How ‘habit stacking’ can help you accomplish your goals

Happy New Year’s resolution season! It’s that special time of year when we all try to drink more water, eat more vegetables, wash our faces, make our beds every day and practice mindfulness. Best of luck to us!

For many of us, trying to pick up good new habits or cut out bad ones feels doomed from the start. New habits can feel incredibly demanding. For many of us, even when we desperately want to achieve them, we don’t — and there’s a reason.

In his book, Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results, psychologist James Clear describes his study of “synaptic pruning,” which basically means that the brain neurons you use every day grow nimble and strong, while the ones you don’t atrophy. Simply put, your brain is wired to do the stuff you already do. But it’s lousy at unfamiliar tasks.

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That might make your New Year’s goals sound like a lost cause. It’s not! You can use psychology to your advantage with what’s called “habit-stacking,” the practice of “stacking” a new habit onto an old one to make it easier to incorporate into your life. Habit-stacking can help you break down your goals into small, achievable tasks that put your resolutions within reach.

How to stack your habits

First, consider the habits you currently have. We all have small ones that we take for granted. For instance, although I can’t seem to wash my face, floss or put away my clothes consistently, I have no problem with brushing my teeth, showering, making coffee or doing my laundry. Things like putting my hair up in a ponytail, turning the lights on in my living room or taking medication are effortless for me because (as I now know) my brain neurons are so used to doing them. And each of those habits has potential for stacking.

Here’s an incomplete list of habits I’d like to have: washing my face at night and in the morning, daily journaling, stretching, making a to-do list every day, reading every night, calling my parents regularly, eating more vegetables, running four to five days a week, drinking more water, taking walks, making my bed, putting my clothes away and not using my phone while in bed.

In his TEDx talk, BJ Fogg, professor and founder of Stanford Behavior Design, offers a formula for how I might stack my goal habits onto my current ones: “After I blank, I will blank.” The key word is “after.” “Before” won’t work — you always want to start with the cognitively easy task to get you going. Using the word “immediately” is also helpful, as you want the transition between the two tasks to become automatic, which is easier if you don’t allow for digressions in between. “You don’t have to put up Post-it notes. You don’t have to set alarms. You just establish what [your habit] will come after,” says Fogg.

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Here’s how that might look for me: After I brush my teeth, I will drink a glass of water. After I get the coffee brewing, I will do a short journal entry. After I eat lunch, I will go for a walk. After I put my laundry in the washer, I will call my mom. It can even be helpful to say your intention out loud or to write it down.

In his book, Clear emphasizes how important it is to pick highly specific, actionable tasks for both your existing behavior and your aspirational habit, so there’s no ambiguity (e.g., not “at lunch, I’ll do my physical therapy exercise,” but rather, “after I close my laptop for lunch, I’ll do 5 minutes of physical therapy”). Adding “immediately” to the intention makes no room for digressions between habits. It can even be good to specify where you’ll do it. Remember: Your brain is bad at this. Make it as easy as possible.

Here are some examples:

• Immediately after I pour my coffee, I will sit in my armchair and meditate for five minutes.

• Immediately after I brush my teeth at night, I will plug my phone in across the room.

• Immediately after I take off my shoes when I come home, I will change into my workout clothes.

(When assigning a cue habit to an existing habit , use one that occurs at roughly the same frequency and at the same time of day. So, If you want to exercise three times a week, pair it with going grocery shopping in the evenings, not brushing your teeth.

Once you have two in a row down, you can add a third, until you have a full morning “habit stack” like: “Immediately after I brush my teeth, I will make my bed, drink a glass of water, then journal for five minutes.” Or an evening habit stack: “Immediately after I brush my teeth, I drink a glass of water, then pick up my clothes, then plug my phone in across the room, then take out my book.”

Think big but make it small

Habit stacking isn’t just good for doing chores. It can help you achieve big goals like saving money, working out, improving your mental health, making friends, finishing a project or managing your time better. Habit stacking helps break these goals into tiny habit-shaped pieces.

Fogg believes that a behavior happens when motivation, ability and a cue all collide. So the key is to identify small habits that support these bigger goals, tasks that are so easy for you that you can do them even when you lack motivation. Then you just have to find the right cue. In his talk, Fogg recounted how he decided to do just two push-ups (his ability) every time he peed (the cue) to support his fitness goal (his motivation). He did two push-ups every time he peed until it got easier, then he upped it to five push-ups. A few years later, he was doing 8 push-ups every time he peed, for a total of 50-70 push-ups a day.

After you’ve pinpointed the motivation and know how to find a cue, it’s time to hone that ability. Say your goal is to write a novel. If you’re new to fiction writing, realistically, you probably won’t be able to train yourself to write 10 pages of your novel simply because you stacked it with brushing your teeth. Like Fogg did with his push-ups, start slow. “After I brush my teeth, I will write one sentence of my novel.” That way, even when you’re busy, tired or overwhelmed, you can still find time to do it, making you way less likely to abandon that goal. Then once that becomes a habit, try upping it to three, and so on.

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What’s your goal? If you want to exercise more, try taking the stairs over the elevator rather than jumping straight into CrossFit. If you want to eat healthier, start with putting a few veggies on your plate every time you go for a snack before overhauling your entire diet.

Once you think up a tiny habit you want to achieve, all you need is the right cue. “If you plant a tiny seed in the right spot, it will grow without coaxing,” says Fogg. “You don’t have to amp up motivation. You don’t have to draw on willpower. All you have to do is plan it out, and let this natural process emerge.”

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