Do you have pesky annoying stuff you have to do that you don't want to? I hate cleaning my bathrooms. It's one of those things I dread at the end of the week. But it's got to get done. So I read James Clear's book Atomic Habits and learned about Habit Stacking. Now, I have the cleanest bathroom around!
Have you read this book? Do you know what habit stacking is? Do you hate cleaning your bathroom, as well?
Tune into this short episode to learn how you can apply habit stacking in your own life.
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Hey, thanks for joining me for this episode of Curves Welcome podcast. This podcast is all about facing and embracing the curves of life. Something I've been paying attention to for the past month is something called habit stacking. And I learned this through the book, Atomic Habits by James Clear. That book really changed my perspective on so many aspects of my life. This book helped me to really fine tune some of the things that I'm already doing. But I was doing in my opinion, ineffectively, because I was trying to add way too many things onto my to do list, to my agenda. And then what would happen is some of the things would just get sidetracked. And then I would end up pushing them off. And then a week would go by, two weeks would go by, and I would realize, dammit, I didn't get to those things. And some of those things I would push off, I would call those pesky, annoying tasks that as an adult living in this world, I need to do. So those things include cleaning my bathroom. I really don't enjoy that task. And I just, you know, the end of the week, I know it's time to clean the bathroom. And I feel like it took me an hour to do it, because I would just complain about it the whole time until I actually got doing it. And then it just seemed like it took so long. Because I have to take everything out, put everything back just seemed like a laborious thing. And I always feel like I have such better things to do with my time. I want to be able to work on projects and record podcasts and produce videos, make book trailers for authors, whatever, all those things that I want to be able to do and accomplish. That's what I wanted to do. I don't want to fill it with cleaning bathtubs, and toilets and sinks and floors and floorboards and windows and mirrors. After reading this book, I will tell you, my mindset has changed. And one of the things that I learned also in a course I'm taking with Jim Kwik is that, to set yourself up for a great day requires a few things. But one of them is the clean environment. We all love clean environments. Nobody doesn't like a clean environment, it feels good to be in a clean environment. And so I had to really trick my brain to start rethinking the way I thought about these types of tasks. So Atomic Habits, talks about habit stacking. And what that means is stacking those tasks that maybe seem pesky to you into things that you find actually appealing. So one of my favorite parts of the day is showering. I mean really, I love the hot water. I love the smell of the suds. I just I love the relaxation, the feeling of the water on my back and soothing my muscles, I look forward to my daily shower. And so I said, Okay, how about if I stack a task onto this. So every day, what I did was I broke down the task, the overwhelming task of cleaning my bathroom on a weekly basis, down to six steps. And those six steps, I do one task a day. And before I jump in the shower, what I do is on one day, I clean the toilet, then I'll take a shower. And the next day, I'll clean the sink, and then I'll take a shower. Then the next day I'll do my mirrors and my floorboards and my floors. And then I take a shower. And then the part I really hate doing the most is the tub and the shower walls. So you know, but that's part of it. So on one day, I do the shower walls, take a shower, the other day, I scrub the tub, take a shower, and so on Sunday is my day off. And Sunday used to be the day that I have to do the entire thing. So there's a couple of reward systems built into that I get to enjoy my shower, feeling accomplished that I did something positive. And I have helped to clean my environment and keep up with it. So it doesn't seem like a daunting task. And I freed myself up on Sunday. And so what I'm realizing is instead of taking an hour on Sunday to clean my bathroom, it really only takes me about five minutes to do each of those tasks. And what's five minutes in the grand scheme of a 24 hour day, right? And I'm going to waste those five minutes somewhere along the line. Why don't I put them to good use instead? So that's what I began doing. And I've been doing that for a month now. And what I'm feeling from doing that is, again, a sense of accomplishment that I'm actually doing that task and I'm enjoying the idea that my bathroom is always clean. I never have to worry about waiting until a week or two to clean it, it's done. It feels good to walk in there every day and know that I can do a five minute task. And then I reward myself with my luxurious shower. This can be applied to anything you do in life, pick something that you really love doing, and then stack a habit onto that. So it might be taking out the trash, you hate taking out the trash? Well, what is one thing you love doing that sort of coincides with that it may be cooking, who knows it may be making tea, or whatever it might be before you do that really enjoyable task, do that other task, just get stuck it on to that and make the good task of reward. Hopefully this helps you. I know it's helped me tremendously. And I plan on doing this to many aspects of my life. So that's just my tidbit for this month. Hopefully you enjoy it, and that it helps you let me know, comment, if you're watching this on YouTube. Or if you're listening to it on a podcast player. Reach out, let me know what you think of this. And if you have done this yourself, and found maybe different methods of doing it, or if it's something that you've never tried and you gave it a try. How did it do? How did you do with it? Let me know. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of curves Volcom podcast please like it or subscribe and you'll be notified anytime a new episode comes out. Take care