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Welcome back to Day 13 of 31 Days to a Life of Purpose!
Today, we are going to continue our discussion on habits by talking about habit stacking. Sometimes referred to as habit chaining, habit stacking is taking a series of small habits and linking them together.
I first learned of the concept of habit stacking with S.J. Scott’s book Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less. Scott has several books on Amazon related to habits, most of which are only $2.99 for the Kindle version. His basic premise is that you can change your life with short tasks that take less than five minutes. When you take these short habits and stack them, one after the other, you are able to create greater change in your life. By combining several habits, you create a routine of small, strategic changes to impact your life.
Your routine can include a series of related tasks or it could be a series of unrelated tasks, i.e. read a blog post, send an encouraging text to a friend, do 10 sit-ups, then drink a glass of water. You may struggle to find time to do these individual tasks, but when you link them together, they become almost like one activity. Once you start the routine, you work until you’re finished.
The goal is that your habit stacking routine will only take you 15-30 minutes. It would be difficult to keep up with a routine that takes an hour and includes 20 different actions. Keep it simple to make it effective. The process of habit stacking will also allow you to incorporate several new habits into your life at once, rather than trying to incorporate scattered habits throughout the day.
Tomorrow, we will be talking about specific routines to start your day off right!
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