One essential part of managing your recovery successfully is finding balance in your life and learning what routines and rituals work for you. What if you could build upon your current successes to easily adapt to something new? That’s the basic premise of habit stacking: identify a current habit you already do and put a new behavior into that structure.
Are You Already Experiencing the “Spillover Effect”?
This term is used in many industries, but in behavioral science, it is used to refer to what happens when “changes in one behavior influence changes in subsequent behaviors.” Spillover effect can be positive or negative. The difference usually hinges on whether you have a growth or fixed mindset. For example, if you have a growth mindset, taking up a new exercise routine might have the spillover effect of eating more healthfully to support your new energy needs.
Some researchers break it down further into promoting or permitting certain behaviors. If you’re trying to eat more healthfully, a promoting spillover would be “I ran for an hour today. Let’s keep up the good work.” Whereas a permitting spillover might be “I ran for an hour—I deserve a big slice of cake!” Another layer of that model includes purging and precipitating behaviors. Purging is “I’ve been lazy today, so I’d better not eat a lot tonight” while precipitating spillover is “I’ve been lazy today, so might as well have a big piece of cake!”
So think of habit stacking as identifying something you already do every day, then building off that existing positive framework to introduce new behaviors.
How to Stack Habits
Let’s stay with the example of healthy eating. Advent Health states there are three methods of habit stacking that may work for your goals.
- Chain. By linking a new behavior to an existing habit, you form an easy connection. For example, if you want to drink more water, plan to have a 12-ounce glass before every major meal. So if you have three primary meals daily, that’s automatically three extra glasses of water.
- Pairing. According to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, “When and where you choose to insert a habit into your daily routine can make a big difference.” So pairing a new habit with an existing one may be helpful. For example, if you want to eat more fruit, outline the intention clearly. Instead of “I’ll have fruit every day,” be specific: “As my evening meal dessert, I will have a piece of fruit.”
- Sequence. You can also use a series of events in an existing routine to insert a new behavior. Let’s say you want to pack a more healthful lunch each day for work instead of eating fast food. Look at your morning or evening routine and see where you can introduce this new behavior. Maybe at night, your sequence of events is to clean up after dinner, take the dog for a walk, and then settle in for some family time. Add packing your lunch into this sequence as you clean up after dinner—you’re already in the kitchen, with all the items readily accessible. Then it will be ready to go for the next day.
Want to Learn More About Habit Stacking? Try These Books
Ready to give this practice a try? Here are some books you might find interesting.
- The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions by Dr. Michael Norton. Norton, a Harvard University professor, also has a TEDxTalk, “How to Buy Happiness”.
- Habit Stacking: 127 Ways to Improve Your Health, Wealth, and Happiness by S.J. Scott. These various ideas help eliminate the stress of trying to change too much at once. He also has another book, Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less.
- Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick by Wendy Wood. As a provost professor of psychology and business at the University of Southern California, Wood examines how to unlock our habitual mind to make the changes we want.
- Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by B.J. Fogg. This Stanford University researcher presents two decades of study that indicate positive emotions and celebrating little victories builds better habits.
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. First published more than three decades ago but still just as relevant today, it’s considered the gold standard of the concept.
You, Only Better, at Fair Oaks
When done correctly, addiction and dual diagnosis treatment is more than just identifying a set of symptoms. At Fair Oaks Recovery Center in Sacramento, California, we’ve earned the status of a licensed Chemical Dependency Recovery Hospital, issued by the California Department of Public Health to addiction rehabilitation and dual diagnosis treatment facilities that provide high-level acuity care. We offer progressive solutions that help you not only manage your condition effectively but also create the healthy, enriching life you deserve. Ask our admission specialists to explain how our philosophy might work for you.
