New Year New Habits: Habit Stacking

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We are just over half a month into the New Year! How are your 2023 goals going so far? If you said “great”,then that’s fantastic! If they’re not going so well, or you’re looking for ways to stay on track, here is a simple concept that may help you develop some healthy habits to keep you progressing towards your goals.

Habit Stacking, is a simple yet effective way to incorporate a new habit or build upon one that you’ve already developed. The concept is simple. Think of a healthy habit or behavior that you would like to form. Then find a habit or behavior that is already well engrained into your daily routine. This could be watching tv, showering, brushing your teeth, washing dishes, etc. Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to tie the existing habit or behavior with the new one that you are trying to develop. For example, if you wanted to incorporate more walking, and one of your daily habits is to talk to a family member or friend on the phone. Then you could tie those two behaviors together. Now whenever you end up on the phone with that family member or friend you go for a walk for the duration of that phone call. Another example would be stacking a new habit on the behavior of brushing your teeth. If drinking more water is the habit you want to develop, make sure to drink a glass of water after each time you’ve brushed your teeth.

Healthy Habits Picture

Building Healthy Habits

Now you may think, how big of a deal does tying habits or behaviors together make? Well, think of a goal that you wanted to work towards and the habits you may have said you were going to build to get to that goal. How many of those habits became concrete and how many were discarded after a few weeks or months. How many of those goals were obtained and how many fell through? Hopefully, most of your habits were maintained and goals accomplished. But, many times this is not the case, unfortunately. Just saying that you’re going to drink more water daily probably is not going to be enough to make it happen. Whenever you get a chance to sit down and plan out your goals in the future, take a second to think about what habits you can tie to your daily behaviors to increase you likelihood of creating concrete changes.

If you’d like to read more about Habit Stacking please take a look at the articles below! If you have any questions please reach out to FCS Agent Jordan Jefferies-James (336) 342-8239.

Resources:

  1. Make it or Break it: The Science of Habit Change
  2. Habit Stacking