Habit Stacking

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Jessica: Hi. Thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Jessica. My cohost Coral is here as well. Today we’ll be talking about habit stacking. Coral will be sharing a practice with us. Hi, Coral. How are you?

Coral: Hey, Jessica. I’m doing well. It was so nice to have a couple of weeks over the holiday break to decompress a little bit. I spent a good bit of that time catching up with my folks. They do live just right around the corner from me, but that pace of life just over the holidays is a little bit more relaxed. One thing I particularly enjoyed was listening to their conversations.

They’re planning an upcoming trip to Alaska for a cruise, which is really different from the way that they’ve traveled in the past, but it’s going to be their 40th wedding anniversary. Again, it’s just an interesting thing to listen in on. I’ve listened to lots of their travel conversations over the years, 40 years. My dad, these days he navigates some mobility challenges. It was a reflective space that I was in just thinking about how the way they travel has shifted over the course of their partnership.

It was really just beautiful to think about the fact that they’re still adventuring together, even though it looks different in this season of life for them. A nutshell takeaway that I’m going to bring forward into the new year is just looking at things in a different way, trying things in a different way. Even if the previous ways of doing those things don’t align with this current season, is there a different way that I can approach things or have it look a little bit differently that serves me better? Being okay with that, being joyful in that. That’s my spark for this most recent little bit of life. How about you? How are you?

Jessica: That’s wonderful. Approximately how many houses away? Is it around a corner? Is it down the street? I’m curious.

Coral: It is a 11-minute walk.

Jessica: Oh, 11-minute walk. It’s a little ways. By contrast, I live, it’s approximately four houses away from my mother-in-law’s house, but it is also around a corner. It feels like it’s a little further, but it’s really close. I wish my parents lived nearby. That’s really cool that you could witness that. My parents just had their 50th wedding anniversary. Your parents are just right around that corner as well. How cool.

I’ve actually been, I guess, inspired maybe this week by writing some nice things about myself and my work. It’s funny, but as of our recording, it’s the time of year when my organization goes through performance management. There’s a lot that I have to say, and there’s a lot that I dislike about the whole process.

I have to say, I would say that about the way performance management is conducted across many, many, many organizations,

but there’s one thing I like about this time of year, because before I meet with my supervisor, I reflect on all the things that went well and I make sure to notice the things that I felt like I knocked out of the park. I’ll write out all of the things that I accomplished, whether they were planned accomplishments that are in my performance management report that I need to report on, or whether they were surprise accomplishments.

I’m always pleasantly surprised by how many things I’ve accomplished over the year. It’s a nice way to go into the new year. Also, it makes me very uncomfortable to say nice things about myself and it’s a good exercise for me in general.

Coral: No, that’s such an important practice to celebrate our own wins. I love that you can find that sparkle in something that can be a bit of an uncomfortable process. You do amazing work. I’m really glad that you’re able to recognize that for yourself, Jess.

Jessica: Oh, thank you. We’d love to hear what’s inspiring you. Please share what’s inspiring you by clicking the “send us a text message” at the top of the description of this episode. When you click the link, your text messaging app will open and you’ll see a seven-digit number and the words “do not remove.” Type your message after that and click send. Don’t remove that number or we won’t receive your message.

To protect your privacy, we won’t see your phone number and we can’t text you back, but we’ll share your feedback on a future episode. If you’re listening on a computer, you can email us at [email protected]. Let us know what’s inspiring you right now.

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Let’s learn more about habit stacking, Coral. Can you tell us a little more about the practice that you’ll be sharing and why you chose it?

Coral: Absolutely. If any of our listeners have read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, they’re probably already familiar with this practice. I personally love the practice of habit stacking because to me it’s one of the most approachable ways to find or to begin cultivating new habits. Oftentimes when we’re going about new habit formation, it can feel like we’re just a little bit lost about where to begin.

Habit stacking gives us something to anchor those new habits in. Behaviorists will refer to this as a trigger. A trigger is something that we recognize that can– Perhaps not recognize, sometimes it’s subconscious. In this case, it is conscious. Essentially, a trigger just helps us kick off another particular action.

Jessica: I feel like that was a really good teaser. I have questions, but all those questions are about how to do it. Let’s get started with that. Please walk us through how to start habit stacking.

Coral: Sure thing. First, I’m

just going to break it down and then maybe we can walk through an example afterwards to give it greater context and bring it to life. To begin habit stacking, it’s very straightforward. First, you just clearly define what habit it is that you would like to establish. The more clearly you can establish this, the better. Then next, determine how frequently this habit should happen. This is really important. Should this be daily, weekly, monthly? Also, what time of day does this need to occur if you really want to drill into it?

Next, once you’ve got those two bits, then you can identify a current habit that you already have, and this will serve as the trigger for the new habit. The key here is that you want the current habit that you have to have a similar frequency to the new habit. For instance, if your new habit is daily, you don’t want to pick something that only happens once a week. You want something that has the same frequency so you can keep it going.

Jessica: Let’s go through an example of this.

Coral: Sure thing. One practice that I’ve always hear friends and colleagues mention as an intention each new year is often mindfulness. It’s always something that can serve us well. Let’s just take mindfulness for an example. A simple mindfulness practice that we can define as a habit is one minute of breathing. Maybe you want to have a mindful minute each day, so daily. Maybe you want to begin your day with this. With all of that in mind, so we’ve got a daily habit. It’s short and something that needs to happen towards the start of the day.

For me, something that immediately comes to mind is coffee. No great day ever starts in my life without coffee. I would probably start off by stacking these two habits together. To pull all of this together, I would summarize my habit stack something like this. Again, this is going to sound very nuanced, but again, the more clearly that you can define all of this, the better.

Here’s my habit stack for this instance. When I press the start button on my morning coffee to begin brewing it, I’ll set a gentle timer on my phone for one minute and breathe slowly in my kitchen with my eyes closed. Then I’ll have my coffee.

Jessica: That’s wonderful. When you first mentioned coffee, I was thinking about that moment when you sit down with your hot cup, whether that’s coffee or tea or whatever, when you sit down with that hot cup and you pick it up and you maybe smell it, it’s usually too hot for me to drink at first. I usually need to wait a minute for it to cool down anyway, but I love to hold the hot cup. I was thinking about that moment being when I might establish a one-minute mindfulness breathing exercise. It really can be however it works for you, I think, is the point that I’m trying to make here.

Coral: Absolutely.

I love that, too, you’re bringing in other sensory aspects into this that help you ground in something that would be a mindfulness practice. I have to do it while I’m brewing my coffee. I have a two-year-old and he’s usually up and at them less than five minutes after I wake up without fail. It’s totally about finding how this blends into your life and works with the flow rather than going against the grain and friction. It’s all about flow and helping things just go into the fold more seamlessly than not.

Jessica: It’s a super simple practice. I feel like it has so much leeway for you to decide what’s going to work best for you, which I think is really important because I think there’s a lot of advice out there about how you should set up your mornings, how you should set up your evenings, all the different things that you should incorporate into your day. This is really just, no, just find one thing that you already do and tack something small onto it. Thank you so much for sharing this.

Coral: Absolutely. I’d really be curious to hear what our listeners, if they’re employing this, what you’re using habit stacking for to incorporate into your new year.

Jessica: That’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for incorporating the one-minute agreement. Until then, keep practicing.

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Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2023-48770-41333.

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