Habit stacking can boost your productivity and long-term success
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Is that a quote from a rah-rah motivation speaker?
Nope. It’s from Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher. His writings covered subjects ranging from the natural sciences, philosophy and linguistics to economics, politics, and psychology. His own work ethic was legendary, and he clearly understood the connection between good habits and good performance.
In the modern workplace, most people appreciate the role of human habits in an organization’s overall productivity and prosperity. Trouble is, a lot of those same people have habits that don’t serve them particularly well.
Want to boost your productivity in 2025? Make it easier with habit stacking. By pairing new habits with established routines, you can create powerful combinations that enhance focus, efficiency, and long-term success. Discover how this simple yet effective strategy can transform your workday.
If you’re interested in all things self-improvement and self-help, then you’ve undoubtedly come across James Clear’s book “Atomic Habits”. In it, Clear discusses simple ways to incorporate good habits into your everyday life and, most importantly, how to stick to them.
One such method that has received a lot of attention is ‘habit-stacking’ – Habit stacking can be applied to various areas of life, such as exercise, reading, journaling, or even learning a new language. The key is to identify an existing habit that occurs consistently and pair it with a new habit you want to develop. By doing so, you create a powerful routine that helps you make progress towards your goals while minimizing the effort required to initiate the new behaviour.
Unleash the power of habit stacking: Elevate your daily productivity
Have you ever found yourself making grand plans on a Sunday night, promising to hit the gym regularly from the following week? Yet, somehow, Thursday rolls around, and your gym gear remains untouched on the radiator? It’s a common scenario we’ve all faced. The excitement to start new habits often wanes as our bodies and minds struggle to adapt to the unfamiliar routine. We lack clarity on when and how to implement these changes. Saying, “This week I’m going to start going to the gym,” seems straightforward, but on a day-to-day basis, it becomes vague. Will it be in the morning? Before breakfast? It’s unclear.
This is where habit stacking comes in. Instead of introducing a completely new routine, we build upon our existing one. Rather than stating, “I will do 10 squats every day,” which may feel foreign and unusual, habit stacking suggests incorporating the squats into an activity you already perform, such as making tea. For example, you could say, “I will do ten squats every time I boil the kettle.”
Over time, your brain starts associating the act of turning on the kettle with doing ten squats.
Seems too good to be true? Well, according to Dr. Courtney Conley,
Have you ever found yourself making grand plans on a Sunday night, promising to hit the gym regularly from the following week? Yet, somehow, Thursday rolls around, and your gym gear remains untouched on the radiator? It’s a common scenario we’ve all faced. The excitement to start new habits often wanes as our bodies and minds struggle to adapt to the unfamiliar routine. We lack clarity on when and how to implement these changes. Saying, “This week I’m going to start going to the gym,” seems straightforward, but on a day-to-day basis, it becomes vague. Will it be in the morning? Before breakfast? It’s unclear.
This is where habit stacking comes in. Instead of introducing a completely new routine, we build upon our existing one. Rather than stating, “I will do 10 squats every day,” which may feel foreign and unusual, habit stacking suggests incorporating the squats into an activity you already perform, such as making tea. For example, you could say, “I will do ten squats every time I boil the kettle.”
Over time, your brain starts associating the act of turning on the kettle with doing ten squats.
Seems too good to be true? Well, according to Dr. Courtney Conley,
When a behaviour is repeated over and over, the synapses involved in that behaviour become stronger, and the brain prunes away synapses that are not being used. It is thought to be one of the ways that habits are formed, and why they can be difficult to break once they are established.
So, how can you build habit stacking into your life? Here are some key actions to get you started:
Identify an existing habit: Choose a habit that you already do consistently as your foundation. It could be something as simple as brushing your teeth, making breakfast, or taking a shower.
Select a new behaviour: Determine the new habit you want to develop. Start with something small and achievable, like a five-minute stretching routine or reading a few pages of a book.
Pair the habits: Connect the new behaviour to the existing habit. For example, if you want to establish a stretching routine, you could say, “After brushing my teeth in the morning, I will do five minutes of stretching.”
Create triggers: Clearly define the cues that will remind you to perform the new habit. It could be a specific time, location, or action. In the stretching example, the act of brushing your teeth becomes the trigger to start your stretching routine.
