Keep a routine. At home, people often maintain a lot of different routines. You might meditate, take daily vitamins, drink a good amount of water, get in regular workouts and have meals at the same time every day. But when we travel, so much can change. Often we don’t even realize it, but when we’re on the road, a lot of our good habits vanish because our schedules are so different.
But a system called “habit stacking” can help. With habit stacking, you link habits back to back in a single sequence. One action triggers you to remember the next, but everything is linked together as one habit.
It might looks like this example sequence:
1. At night, leave a glass on your kitchen counter.
2. When you wake up, seeing the glass triggers the habit you want to have of hydrating first thing in the morning.
3. With the glass on the counter next to your vitamin bottle, drinking water reminds you to take your vitamins.
4. Near the glass, you’ve also left the dog leash out, reminding you to take your dog for a walk, thereby getting in some morning activity to get your blood moving.
Each habit triggers the next because you’ve kept everything close together, providing visual cues. You don’t need to “remember” to take your vitamins; the vitamins are right next to your water glass, making it a no-brainer.
Other habits we like to stack include:
- Starting off the day listening to a positive morning podcast
- Thinking of ten things we’re grateful for or writing them down
- Putting aromatherapy oils in a diffuser
- Doing a daily workout at the same time each day
- Planning the next day’s adventures together at night
