Habit Stacking

Helps to establish and maintain habits and routines

Can be helpful for: individuals who find it difficult to establish and maintain new habits, those who easily forget recurring tasks and anyone looking for strategies on how to create new habits or how to stop bad habits.

How to Habit Stack

Habit stacking is a helpful method to encourage remembering recurring daily tasks and staying motivated to maintain them. To habit stack, you connect a new habit you’d like to establish with a pre-existing habit that you already find easy to remember. This makes the new habit more naturally integrated into your routine, easier to recall, and more sustainable.

This approach can also motivate you to complete less enjoyable tasks by pairing them with ones you do enjoy. Similarly, it can help deter undesirable habits by replacing them with more positive behaviours. For example:

  • If you struggle with remembering to brush your teeth but always shower each morning, stack these habits by brushing your teeth before your shower.
  • If you don’t enjoy exercise but love your morning coffee, stack these habits by committing to 10 minutes of yoga or walking before enjoying your coffee.
  • If you want to stop drinking alcohol, stack your inclination to drink with another habit, such as picking up a book or starting housework. By consistently engaging in a replacement behaviour, your brain begins to link the cue to the new, healthier habit over time.

Top Tips for Habit Stacking

  • When building a new habit, use visual reminders like Post-it notes. Place them near where you already perform the habit you’re stacking with to avoid forgetting.
  • Start small by building just one or two habits at first. Let them stick before adding more.

What’s the Science?

Every time you build a new habit, your brain undergoes synaptic pruning. This process reduces connections between underused neurons while strengthening frequently used ones. Over time, practised habits become easier as these connections grow stronger and more efficient.

This neurological process explains why habits tied to addictions are hard to break—the associated neural pathways are deeply reinforced. Habit stacking leverages these existing connections to make creating new habits easier and helps redirect behaviours to break old, unwanted habits.

References

Clear, J. (2020). “How to Build New Habits by Taking Advantage of Old Ones.” Disponible en: jamesclear.com.

Gendron, A. (2023). The Mini ADHD Coach. Penguin Random House UK.

 

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