When it comes to building new habits, the most important thing is figuring out how you can be consistent with that habit. And in order to create consistency, the habit has to be easy to implement in your life. It has to be obvious to the point that you can’t miss it even if you wanted to. Therefore, the key to habit building is making it obvious.
Behavioral psychologists have conducted many studies on why humans behave in a certain manner under certain circumstances. It turns out there are patterns to our behavior. It may seem that it’s all arbitrary but that’s far from the truth. The reality is that our brain enjoys creating patterns whenever it has an opportunity. Therefore, although, it may seem that your daily actions and habits are random, they follow a certain pattern. And today you’ll learn how to make that pattern work for you. And, consequently, take advantage of your pattern-loving brain to make it work for you and not against you.
The Diderot Effect
As a consumer you might notice buying something new results in another purchase, followed by another. For example, you buy a new laptop and once you’ve bought the new laptop you might feel you need a newer headset, monitor, or keyboard to go with your purchase. A single item can trigger a stream of purchases. This phenomenon is so common that it even has a name; the Diderot Effect.
While the effect is commonly associated with consumerism, we relive the concept every day, without even realizing it. For example, when you wake up, you often follow that act by going to the washroom, and you follow that up by brushing your teeth. One action triggers the other action. Many examples can be given, where we subconsciously give in to different triggers and behave differently to different stimuli. When you hear a text notification, as a reflex you’ll extend your hand to check your phone. The notification triggered your behavior to extend your hand. One action was the cause of the other.
How can this understanding be of any help with respect to habit-building? Well for starters we understand that actions are based on triggers. You follow a cycle, you do the next thing based on what you did before. No behavior happens in isolation, each becomes a cue for the other. There are things that are constant in our lives, such as going to sleep, waking up, sunsets, sunrises, breathing, eating, and drinking, to name a few. These things occur in our lives perpetually. Normally, no day will go by in which you do not wake up, eat or breathe (unless that day is your last). Hence, an action becomes the trigger for the next behavior and that becomes a trigger for the next.
With all that being said, to create a new habit you need to create a trigger for it. The stronger and clearer your trigger, the greater the likelihood of consistency with that habit.
Habit Stacking Taught to Us by Rasulullah ﷺ
Habit stacking is a term that refers to following up a habit that you’re currently practicing with a habit you want to implement. This type of routine, where one follows the other in order to make sure that the latter takes place is taught by Rasulullah ﷺ on many occasions. Rasulullah ﷺ understood that there are events that are inevitable and will happen regardless, such as
| Using the washroom | Eating | Drinking water |
| Traveling | Starting to eat | Finishing eating |
| Sleeping | Waking up | Sneezing |
| Hearing a sneeze | Entering your home | Leaving your home |
Do you recognize a pattern with the above list? What’s common in all of them? You guessed it right! There is a specific behavior taught by Rasulullah ﷺ for all the above triggers. That behavior is to say the specific prayer (Dua) for its respective triggers. The actions above become a trigger for reciting the Dua associated with it. Rasulullah ﷺ strategically coined the remembrance of Allah with things that inevitably happen to all of us throughout the entirety of our day. Therefore, there are countless moments in which we remember Allah. The deeper we dig into this the clearer it becomes. Even the daily recitation of the Quran is coined with unavoidable actions. Like, reading surah Yasin when the sun rises, reading of surah Waqi’ah when the sun sets, reading of surah Kahf for Thursday’s sunsets, etc. The point of this article is to talk about habit stacking, but let’s take a moment and appreciate how easy Rasulullah ﷺ made it for us to actively remember Allah throughout the day.
Back to habit stacking. Just like Rasulullah ﷺ made waking up the trigger to read the Dua of waking up, similarly, if you want to create a new habit you need to connect it with an obvious trigger. For example, you make waking up a trigger for going to the washroom. Once you leave the washroom you can choose what that action will serve as a trigger for. You can choose to make it the trigger to begin working out, studying, writing a to-do list for your day, etc. Whatever behavior you want to create, join it with something you’re already doing.
Habit Stacking at its best
To make better use of this principle, your triggers have to be as clear as possible and not vague. For example, when Rasulullah ﷺ said to read a specific dua before sleeping, he made it clear when to recite it. There was no ambiguity. The same applies to when you wake up. The dua prayed after awakening is ideally supposed to be your first utterance of the day. You see how clear Rasulullah ﷺ made these triggers. If you want to implement habits with similar ease refrain from making your triggers vague. Make them clear and follow the cue up with the desired habit. As discussed earlier, create a pattern in your mind.
A perfect example that comes to mind while speaking of making your triggers as evident as possible is the practice of Tahiyyatul Masjid. Rasulullah ﷺ in a narration says: when one of you enters a masjid, he should perform two Rak’ah before he sits. In this narration, Rasulullah ﷺ acknowledges the urgency of doing the desired action right after its trigger (entering the masjid) and before indulging in anything else. If you make your trigger vague then it is not obvious for you when to start your action. And as stated earlier, if it’s not obvious then achieving consistency becomes significantly harder.
Another thing to note on the principle taught by Rasulullah ﷺ is the frequency of the triggers. The trigger for reciting surah Kahf is Thursday’s sunset (the Jumu’ah). More importantly, it counts equally if it is read anytime in-between Thursday’s sunset and Friday’s sunset (because that whole period counts as one day with respect to the lunar calendar). The point I’m trying to make here is about the frequency of the action. If you want to create a daily habit then don’t precede it with a habit that happens only on Fridays. There is only one Jumu’ah (trigger for Kahf) a week, hence only once a week did Rasulullah ﷺ recommend the recitation of Surah Kahf. So if you want to work out every day, and you make “before going to groceries” your trigger for going to the gym, but you only go for groceries on Sundays, then you will lack consistency.
Action Step
Now it’s time to take action. After all that you’ve learned today, take advantage of your pattern-loving brain. Create patterns in your daily habits to create new habits and make them permanent. After learning about the Diderot effect, how one action leads to another and no action occurs in isolation, you’ve learned how to make use of the ultimate formula of habit building. To stack a “new habit” after a “current habit”. You’ve learned how to keep that current habit (trigger) as obvious as possible.
A simple exercise can be done to start implementing these principles taught to us by Rasulullah ﷺ. Simply create two columns, in the first one, write all the habits that you’re currently practicing without fail (breakfast, lunch, washroom, going to work, etc), and on the other column write down the habits you want to incorporate after these triggers.