Use Habit Stacking to Boost Your Productivity

Failing to establish a habit and wanting to be more productive? Use habit stacking.

Photo by Prophsee Journals on Unsplash

As the month of December draws to a close, like many people, I start to feel optimistic about the New Year. Like every year, I set 'go to the gym more' as a New Year's Resolution. Once I've recovered from my New Year's Eve hangover, a huge sense of motivation courses through me, eager to achieve the goal I have set. Armed with all the new branded gym gear I've bought and the Apple Watch I received for Christmas, I start going to the gym. The first week, I go four times and feel extremely proud. The next week, I go three times; it's okay to have a rest day. And the week after, I go twice because I have a huge university project, making it challenging. By February, I'm not going at all. What's happening here? I started the new year so motivated for this to be the year I finally get abs. The issue is I am relying on motivation. The rush I got at the start of the year was unwavering, but as the weeks pass, my motivation is drastically decreasing, eventually crashing down to zero.

Using motivation to achieve anything will only result in failure. How many days a week do you feel motivated? If you plan on going to the gym consistently four times a week for a whole year. That's 208 days out of 365; how many of them do you think you will feel motivated to go? As Jeff Haden puts it in his book 'The Motivation Myth,' "Motivation is a sugar rush that never lasts.” If you want to sustain going to the gym, the answer is to make it a habit, and one great way of doing that is habit stacking.

I was first introduced to habit stacking in James Clear's book 'Atomic Habits.' This book goes into detail on how to build good habits and get rid of bad ones. The concept of habit stacking is simple, and James has a formula for it.

After/Before [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT]

• Before I go to work, I will schedule my day.

• After I brush my teeth, I will take my medication.

• Before I make tea, I will meal prep my lunches.

• After I study, I will work out.

This method is effective as you make use of your already existing habits. These are patterns that you have solidified over time. Some of them you won't even consider habits; however, your brain is great at making sure you brush your teeth, eat breakfast, take a shower. Building habits is hard, and research states that it takes on average 66 days to make a habit stick! Yet by attaching this new behaviour to your existing patterns, you are more likely to build lasting habits.

For me, going to the gym is hard! However, studying is easy. Through nearly ten years of studying in some capacity, I have built this habit that I no longer think about; I just do it. One thing that I like to do when studying is go to my local coffee shop. Getting ready, out the door, and to the shop is not something I think about; again, I just do it.

Through a eureka moment recently that I thought about attaching the gym with this habit. After a grueling session, sweat dripping down my face, and genuinely convinced this is how I die, I sat down in the cafe to recover. Like the scene of a movie where the main character realizes they already had what they were searching for the whole time, a light bulb went off in my head. My gym has a cafe where I can study! Once I'm done, I can simply walk into the gym and work out. I'm happy to report that I have been consistently going three times over the past three weeks.

How To Spot Existing Patterns.

However, this isn't about how I become to look like Zac Efron in the film Baywatch. Stacking the gym with studying is just an example in the hope that you can identify where you can apply this concept. If you're struggling to do this, do what my fiance does when she is packing for a trip. She says out loud everything she will be doing from getting up to going to bed on that day. This is so she can identify all the clothes she will need for the trip. Do the same thing; speak out loud everything you will do in the day for a week, starting with Monday to Sunday.

This may sound trivial, but by doing this, you will stumble on your already existing patterns. For example, you may always make coffee in the morning; you may have to commute each day to work, or you may read at a certain time each day. Once you have identified these patterns, stack the habit you want to build. For example, after making my morning coffee, I learn Spanish for ten minutes on Duolingo.

The reason I think saying out loud what you do in the day rather than looking at your calendar is better in two ways. The first, you don't add an event saying 'brush teeth' to your calendar, so you may overlook patterns. Secondly, you train your brain to spot these opportunities for the future. I think if I had not done this method, I would have caught my breath and walked straight out of the gym that day, and my streak would look much different. I know what you're saying, ‘well why didn’t you spot this in the exercise?’. Great question, I think I was being too rigid associating certain tasks with certain places. I study at the coffee shop I work out at the gym. Ask yourself, is the habit I am trying to build or the patterns I have spotted restricted in any way? Such as location, time, or day and see if you can adjust to better fit your new habit.

From Habit Stacking to Habit Tracking.

Finally, I like to end posts with helpful resources when I can. Another method of building habits backed by research is tracking. A habit tracker can give you a little dopamine hit each time you tick it off, training your brain to want more. The habit tracker I use is Streaks. What I like best about this app is the integrations it has with Apple Health. I can track when I drink water or go to the gym, and this is all added to my Health app.