What is a Habit?
A Habit is something that we do regularly at fixed intervals of time. It is a process that is a part of our lives. This occurs naturally to us, through involuntary triggers. Some people have this process: wake up in the morning, rub palms together, cover the face with warm palms and then slowly open the eyes. This is an example of a habit.
When you analyze your daily life, you can observe that there are numerous habits you follow, either knowingly or unknowingly. As with everything, even habits have a downside. You could classify habits into ‘positive’ and ‘not-positive’ habits, and this classification is purely subjective to you. You could consider drinking carrot juice at noon every day as a positive habit, but it could be ‘not-positive’ for someone else.
Observe that I don’t use the terms good/bad or positive/negative habits. This is because there is no such thing called a good habit and a bad habit. There are just habits. Whether it is good or bad for you depends on how that particular habit affects you.
What is Habit Stacking?
Now, assume you want to develop a new habit, which you believe will add value to your life. It is often difficult to insert a new habit into your daily routine. To make this process easier, we could use habit stacking. In this technique, the new habit is clubbed with one of your existing habits which you never fail to miss. This way, you automatically end up doing the new habit after your targeted existing old habit.
How to Implement Habit Stacking?
For instance, consider this sample.
New Habit – “Read newspaper for 15 mins”
Targeted Existing Habit – “Pray for 5 mins every evening at 6 PM”.
Through habit stacking, you could stack the new habit over the existing target habit. The stack would look like this.
“Pray for 5 mins every evening at 6 PM -> Read newspaper for 15 mins”
These individual habits would coalesce to become a single habit in due course of time. As with all habits, you need to follow this consistently for a period of time for the coalescence to take place successfully. This is the essence of the habit stacking technique.
Check out my other pages to discover more articles on technology, and business. You can find my creative space as well on this website.
Nanri! Vanakkam!
