Science of Habit Stacking

Have you ever struggled to form a new habit? Maybe you’ve tried countless times to start exercising regularly, meditating daily, or reading before bed, but you just can’t seem to stick with it. If that sounds familiar, you might want to give habit stacking a try.

What is Habit Stacking?

Habit stacking is a technique for forming new habits by linking them to existing habits. It’s based on the idea that habits are easier to form when they’re integrated into your daily routine, rather than being standalone actions. By pairing a new habit with an established one, you create a chain reaction that makes it easier to follow through with the behavior you want to adopt.

Here’s an example: let’s say you want to start a daily meditation practice. Instead of trying to meditate at a random time each day, you could stack it onto an existing habit, such as brushing your teeth. So your new habit might be: “After I brush my teeth in the morning, I will meditate for 10 minutes.” By tying your meditation practice to something you already do every day, you’re more likely to remember to do it and less likely to skip it.

But why does habit stacking work? There are a few reasons.

First, when you stack a new habit onto an existing one, you’re leveraging the power of an established neural pathway in your brain. Habits are essentially automatic responses to certain stimuli, and the more you repeat a behavior, the stronger that neural pathway becomes. By adding a new behavior onto an existing one, you’re piggybacking onto a pathway that’s already well-worn. This makes it easier for your brain to integrate the new behavior into your routine.

Second, habit stacking helps you overcome decision fatigue. Every time you have to make a decision, you’re using up a little bit of your mental energy. Over the course of a day, you make thousands of decisions, and by the end of it, you might not have much willpower left to tackle a new habit. But when you stack a new habit onto an existing one, you eliminate the need to make a decision about when, where, and how to do it. The decision has already been made for you, so you can conserve your mental energy for other things.

Finally, habit stacking creates a sense of momentum. When you successfully complete one habit, you feel a sense of accomplishment that can carry over into the next habit. This creates a positive feedback loop that reinforces your behavior and makes it easier to continue.

So, how do you get started with habit stacking? Here are a few tips:

• Choose a habit you want to adopt and identify an existing habit you can stack it onto.
• Make your new habit specific and measurable. Rather than saying “I’ll meditate more,” say “I’ll meditate for 10 minutes after I brush my teeth in the morning.”
• Start small. Don’t try to stack too many new habits onto an existing one at once, or you might get overwhelmed.
• Track your progress. Use a habit tracker or journal to keep track of how often you’re completing your new habit, and celebrate your successes along the way.

Habit stacking is a simple yet powerful technique for forming new habits. By leveraging the power of existing neural pathways, conserving your mental energy, and creating a sense of momentum, you can make it easier to stick with the behaviors you want to adopt. Try habit stacking to get into a routine of taking the LoveBiome Daily 3 System. Give it a try and see how it works for you!