The Power of Habit Stacking
I hate taking pills but, unfortunately, I’ve been forced to take a medication twice per day. I won’t get in the details of why, but it’s taken once in the morning and once at night. I was on it for the duration of January.
To make the experience more “fun,” every time I take the medication, I do 20 pushups.
First, you may be wondering WHY? Simple–I want to “up my pushup game” and I like feeling strong.
Second, I know I’ll be successful because it leverages a powerful principle called Habit Stacking.
Habit stacking is taking an ingrained habit and adding a new habit immediately after it.
It is the following formula:
Before/after I do [ingrained habit], I will do [new habit].
In my case, taking medication twice per day isn’t necessarily an “ingrained” habit but it is something that I KNOW I will do. This makes doing something new immediately after it EASY. Plus, I haven’t precisely timed how long it takes me to do 20 pushups (I’m guessing it isn’t much more than 30 seconds) so doing pushups takes no more than 1–2 minutes out of my day.
20 pushups also doesn’t seem like a lot. But 20 pushups per pill equals 40 pushups per day, which equals 280 pushups per week, which equals over 1000…