It’s not very often, that we stumble across a how-to for health and productivity which actually, on the face of it, seems pretty doable.
‘Habit-stacking’ might sound uncannily like just another one of social media's buzzwords for betterment, but in actual fact, the approach has a strong enough basis in psychology, to put paid to this quite legitimate assumption.
The theory is, that by latching (or stacking) a new positive behaviour, onto an existing 'anchor' habit (ie. making the bed, brushing your teeth, putting the kettle on) it ultimately becomes a cue, and the new behaviour becomes habituated.
An example of this in practice, would be stacking body brushing (new habit) onto your daily shower (old habit/anchor.)
Mopping the floor (new habit) in the two minutes whilst the kettle boils (old habit.)
Listening to a podcast (new habit) on the drive to work (old habit.)
And so the list goes on…
Part of the beauty of this idea of clustering the habits we want to create, with those we already have, is that it’s the antithesis of overhaul culture. In other words, the belief that we need to not do what we’ve always done, in order to get a different result.
Quite to the contrary, via the medium of logical, low-effort piggy-back improvements,
habit stacking gives us permission to stay set in our ways, without simultaneously becoming a self-limiting creature of habit!