Habit Stacking for Founders

Atomic Habits is mostly about personal productivity. But here are three examples of how I implemented Atomic Habits at work to become a better leader.

Have you heard about habit stacking from Atomic Habits by James Clear? I’d go so far as to say that adopting it changed my life 🙌🏽 — How, you might ask?

We often believe that massive changes require massive effort, but sometimes it's the small, counterintuitive adjustments that can make the biggest difference.

After reading Atomic Habits, I started to implement habit stacking. The concept is simple: use existing habits as triggers to add-on new ones.

💡 It feels like I've hacked my brain a little bit because of the consistency this method brings.

Example of my habit stacking in action:

1️⃣ Becoming more mindful about what really moves the needle for me: not always “the work”

⚓️ Anchor habit: Logging my daily hours for startup consulting clients
— New habit: Prioritizing my writing and growing my business
— Tool I use: Google Sheets + ‘Import Range’ function

The thing that’s always top-of-mind for me is the “the work” - helping my startup clients grow. What often comes as an afterthought is my writing, and the work of growing my business and finding new startup clients. So I set out to solve that.

I noticed that I was already in the daily habit of logging my daily consulting hours in 3 Google Sheets hours trackers - 1 for every client.

I made one slight adjustment: now I’ve got a private master sheet where I’ve added columns for ‘Writing’ and ‘Working on the Business.’ Every time I go to update my work hours, it reminds me that I should work on the other two columns.

Next, I went back to the separate Hourly Tracking docs for each startup, and used ‘Import Range’ to pull-in just the relevant columns for each startup.

2️⃣ Getting better at mindfulness, being less frustrated at work

⚓️ Anchor habit: Checking Asana to see “what’s next”
— New habit: I put my daily meditation into the “Today” section of my Asana tasks. I developed this daily meditation thanks to Dave Kashen. It involves some visualization techniques that help me start my day from a place of abundance and curiosity rather than fear and frustration.
— Tool I use: Asana. I set up tasks that I can mark as Today, Tomorrow, and On-Deck. So my eye keeps coming back to the mediation in “Today” until it’s done.

3️⃣ Building deeper relationships with colleagues, and showing that I genuinely care

⚓️ Anchor habit: Running a weekly team meeting
— New habit: We spend the first 10 minutes of the meeting doing a “Personal and Professional Check-in” - something I learned from Jerry Colonna.
— Tool I use: None. The idea is to be present. To take a moment to check in with your body and your thoughts.

🎯 Now what about more challenging or long-term goals? I learned that the key is to break down the larger goal into smaller, manageable habits that gradually build toward your ultimate objective.

Usually when people talk about Atomic Habits, they talk about being more productive or getting in shape. But what I found was that these small changes allowed me to live a more centered and mindful existence.

Small changes, when done consistently, can lead to big results. Give it a try and see how it can change your life and business 🌟