The Dreamer’s Guide to Habit-Stacking: How to Romanticize Your Days

What if every single day felt 🌸romantic?🌸

You didn’t wake up feeling an anxious, cold, fast-moving energy, but a soft, warm welcome into the day? Yes, you can feel this, even if you have a “cozy girl job” to make the bills happen while you’re turning your artistry full-time (hey, female singer-songwriter here, and that’s very much me!).

I love to talk about goal-setting and manifestation (like creating a vision board), but I’m also the first to say that simply sitting around thinking about what you want in life ain’t going to do much!

Your goals will be limited unless you have solid systems, starting with cultivating ✨ creative habits.✨

(Or, as you read on, romanticizing them to make them feel less like habits and more like rituals.)

🤔 What is Habit-Stacking?

At its core, the habit-stacking meaning is actually brilliantly simple: link a new habit you want to form with an existing habit you already have.

James Clear created the concept of habit-stacking in his book, Atomic Habits.

In Atomic Habits, habit-stacking is described as different from traditional habit formation because it doesn’t rely on willpower or motivation alone. Instead, it capitalizes on the neural pathways that you’ve already created through your natural, current habits!

This is huge. This means you don’t need “motivation” in order to do things you want to do!

Think about your daily routine right now. You probably brush your teeth every morning without much thought, right? 🪥 This is actually a perfect opportunity for habit-stacking, since you’re already doing it.

Let’s say you’ve been wanting to move your body more. You could decide to do some stretching every time you brush your teeth. Or, if you have affirmations that you simply never remember to say, you can stick them right on your mirror or near your toothbrush and think about them while you’re brushing.

Connecting the new habit to an existing one is making you more likely to remember and follow through. It’s simple, but crazy powerful. 📝

See? Nick is habit-stacking right here. Eating a burrito while hanging out with Schmidt and Cece in bed. What a win!

via GIPHY

🔄 The “Habit Loop” and the 3 Phases of Habit Formation

The habit loop, a concept popularized by Charles Duhigg in “The Power of Habit,” consists of 3 elements: cue, routine, and reward.

The cue triggers the behavior, the routine is the behavior itself, and the reward is the benefit gained from the behavior. Habit stacking leverages this loop by using an existing habit (and its associated neural pathway) as the cue for a new habit.

According to the British Journal of General Practice, the habit formation process includes a learning phase, an initiation phase, and a stability phase.

The great thing is that once you’ve gotten past all the phases, habits are likely going to stay in your brain even after you feel consciously motivated to do it.

So you no longer have to feel “up to it” in order to create a habit — you can trust that your body will simply want it.

🤗 The Benefits of Habit-Stacking for Creatives

As creatives, we often juggle multiple projects, deadlines, and the constant need for fresh ideas. Plus, we have this innate pressure that “well, I want to create so much, but I can’t seem to find the time to or the motivation to do it. Does that mean I don’t love it?!”

(Hint: no, it doesn’t mean that. I know you love your art.)

🌹 Romanticizing Everyday Tasks

Part of living that beautifully creative lifestyle of your dreams is being able to romanticize your everyday tasks. This is the main way I suggest fostering productivity techniques for creatives without them feeling like this cold, harsh chore!

The clearest way that I can explain this is through Marie Kondo’s philosophy of things that “spark joy.”

As artists and creatives, we already have this unique ability to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

So, let’s bring that into our daily habits. In fact, I would even consider calling these “habits” “rituals” instead. It just brings a more magical, intentional element to it, don’t you think? 💫

For example, by using habit stacking, you can turn your morning coffee-making routine into making a quick daily sketch. Have that notebook right by the coffee machine, and suddenly, you’ve forced yourself to create every single day without even having to think about it.

This makes your task more enjoyable, sure, and also infuses your day with those small creative moments that piece together to create a large impact (or even a future project completed!).

via GIPHY

👩‍💻 More Cozy-Girl Job Productivity

Congrats, if you have a cozy girl job right now to help you transition into a full-time creative career, you’ve hit the jackpot!

Cozy girl job (n): job that creatives and artists get that’s remote, likely in digital marketing, and lets you work where you want and when you want. It’s cozy in your physical space and in your emotional space, without feigned deadlines, fires, and a million energy-draining meetings. She takes a bit to find, but when you do, hold onto her. She’s here to help you sustain your life so you can pursue your creative dreams.

Part of having your cozy girl job is creating rituals (habits) that spark joy for you. Think about the habits you have inside of that job and how you can make them more joyful.

Do you use a project management platform and could use more color-coding, emojis, customizations, and beautifying?

Are you using your favorite colors as much as possible, like in your Google Docs, your desktop background, and even the home studio you’re working in? Are you nurturing your 3 lifestyle muses enough?

And, of course, since we’re talking about habit-stacking, what habits have you created around this job that’s made it more productive?

