Stacking Habits and Taking Names

by Angela Munoz

What is Habit Stacking?

In James Clear’s, Atomic habits: An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones (2018) the author describes a concept called “habit stacking,” a process for adding in new habits on top of existing habits that are already solidified in one’s daily routine. In essence, the author shares that by working with existing favorable habits, one can enhance their success faster and with more ease by integrating new programming into the old system, much like installing updates on a computer (Clear, 2018). Focusing specifically on chapters four through eight of Clear’s book, I decided to take a deeper dive into my own habits as a doctoral student to discover where I can make upgrades in my own life and how these could be collectively used by newer doctoral students.

Evaluate the Unconscious

According to Clear (2018), best practices in building better habits begins with evaluating unconscious habits, these could generate from our upbringing, work processes, or environment. For instance, an unconscious habit of mine is that I will answer my personal cell phone with “Meds by Mail, this is Angela, how can I help you?”

After ten years of saying this exact line for my work, I have programmed myself to say it every time I answer any phone. If I do manage to avoid saying this at the beginning, it usually is also followed up promptly at the end of the call with a very enthusiastic “thank you and have a great day!” It is slightly embarrassing and confusing to family and friends as they may not be familiar with my customer service voice, and this causes them to hang up because they were not expecting to hear this message when they call my personal phone. To try to avoid this, I make a conscious effort to take off my work headphones and tell myself, “I am off the phone” while taking a huge sigh of relief and positioning my work headphone in a specific place on my computer desk. This small task helps to solidify in my mind and actions that I am no longer working, and I am not “on” as a customer service agent.

As a doctoral student, there can be a similar social response cue in how we react in social gatherings or any interactions with family and friends. At times, I myself have felt the need to quote scientific research studies or elaborate further on topics related to my studies that my family and friends may not be particularly interested in at the time. There is a time and place for small talk, and doctoral students create boundaries between working with the material for hours each day, by establishing a time to be “on” and a time to be “off.” When I worked at a radio station in college, I was required to smile for long periods of time and be friendly and outgoing, which was a challenge at times. When I gathered with friends and family, I subconsciously felt that I needed to turn my personality “on” so that others would find me more interesting or likable. I realized that this was a subconscious habit after attending a funeral and realizing how my face hurt from smiling and I was completely exhausted from the contradictory feelings of being happy when deep down I was indeed very sad.

Doctoral students should know that it is not required for us to be “on” or presenting and bringing forth knowledge and expertise into every verbal interaction, it is acceptable to just be personable and to reflect our truest selves when we interact with our families and friends. Clear states the importance of creating conscious habits through connecting all the senses, so doctoral students may decide to establish their own rituals for “turning off” their doctoral selves, allowing time for the information to sink in without constantly spewing information at every chance. This could include saying an “end of work” mantra, physically changing clothes when not studying or working on coursework, completing work in a separate area of the house, or even creating a physical break between work, school, and family time by taking a shower, exercising, or cleaning the work area. This helps to give closure to the work process and allows the student to be present when interacting with others.

Increasing Consciousness

Clear (2018) describes various explanations of a process called habit stacking. The concept of stacking habits comes from the need to occasionally and progressively level up existing habits by stacking on better habits over time. This enforces consistency of the older habits and further instills the effectiveness of the new habits. With so much on my plate, I have an extremely tight schedule, so my habit stacking is somewhat complicated. For example, when I take my 9:15 a.m. break, I usually exercise in my living room. However, I found that I was not always getting an effective workout based on my step count for the 15 minutes. When I work out with hand weights, I see more progress on my step count than from my floor leg exercises, because of the positioning of my Fitbit on my wrist.

After evaluating and researching, I found being active early in the morning while intermittently fasting was more effective for weight loss and if you reach 10,000 steps a day you can drastically improve your health, metabolism, mental activity, hormones, and contribute to weight loss and it does not matter what specific exercise you complete. This was life-changing news, and I quickly decided that it was easier and more effective for me to create a habit that allowed me to “just move around” than to plan out targeted exercises for only 15 minutes at a time. I believe stacking habits should also improve your time and performance of achieving your daily habits. I noticed I was spending a significant amount of my morning looking up new workouts, deciding which workout I would do before my break, and then if it became too time-consuming, I would waste my entire break.

After reevaluating my habit, I decided that I would exercise from 9:15 a.m.-to 9:30 a.m. in my living room, listen to my favorite music, and move around consistently until I reached 1,000 steps or my break is over. I had inadvertently created a stackable habit by including intermittent fasting with non-targeted workouts.

In a comparable way, doctoral students are required to complete a great amount of writing throughout their educational journey, and some are not determining the best time of day for them to be writing, as there may be more opportune times to complete writing assignments. Students are certainly more inclined and responsive to writing prompts when they are feeling the most at ease, rested, and they have the time available to reflect and then write. This is like the intermittent fasting technique, as there are certain times of the day when the metabolism works more productively and efficiently. Also, students can improve their writing skills by not only challenging themselves with targeted scholarly writing but with non-targeted writing, allowing their creativity and knowledge of other subjects to blossom as well.

Environment vs. Motivation

As Clear (2018) suggests, the environment can have more meaning and impact on your daily habits than your level of motivation. This can certainly be true, and developing an environment that is conducive to writing, whether this is the work area, time of the day when you work, the amount of time spent in an area, or the type of work you are doing, the environment can inspire or destroy creativity and focus. Motivation can be fast and fleeting as Clear (2018) described in his story about how weight loss participants quickly lost their motivation after only a few hours since there were no clear incentives to continue the habit, so Clear uses an ideal called temptation bundling to make the habits more enticing and more likely to persist. According to Clear’s research, an individual only requires the hope or anticipation of the reward to push forward, not the actual fulfillment of it. In my own experiences, I have accomplished a great deal more than was necessary, and so many of my achievements have not yet fulfilled my greatest hopes, but the fear of regret is stronger than my fear of failure, so I continue. As a stackable habit, I continue to plan for the best possible outcome for my future, while consistently researching and learning about other options and opportunities.

Doctoral students can learn from Clear’s research by creating effective and consistent habits in planning for their future, but they should also include research and open-mindedness of alternative plans and opportunities as a stackable habit. For every opportunity you have planned to achieve, have at least two other equally strategic and foreseeable plans that you can spend time developing, learning about, and preparing yourself for in your current environment or another. This offers hope, preparedness, and connection as a temptation bundle. Clear states in his Chapter 8 Summary, “the strategy is to pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do” (2018). Doctoral students should acknowledge the current economic landscape and notice how it is becoming vastly competitive and significantly less hopeful, and it is vital that we prepare ourselves by leveling up our personal habits with stackable habits as many times as needed until we attain our goals. If others only need the hope of reward, then we as doctoral students should strive to not only hope for it, but to fully achieve it, that will be the difference between doctoral students and everyone else (Clear, 2018).

References

Clear, J. (2018). Chapters 4-8. In Atomic habits: An easy & proven way to build good habits & break bad ones: Tiny changes, remarkable results (pp. 59–111). Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House.