Skip to main content

HABIT STACKING: A SIMPLE PLAN TO OVERHAUL YOUR HABITS

 The Diderot Effect states that obtaining a new possession often creates a spiral of consumption that leads to additional purchases.

You can spot this pattern everywhere. You buy a dress and have to get new shoes and earrings to match. You buy a couch and suddenly question the layout of your entire living room. You buy a toy for your child and soon find yourself purchasing all of the accessories that go with it. It’s a chain reaction of purchases.

Many human behaviors follow this cycle. You often decide what to do next based on what you have just finished doing. Going to the bathroom leads to washing and drying your hands, which reminds you that you need to put the dirty towels in the laundry, so you add laundry detergent to the shopping list, and so on. No behavior happens in isolation. Each action becomes a cue that triggers the next behavior.

When it comes to building new habits, you can use the connectedness of behavior to your advantage. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top. This is called habit stacking.

Habit stacking is a special form of an implementation intention. Rather than pairing your new habit with a particular time and location, you pair it with a current habit. This method, which was created by BJ Fogg as part of his Tiny Habits program, can be used to design an obvious cue for nearly any habit.

The key is to tie your desired behavior into something you already do each day. Once you have mastered this basic structure, you can begin to create larger stacks by chaining small habits together. This allows you to take advantage of the natural momentum that comes from one behavior leading into the next—a positive version of the Diderot Effect.
 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Maximizing Your Profits with Scoring

SETTING YOUR MAXIMUM INTRADAY TRADING LOSS First things first: set a max intraday trading loss. There will be days when you just do not have it. Why do you think coaches pull their players when they are not playing well? They are more harmful on the field than off. When you are underperforming, you are hurting your team and your trading business. You need a system to yank yourself over to the bench. A stop loss is your answer. TRADING BASED UPON THE TIME OF DAY A good trader makes note of what time of day it is, when he trades most profitably, and adjusts his trading to fit such times. Your numbers at the end of the month will not reflect your true trading potential. Make the most trades with the most size during the trading periods that statistically are most profitable for you. Money saved during your weaker trading periods is money earned. Consistency The fact is that most trades you make will start working for you right away. But the new traders also hold stocks that are trading ag...
 Loss is painful, guilt can be devastating. Worse than losing one's dream is the knowledge that the loss was self-inflicted. Problems are solutions that have outlived their usefulness. Problems are pattern that were learned in emotional circumstances during one period of life and that now have taken an existence of their own. Many times, outdated solutions replay themselves in a variety of life situations, leaving people mindlessly repeating their mistakes in work, love, and trading. There can be no free will for people who are locked into patterns developed for past challenges. Successful traders are therapists both learn to do what comes unnaturally. The resolution to problems can be found in what people are doing when those problems are not occurring. The problem with many traders is not that they have problems, but that they are focused on their problems. It is this problem focus that prevents them from appreciating what they are doing right, that blinds them to solutions alrea...

Wealth file #1 Rich people believe "I create my life" Poor people believe "Life happens to me."

You have to believe that you are the one who creates your success, that you are the one who creates your mediocrity, and that you are the one creating your struggle around money and success. Consciously or unconsciously, it's still you. Instead of taking responsibility for what's going on in their lives, poor people choose to play the role of the victim . A victim's predominant thought is often "poor me." So presto. by virtue of the law of intention, that's literally what victims get: they get to be "poor." That said how can you tell when people are playing the victim? Victim Clue #1: Blame Victims blame the economy, they blame the government, they blame the stock market, they blame their broker, they blame their type of business, they blame their manager, they blame the head office, they blame their spouse, they blame God and of course they always blame their parents. It's always someone else or something else that is to blame. The probl...