For example, a huge habit-stacking practice I’ve added is batch-creating all of my client’s images for the entire month. I used to create images for their blog posts for each article as they got completed, but I found myself going into Canva time and time again to do the same thing and it took me forever.

So, I created a little workflow optimization strategy through simple batching and habit stacking: I carve out 2 hours a month to go through this image-batching process.

The stacking part? I listen to a fun podcast while I’m doing this! 🎉 Since it’s pretty mindless work and doesn’t require too much concentration, it physically sparks joy for me when I do it, because I get to listen to something I love while getting stuff done. Win-win!

💭 More Creativity

Habit-stacking can give you more opportunities to be creative. It’s effectively time-management for artists without feeling like it’s annoyingly structured.

Remember that coffee example I talked about earlier? ☕️ This is what I’m talking about.

Habit-stacking gives you the opportunity to stack in more time to be creative. Because I know, it can be so hard to be creative when you’re busy with a million other things that pay the bills. 💀

Building creative routines, rituals, habits, boundaries — these all feel like they might be at odds with inspiration and creativity. But they actually create a vessel for it. The more constraints you have on your work, the more focused and creative you’ll get to find the solution or conditions for it to thrive in its best possible way.

Habit-stacking also helps reduce decision fatigue and overthinking, which can take up a lot more creative energy than you might realize.

The less you have to think about what you have to do and the more you can *just do it,* the more time you’ll be able to carve out to let your creativity run free, focusing on quality over quantity in your work instead of the other way around.

It’s ✨artistic discipline, ✨without the hustle culture.

👏 How to Implement Habit-Stacking in Your Creative Routine

Okay, we love us some habit-stacking. But how can we put this into action? First thing’s first, don’t try to overhaul your entire routine overnight – that’s a recipe for frustration and failure. Let’s take it step by step, both in practice, and as you incorporate your habit-stacking formulas into your life.

🫶 Step 1: Identify the Rituals You Love

The first step in creating discipline through habit stacks is identifying the rituals you already enjoy. These positive habits will serve as the foundation for your stacks. Take some time to catalog your current daily routines. Which ones do you look forward to? Which ones make you feel good?

For me, I love sitting under my red light lamp. I could do it all day, every day. I do it in the morning and in the evening, and even sometimes during the day. Perhaps for you, it’s drinking coffee in the morning, taking a walk after lunch, or listening to a podcast or YouTuber (my YouTube vids are stroll-friendly, btw 😉).

🙃 Step 2: Identify the Habits You Dread

Just as important as identifying positive habits is acknowledging the ones you dreadddddd doing. These can be annoying habits that you know you need to do but you absolutely do not love doing.

What projects do you procrastinate on starting big projects? Do you know you have to clean your studio but simply refuse? Do you yearn for the day that you’ll wake up insanely motivated to finally start that outdoor garden you’ve been dreaming of?

➕ Step 3: Create a Habit-Stacking Formula

Now it’s time to put it all together and create your habit stacking formula.

A basic habit stacking formula looks like this: “After/before/during I [current habit], I will [new habit].” The key is to be specific and consistent.

(I added the “during” part because sometimes, we can do two things at the same time. Technically, I don’t believe in multi-tasking; this is mainly for pairing going for a walk with listening to a podcast, turing on New Girl while you’re doing the dishes, etc.)

For example, some new stacks you can create:

🦋 After I turn on the coffee machine and wait for it to be ready, I will spend 10 minutes drawing in my notebook.”

🦋After I make my to-do list for the day, I will immediately send a picture to my accountability buddy.

🦋While I listen to my favorite podcast, I will walk around the neighborhood.

🥞 More Examples of Habit Stacks/Formulas

To help you get started, let’s look at some habit stack examples tailored for creative souls like you.

🌞 Morning Routine Stack

• After my alarm goes off, I will turn on my red light lamp and spend 5 minutes stretching.
• As I get up for the day, I will turn on a Headspace meditation.
• As I want for my tea to brew, I will write 3 morning pages in my journal (a la The Artist’s Way, of course!)

🎧 Workspace Preparation Stack

• After I enter my workspace, I will light a candle and dim the lights to set the mood.
• After lighting a candle and setting the mood, I will bring up my body-doubling program (like Caveday, focused, Flow Club, etc.) for productivity and send them my goals.
• After sitting down at my desks, I will check my Asana board for the tasks I need to do today.

Notice how some of these stacks engage multiple senses. Creative need our senses to be triggered, which is why I’m all about designing a home studio that speaks to you! Of course, the colors of your walls and space isn’t quite a habit, but a more permanent way of curating your space. But little delighters and mood-lifters like candles can help romanticize and ritualize your habits and your days.

📽️ Transform Your Creative Life: Follow My YouTube!

If you want some more tips and tools on living a creative life and how to become an artist, I would love it if you joined our cute little creative community on YouTube.

I love talking about ways to stay creative and manifest your dream artistic life. Either way, enjoy those beautiful new habits of yours. 😘