Habit Stacking

Do you often feel overwhelmed with hundreds of ideas, projects and to-do lists – unsure how to give them all the attention they need?

Are you juggling your business / work alongside family life, low energy or countless other commitments?

Habit stacking is a simple technique that helps you introduce and maintain routines without adding more overwhelm. When you link new habits with ones that are already established and automatic, it feels more natural and much less overwhelming.

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What is Habit Stacking?

The Science Bit:

Habit stacking is simply the act of attaching a new habit to an existing one. It offers a structured approach to forming simple and repeatable new habits by giving them an anchor with the existing routines.

The current habits act as the cue in behaviour change. Once you do the action, you’re then cued to also do the new one. It’s much easier to build a new habit onto an existing one because of neuroplasticity (the ability to rewire your brain throughout your life).

A habit is a learned behaviour that becomes automatic through reinforcement (repeating it daily).

When you repeat an action, you create and strengthen the neural pathways in your brain associated with that habit or action. As well as strengthening the ones used frequently, your brain will prune away the neural connections used infrequently.

This is why attaching any new behaviour / habit to an already strong connection, sticking to the new habits will be met with much less resistance.

Benefits of Habit Stacking

here are three benefits of introducing habit stacking:

Long-term Change: If you find it hard to stick to things (think of those unrealistic NYE promises made to yourself each year), habit stacking make these changes much more realistic, without needing to overhaul your entire routine.

Less Resistance: By linking the new habit to existing ones, it’s less likely to trigger that resistance you can feel in those early days. Because of the feeling of ease, the change can feel seamless and much more natural.

Improved Productivity: Habit stacking can help you to streamline your current processes by chunking similar activities together, helping you to stay focused.

Motivation: The Cue-Routine-Reward concept shows us that celebrating small wins is important in those early days once the initial excitement of the new habit wears off.

Identify Your Key Habits

Spend a bit of time journaling or brain-dumping these reflections:

Current daily routine or schedule – Is it busy / chaotic / does it have room for more?

Your personal preferences – stick to things you enjoy / think you'll enjoy to begin with.

Current goals – personal or professional.

Future Vision – What you want your day-to-day life to look like. E.g. Less time on the computer / more movement.

Time – What time do you actually have available. It's pointless planning new habits when you don't have the time to do them.

Current, established habits – Jot down all of your habits. think big and small here. A habit can be as small as stretching in bed when you wake up, or cleaning your teeth.

New habits – now add all of the habits you want to introduce. Be free with this, you can refine later once you consider all of the other points.

For example:

1. Morning Routines: Choose habits like meditation, listening to relevant podcasts, or adding journaling as part of your new and improved routine. These will enhance your mindset as well as setting you up well for the day ahead.
   
2. Physical Activity: Identify habits where you can link activities with a daily task. I do this every morning. I walk on my under desk walking pad for up to an hour and use that time to research or write a blog, admin tasks, watch some training, or listen to a podcast. As well as boosting my productivity by checking things off of my to-to list, it also helps to keep my movement up when I work from home at my desk most days.
   
3. Mindful Rest Breaks: Stack self care and rest habits to help break up the day and give your brain a much needed break. You could do a short meditation or take a quick walk. Allowing yourself to totally switch off from data and information is a brilliant way to refresh your mind and enhance concentration and productivity.
   

If you’re worried that you won’t stick to these habits, start small, and start with only one. Link to current solid habits that will act as a cue for you, like my example of cleaning my teeth or using the treadmill while I complete other tasks.

Other Examples:

• Journaling as you enjoy your morning coffee.
• When you get ready for bed, put your gym gear out ready for the following morning.
• Whenever you finish a task you get up and move around.
• 10-15 minutes before a call or a meeting, stop what you’re currently working on, and prepare yourself (mentally e.g. mini meditation, review notes, and physically e.g. stretch, or make a cuppa).

When you find the right habits, the ones that work for you, it will be much easier for you to make them stick.

When you have good routines in place, it not only helps you feel more confident and in control, it will improve your productivity because your mind will feel less cluttered.

Momentum is so much easier to maintain once the changes have been made and you’ve made it as easy as possible for you.

Maintain Consistency

Maintaining consistency is key with habit stacking. You can help make this easier for yourself by setting clear and achievable goals for each new habit that you want to introduce.

Tracking your progress is also key, because it will help you stay accountable, which can be really motivating. 

Understand that building new habits will take you time and effort to begin with. Be open to making changes and adapting your goals along the way.

Track your progress and celebrate small wins every day! By celebrating your achievements and your lessons, you can become your biggest supporter. It’s so easy to focus on what you haven’t yet achieved, or how far away the end goal is.

