meditate for 5 minutes. AND SO ON! Before you know it, you will be smashing those simpler tasks that you might otherwise put off or procrastinate over.
One might say it’s almost like a chain reaction or domino effect to your day. If you build on these easy, manageable and memorable steps your day/week/year will be far more productive.
Develop better routines and achieve small wins, every day.
Habit Stacking is an easy way to increase your daily productivity and happiness levels. Acknowledge your small wins and tick tasks off your to-do list to give you the momentum you need to kick goals throughout your day. Research suggests it takes around two months to develop a habit, so that goal you have felt is unachievable, could be reached much sooner than you think, with the Habit Stacking formula.
Not only are we big on habits and routines to increase our overall well-being, happiness and productivity, but we’re also interested in morning and evening rituals, the historic symbolism that dates back to ancient times and how these can affect our modern lives. Look out for an article around this topic very soon.
And if you’re looking for some other productivity hacks then check out our article on The Best Productivity Apps For Getting Stuff Done or why not join me on Monday mornings with a group of other amazing small business owners for our Monday morning accountability group catch ups. It’s free to join, simply drop me an email chrissy@creativelittlesoul.com.au and I’ll send you the details.