Back in the habit
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Habit stacking is so freaking powerful. It’s helped me start and stick to everything from my morning stretches to my daily meditation ritual. I've used it to run or walk every morning for the last few years and it helped me to start doing 10 minutes of strength training on weekday mornings.
“Have you done your exercise for the day sweetie?”
“Oops, no! Dad, can I quickly do it now?”
“Sure, I don’t mind. Go for it.”
This is not an uncommon exchange between myself and either of my daughters. It typically takes place after dinner and before we sit down as a family to watch an episode of Downton Abbey or a movie together before bed.
At this point in the blog post you might be getting ready to judge my parenting style. What kind of man forces his 11 and 13-year-old daughters to exercise? Fortunately, they are more than welcome not to exercise.
All I did was explain the scientifically proven benefits of regularly moving your body. I bought them an exercise bike and said they can get an extra block of Lindt 85% dark chocolate – which they love - every day on which they did 10 minutes of cycling.
I haven’t used any of the technical terms in the paragraphs above. But there are a few cool things at play here:
- Intentionally crafting your environment (buying a bike)
- Incentives & gamification (chocolate)
- Coaching and accountability (me)
Habits also play a part in this little story. Both positively and negatively. Doing it daily helps it become a habit, and so does getting the reward at the same time each day. But the reason they get all the way to dinner without exercise on many days is because there is something missing. They would find it so, so much easier to stick to the habit if they attached it to something else that they do at the same time each day.
This is called habit stacking. It’s the thing that helped me start and stick to everything from my morning stretches to my daily meditation ritual. It’s a tool I used to run or walk every morning for the last few years and what I used to start doing 10 minutes of strength training on weekday mornings.
Even writing this post is another attempt at me using the power of habit stacking. I stopped writing in September 2020 when I took a two-week vacation. I was - quite frankly - quite tired of writing at that time. I had written over 200 articles by then and was trying to also finish my MBA which requires a heck of a lot of research and writing in its own right.
But I feel ready to get cracking with the help of the power of habits. I am trying to “stack” my writing habit on top of my most well established and unshakeable habits. My morning cup of coffee.