What Is Habit Stacking?

Raise your had if you’ve ever been personally victimized by your habits.

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Same, friend, same.

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It’s not uncommon for our habits to run rails over our sanity — and often, we don’t even realize that they’re habits?

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Think about this…

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If you are always 10 minutes late for a zoom call…that’s a habit.

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If you only eat Door Dash for lunch…that’s a (delicious, but possibly expensive) habit.

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If you take a walk to decompress every time you have a showdown with your annoying coworker…that’s a habit.

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Now, we’re not saying all habits are ones you want to change…but if your unconscious habits are causing you frustration, you’re in luck.

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What if we told you that you could use a super simple, easy to implement method to create brand new habits, develop an action chain, and stick to it (for real this time!)?

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The result would be powerful and could help you get closer to achieving your goals.

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Small Changes That Get BIG Results

Building a new habit is basically taking the small steps necessary to achieve your goals. But this only works if your goals are small — bite-sized. We often reach for the proverbial stars when we set goals, committing to multiple actions or habits all at once.

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…and that’s doomed to fail.

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Instead, we’ve developed a way to help you break down those big hairy goals into smaller, more manageable pieces, so that you can improve your life, your tennis game, lose weight, or finally save enough for that dream vacation that’s been on your list…well, forever.

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We built our tiny habits using a system known as “habit stacking.”

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This “habit stacking” technique is the core technique for building better habits. Habit stacking is when you take two or more existing habits that are related and combine them together as one new routine or sequence.

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In other words, if you want to read more books but you’re not sure how much time you have available each day, you could stack reading with walking your kids, or dog, or doing yoga in the morning. For example: after you walk the dog, you read 5 pages in your current book of choice.

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By stacking these two habits together you will eventually create a routine that turns into a habit and get closer to your goal of reading more books.

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Don’t Go It Alone — We’re Here to Help

Sure, you could totally do this on your own…but then you’re stuck trying to schedule everything, setting reminders or alarms, and you’re already busy enough as it is.

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Let’s be honest — you don’t have time to make a new habit about how to create new habits. If you did, you’d have done it already.

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Instead, you need support. And that’s where Focus Bear is going to completely change your life.

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Focus Bear is a habit stacking app that helps you stick to your habits and track your progress — so that you don’t have to cobble together an entirely new routine to support your new habit stack.

Designed to minimize the amount of willpower required for you to stay consistent with your goals, Focus Bear uses the principles of Atomic Habits, which allows you to break down large goals into small, actionable tasks that are way easier to accomplish.

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The result is an app that can help you achieve any goal you want, whether it’s related to productivity or personal growth.

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Do You NEED Habit Stacking?

Honest answer? That depends.

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When you’re trying to create a new habit, it can be difficult to keep up with all the steps involved. But by breaking down your routine into small and simple steps, it becomes much easier — and more likely — that you’ll stick to your new, improved habits.

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Now, if you’re happy with the status quo, then we congratulate you (and want to know your secret)…but we’re betting that if you’re reading THIS article, you could use some help actually implementing and sticking to creating your new, improved habits.

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The “habit stacking” method works to develop any new habit.

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Want to lose weight? Use Focus Bear to prompt you to go for a run in the morning and to regularly do microworkouts throughout the day.

Want to read more? Use Focus Bear to prompt you to read those Pocket articles you’ve been neglecting after you finish work.

Want to run your first 5K? Use Focus Bear to prompt you to open the couch to 5K app each morning.

You’ll get prompts on all your devices. They’re not some puny little push notification that you can flick away. Once you commit to your habits, Focus Bear holds you to it. Unless you have a real emergency, every other app on your phone and computer will be blocked until you go through your morning/evening routine. Otherwise it’s too easy to let that lazy voice “I’ll skip the run for this morning — I don’t feel like it” overrule what your highly motivated yesterday self planned to do.

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It’ll boost your productivity too

As well as helping you get traction on your habits, Focus Bear will also help you crush it at work. After you finish your morning routine, the app can automatically flick into super pomodoro mode so you hit the ground running and get your most important tasks done first thing.

An errant thought of “Oh I should check to see if that pokemon card I’m selling on Facebook Marketplace has sold yet” will be lovingly shooed away by Focus Bear’s anti-distraction shield.

Start habit stacking today!

If you’re looking for a way to build better habits and create an even more productive life, you download the Focus Bear App! We offer an effective way to help you accomplish your goals and keep yourself on track (plus, our mascot is adorable).

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Build your first new habit starting today — enjoy a 21 day free trial of FocusBear.io on us!

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This blog post was first published in Medium