Habit Stacking

Habits are hard to break.? We all have habits that we would like to break and we all have new habits that we would like to create.? We can feel hopeless about changing a habit of a lifetime but it is possible by replacing it with another more useful habit.?

Habit stacking was created by Stanford Professor BJ Fogg. His book “Tiny Habits” describes how habit stacking can be used to provide an obvious cue for nearly any habit.? Habit stacking identifies a current daily habit and stacks another habit on top of it. ?e.g. I drink my morning coffee and I take some deep breaths.? It takes advantage of current habits so that the new habit is tied to something that you are already doing rather to a time or place.? This is a more effective trigger to building a new habit than attaching to a time or place as circumstances or other events could get in the way.?

Synaptic pruning occurs every time you build a habit.? Your brain prunes away any connections between neurons that don’t get used and build up connections that are used frequently.? New neurons are being built in the brain each day through neurogenesis.? The more you do something the more the brain will strengthen the connections between the neurons.? ?If particular neurons are not being used they will be pruned away by the brain.? The energy is saved for building connections for habits which are used daily.? Each one of us has very strong habits that we carry out each day, and we can use these habits to build new habits.? If you connect or “stack” a daily habit to a new habit that you want to form then it becomes much easier to form the new habit.? James Clear the author of “Atomic Habits” calls this “Implementation intention”.?

Think of a new habit that you would like to form today and put that intention into your mind. Pair it with another habit and see what happens.