Track your progress: Keep a record of your habit stacking efforts. Use a habit tracker, a journal, or a habit-tracking app to monitor your consistency and celebrate your successes.
Be patient and persistent: Rome wasn’t built in a day, and habits aren’t formed overnight. It takes time for habit stacking to become automatic and effortless. Stay committed and embrace the process.
Habit stacking is a powerful technique that can make your work or job search routine more manageable and less overwhelming. By breaking your habits down into smaller tasks and incorporating them into your daily routine, you can achieve incremental progress without feeling overwhelmed by mammoth goals. Here are some key actions to help you build habit stacking into your work or job search routine:
Start with an existing daily task
Identify a regular activity you perform every day at work or during your job search. It could be something as simple as turning on your computer, having breakfast, catching up on emails, or starting a project.
Add a new habit to it
Once you have identified your existing task, add a new habit to it that aligns with your goals. For example:
After turning on your computer, start your day with administrative tasks to ease you into work. After breakfast, check the latest job openings. After catching up on emails, write a to-do list for the day. When you start working on a project (whether it’s work-related or job hunting), set an alarm for 30 minutes to work without interruption. After having lunch, take a few minutes to declutter your desk.
Establish clear triggers
Make sure the existing task serves as a clear trigger for the new habit. It should seamlessly transition from one activity to the next. For example, as soon as you turn on your computer, immediately begin your administrative tasks or set a specific time to check the latest job openings after breakfast.
Track your progress
Keep a record of your habit stacking efforts. Use a habit tracker, a journal, or a productivity app to monitor your consistency and track the impact of these habits on your work or job search progress.
Set daily goals
Before you stop working for the day, write a to-do list for the next day. This will help you start each day with a clear plan and ensure you stay focused on your priorities.
Stay committed and adaptable
Building new habits takes time and effort. Be patient with yourself and stay committed to your habit stacking routine. If you find that certain habits are not serving you well or need adjustment, be open to refining or replacing them to better align with your goals.
By incorporating habit stacking into your work or job search routine, you can make small but consistent progress towards your objectives. Remember, it’s the accumulation of these small habits that leads to significant results over time. So, start small, stay consistent, and watch as habit stacking transforms your daily life.
Forming a Routine
Forming a routine can take a long time and is highly variable between individuals. Experimental research regarding routines is scant. One reason for this is that conducting a randomized control trial to isolate routine as a variable of interest would be challenging. The formation of habits is more often studied. As the formation of a habit and routine is more similar than different, some implications of habit formation research will be discussed. However, it is important to note the difference between a routine and a habit. Habits are associated with a cue. For example, washing one’s hands after using the restroom is a habit because hand washing is associated with the event of using the restroom. Like a routine, a habit requires little conscious thought. However, after prolonged absence of the cue, an individual’s habit may subside. A routine is not dependent on a cue.
A study conducted in the United Kingdom examined how long it takes for adults to form a health habit. Participants were asked to choose a simple dietary or physical activity behavior they did not currently practice to turn into a habit. Behaviors were cued by a single event during the day (e.g., eating a piece of fruit with lunch, drinking a glass of water after breakfast, doing 50 sit-ups after morning coffee, and walking for 10 minutes after breakfast). On average it took 66 days before habits became automatic for participants. Although not significant, physical activity behaviors, which are arguably more complicated than eating or drinking around a meal time, took 1.5 times longer to become automatic than eating or drinking. This illustrates that more complex combinations of behaviors required to prevent disease (routines) are likely to take considerably longer than the 66-day average found for the simple, single behaviors in this study. In addition to the potential differences between the types of behavior, the time to form a habit varied considerably across individuals. In the same study, habit formation ranged from 18 to 254 days. Such variability makes it difficult to form expectations for how long it would take a patient to adopt a simple behavior. This reinforces the importance of tailoring advice and expectations to each person.
Part of forming a habit is the consistent repetition of the behavior. In the study discussed above, consistent performance of the behaviors varied by behavior type. Participants who chose a physical activity or eating behavior were significantly less likely to complete the behavior daily than those who chose to drink water. Importantly, not performing the behavior one day did not have lasting effects on the time to forming the habit. This indicates that turning adherence into routine is likely not a dichotomous process. Occasional nonadherence to a behavior will not derail progress made to creating the routine, and perfect adherence does not need to be a goal or expectation for a patient.
