Designing Your Stack: A Practical Guide to Building a Resilient Routine
Understanding the theory is one thing; putting it into practice is another. Building a successful habit stack is an act of design. It requires a bit of self-awareness, some strategic planning, and a commitment to starting small. This is where we move from “what” to “how,” creating a personalized system that fits your life and your goals.
Start with a “Minimum Viable Action”
The single biggest mistake people make when building habits is starting too big. We overestimate our future motivation and underestimate the power of daily friction. The solution is to define your new habit in its smallest, most manageable form. We call this the minimum viable action.
A minimum viable action is a version of your desired habit that is so easy, so ridiculously small, that you can’t say no. It’s the two-minute version. It lowers the barrier to entry to almost zero, which is crucial for consistency on days when you feel tired, busy, or uninspired.
Consider these transformations:
- “Read every day” becomes “Read one page.”
- “Meditate for 20 minutes” becomes “Sit and focus on my breath for 60 seconds.”
- “Clean the kitchen” becomes “Wipe down one counter.”
- “Go to the gym” becomes “Put on my running shoes and step outside.”
The point of the minimum viable action is not the immediate result. Reading one page won’t finish a book today. The point is to make showing up the victory. You are casting a vote for your new identity. By putting on your running shoes, you are reinforcing the identity of “a person who exercises.” The act of starting is more important than the magnitude of the accomplishment in the early days. You can always do more, but the minimum is non-negotiable. Once the habit of showing up is established, you can gradually increase the duration or intensity.
Conduct a Friction Audit
Every action in your day has a certain amount of friction associated with it. Friction is the collection of small obstacles and hassles that stand between you and doing a task. To build good habits and break bad ones, your job is to become a friction engineer. You want to decrease friction for your desired habits and increase friction for your undesired ones.
To conduct a friction audit, take your desired habit and walk through the steps required to complete it. Where do you feel resistance? What takes extra effort?
To decrease friction for a good habit:
- Want to exercise in the morning? Lay out your workout clothes, shoes, and water bottle the night before. Your future self will thank you.
- Want to drink more water? Fill up a large water bottle and place it on your desk first thing in the morning.
- Want to journal? Leave your journal and a pen open on your nightstand.
To increase friction for a bad habit:
- Want to watch less TV? Unplug the TV after you use it. Keep the remote in a different room.
- Want to eat less junk food? Store it on a high shelf, out of sight, or better yet, don’t buy it in the first place.
- Want to mindlessly scroll on your phone? Delete social media apps and only access them through a web browser, which is less convenient. Move your phone charger to another room so you can’t use it in bed.
Thoughtfully managing friction can make the difference between a habit that sticks and one that’s a constant battle. Design your environment to make the right choices the easy choices.
Leverage Your Environment as a Cue
Your physical and digital spaces are not neutral backgrounds; they are powerful engines of cues that trigger your habits. As we learned from the habit loop, the cue is the first step. If you want to change your behavior, one of the most effective things you can do is change your environment. You can prime your space to make your habit stacks more obvious and automatic.
If your goal is to practice guitar, don’t keep the guitar in its case in the closet. Place it on a stand in the middle of your living room. Every time you walk by, you have a visual cue reminding you of your intention. If you want to read more, leave a book on your pillow in the morning. When you get into bed at night, the cue is already there.
Think of each room in your home as having a purpose. The kitchen is for nutrition. The bedroom is for sleep and rest. The office is for focused work. When you start to blur these lines—for example, by working from your bed or eating on the couch while watching TV—you send mixed signals to your brain. By creating a clear link between a location and a specific habit or routine, you make it easier for your brain to slip into the right mode automatically.
Find Gentle Accountability
While habit stacking is an internal process, a little external support can go a long way. Accountability doesn’t have to be about pressure or punishment. Gentle accountability is about creating a supportive structure that encourages consistency.
This could be as simple as telling a friend about the new routine you’re building. A quick text message like, “Just finished my morning walk!” can provide a small but meaningful sense of reward and social connection. There are also habit-tracking apps, but use them with caution. The goal is to use the tracker as a tool for self-awareness, not as a stick to beat yourself with if you miss a day. The checkmark is a celebration of casting a vote for your new identity, nothing more. The real prize is the person you are becoming, not an unbroken chain on an app.
