Habit Stacking: The Best Way to Establish a New Habit

This simple method will have you sticking to new habits you never managed to nail down before.

We all have ideas and goals of habits we want to incorporate into our daily lives. They can be spiritual or physical, health or maybe parenting related. But somehow it’s always so hard to stick to our good intentions.

I had heard and read about this method and it just seems to make so much sense. Habit stacking simply associates a new habit with a well-established habit. When you are doing something daily, add the new habit at the same time.

Do you brush your teeth every morning? Put your bottle of vitamins next to your toothbrush and you’re a lot more likely to take them. Have a hard time remembering to say birchos hashachar before starting your day? Maybe put a laminated brachos card near your coffee machine and you’ll take those few minutes to connect with Hashem before you get busy.

Ideally, this new habit should not be one that takes too much time. Don’t commit to davening a full Shacharis before your coffee. You have much less of a chance of making it a habit than if you simply take 3-4 minutes to say brachos. Want to add some movement to your day? Pick a small exercise and attach it to a daily habit. Try adding some pushups and/or a plank whenever you’re heading into the shower. This takes a maximum of 3 minutes so there’s no excuse of “I have no time for this exercise now”. If you try to add a 30 minute run, you’re not going to be stacking a habit. Want to physically connect with your child every morning before school? Pick one part of your morning routine – maybe when you’re making that ponytail or handing off a hot cocoa – and lean in to make eye contact and kiss your child’s cheek. That small new habit will become part of your daily routine and you can later build on it from there.