Habit Stacking Ain't so Bad

 

I recently read Atomic Habits by James Clear. I didn’t enjoy reading the book — too directive and not contemplative enough — but I did learn a lot and I got some good ideas out of it. One of the ideas was habit-stacking, the process of starting small, manageable habits and adding other small, manageable habits onto those. Clear suggests making tiny lifestyle adjustments and keeping with them. This process invites significant long-term change.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been a seeker — always trying out new ways to make myself better — yoga, meditation, writing. I’ve taken loads of classes and read countless books espousing strategies for living a more balanced life. And I think I’ve been successful. At 53 I mostly feel balanced, nourished, and healthy. I’ve developed good habits that have stuck with me.

For me, balance always starts in the morning — whether it is a walk before everyone wakes up, doing a yoga class, meditating, or writing in the early morning quiet of my dining room table. At the beginning of 2022, I started a new set of morning rituals. They evolved organically, one leading to another until I had a stack of five. My ex-Catholic partner calls these morning rituals my “ablutions.” I didn’t know until I heard James Clear talk about habit stacking that this is what I’ve been doing.

Every morning I wake up to my dog Freckles sneezing and bark-moaning. Somehow he’s learned that sneezing followed by a few quick whiny barks will wake us up. Freckles’ desperation for his breakfast starts at random times, sometimes as early as 2:30 am. If we’re lucky he will delay his breakfast pleas until 5:30 am or 6:00 am.

I’m a natural early riser so I don’t really mind Freckles’ wake-up calls and I look forward to my morning ablutions in the kitchen. The first habit is to not look at my phone until after I meditate.

When I walk into the kitchen I turn on the coffee pot so that, by the time I’ve fed Freckles, I’ll have a pot ready. After Freckles eats he’s calm again and goes to his downstairs bed where he promptly starts snoring. I take my coffee to the tiny couch under the kitchen windows and read from my book of poems, a compilation of poems about kindness by various authors. I read the poem from the page I left off the day before a few times and then I close my eyes and meditate.

Often an image or idea from the poem guides me somewhere behind my closed eyes and I follow that until either it leads somewhere else or my meditation feels complete.

My next habit in the stack, and reward for not looking at my phone before meditating, is Wordle. After my meditation, I get my phone and open Wordle. Usually, there’s an idea from my meditation that’s floating around in my brain and I try to think of a 5-letter word to encompass that idea so I can use it to start my Wordle. Sometimes I get no letters but sometimes I get two greens or three yellows. On those days I feel affirmed that everything in the universe is indeed connected. I love Wordle — it’s a short sharp burst of dopamine to start my day.

My last habit, the one that completes my morning stack, is a one-minute plank. One of my high school friends turned me on to the idea and now I do it with my mom and one of my sisters every morning. I’ve just finished Day 26 and still, it’s not easy. I actually don’t enjoy it at all. But it’s a good challenge and pretty much the only time I engage my core or upper body so I’m going to stay the course.

I didn’t know, as my habits evolved from not looking at my phone to reading a poem to meditating to Wordle to plank, that I was creating a stack. But I see now that this is exactly what has happened. I get it. My tiny little habits have morphed into significant change. By the time my stack is over and I have to prepare for work, I’ve already had a full morning on my little kitchen couch. I’ve taken care of myself before I venture out into the world and spread myself too thin. Habit stacking. I’m a fan.