Plus, giving yourself a high five and acknowledging your progress feels good! So, if you’re feeling a little flat, take the time to reflect on how far you've come.

“Success is the product of daily habits – not once-in-a-lifetime transformation”.

James Clear

Other Examples of Habit Stacking

S.J. Scott, author of Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take 5 Minutes of Less describes habit stacking as : 

“Linking habits together is a way of getting more done in less time, resulting in a positive change in your life. As you perform the stacked actions every day, they become part of your daily routine.”

S.J. Scott

Scott shares his ideas for creating a daily “habit stack” which consists of developing a daily routine where you complete several mini habits of around 5 minutes each, up to around 30 minutes.

As with the habit stacking I explained in this post, attach them to existing ones – so just after cleaning your teeth for example.

Scott suggests that each small habit needs to be a “complete action”. He also says it’s best to not include things like exercise if you could actually spend more time on this.

I really like this approach, and it is something I may try out as part of my daily morning routine once I have some quiet time, but for now I’m sticking with how I currently do things, because it’s working so well and I get so much done on my morning walk!

James Clear also writes about habit stacking in this great article How to Build New Habits by Taking Advantage of Old Ones

James discusses the science behind building new habits. He discusses how connecting the new habit to a current habit / daily behaviour is one of the best ways to do so.

He includes a “formula” for habit stacking:

After/Before (Current Habit), I will (New Habit).

I love how he is able to bring the scientific understanding to this behaviour change, and the formula makes it lovely and clear.

However you want to approach habit stacking is what’s best for you. But the key is to identify your current daily habits that you do (cleaning teeth / getting out of bed etc.), and using these to build the new ones that you want to introduce.

Tools, Resources & Support

Take a look at these tools & resources that will help you with your intentional planning, seasonal goals and personal growth:

90-Day Planner – This printable 90-Day planner is the perfect companion for you as you set your focus for the next 3 months. Use it every 90 days to help build consistent habits and achieve your goals with ease. With a focus on intentional planning and moving forward at your own space, it's the perfect companion to see you through to the end of the year.

Notion Navigators – If you want to learn how to use Notion and grab some AMAZING dashboards, I highly recommend joining Jakolien. As someone who was scared of Notion and found it too complicated, I now use it daily thanks to the best daily planner system I've ever used. I cannot recommend it enough – my ND brain feels settled, goals are clear, tasks are right there for me to see – so no more decision fatigue, and a much calmer mind.

Life Balance Wheel – Gain clarity of your current reality, identify areas that may be holding you back, and create a plan to make long lasting change.

Impact Stationery – Have you ever dreamed of creating your own high-end stationery products? Laura has an amazing course & community designed to help you created printed products that you can market on Amazon, or your own website. It's different to KDP in that they're not print on demand, and the quality of products are incredible.

Grow With Evelyn – Evelyn is an extraordinary coach. GWE is the best membership I've been in. The level of support, the courses, challenges & community are exceptional. Highly recommend if you're a coach, digital creator or small business owner.

Final Thoughts

Habit formation takes time and it’s natural to feel resistance at first. Our brains don’t like change – it likes to take comfort in what it knows. When you introduce new habits or routines, you can find yourself in battle with your mind. By linking the new habits to ones already ingrained in your life, it makes it a little easier.

When you habit stack you can also further streamline your current working practices, your work life balance and your productivity.

Remember to be specific with both the trigger (cue) for the new habit, as well as the goals and expectations. For example, “I will journal for 5 minutes as I drink my coffee” Or, “On my morning walks outside I will listen to a podcast”.

As a multi-passionate entrepreneur with limited energy, I’ve found habit stacking to be very effective. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you're already working on many different things, and adding extra pressure to make even more changes can feel very unappealing.

Habit stacking has helped me introduce things to my normal daily routines without the normal resistance and as a result improve my day to day life.

I’d love to hear how you’ve used habit stacking in your life – I’m always up for learning new ways to boost productivity while saving my energy!

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Meet Lynsey

Hey there! I'm Lynsey, a counsellor, coach and mentor for women who want to create change, but are feeling lost, uncertain and exhausted. With over 7 years’ experience of training, running businesses, and over a decade as a tutor and adult trainer, I've learned the value of a gentle and intentional approach to work and life that energises you without draining all of your energy.

I've lived with ME/CFS since 2011, and since then re-trained as a counsellor, and achieved a distinction for my Masters in Counselling and Psychotherapy Practice; all while running 4 businesses!

How? Improving your mindset, finding acceptance in yourself, and developing a gentle, but solution-focused approach to achieving goals is key. Knowing that it's not about how fast you move, but finding your own pace and trusting that you can achieve your goals in your own way, one step at a time.

If you'd like to know more about working with me, you can email [email protected] or find me on socials (links in the menu)

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