The opposite of habit stacking

I hear a lot of encouraging advice about stacking tasks together like Lego bricks to make them easier to handle. You complete one regular task, and then you remember to follow it up with your new add-on, and in this way you can build up your habits and routines, brick by brick.

Unfortunately for my kind of brain, when I look at one task I’ll immediately imagine all the other bricks I should be clicking onto it. A veritable tower of logical process and efficiency that is way beyond my actual follow-through capacity! The mental tower and I both crash out at this point, and I’ll somehow not be able to start on the original task, let alone the “stack.”

Today there’s a new album I’m really excited to listen to (brand new from the Mountain Goats, featuring Lin Manuel Miranda for some reason). This isn’t an arduous task! But all day I’ve been thinking that I need to charge my headphones, drive to the park, and go for a quiet walk to listen to it properly.

It’s now 8pm, and I still haven’t listened to the record. Family life, and my own brain’s demands for perfection, have conspired against me.

I’m making a new plan and pushing away all the other tasks, to focus on this one block only:
sit outside with a quiet cuppa and listen to some new songs.

I try to remind myself every day: if the whole list is too long, it’s so much better to do one small thing.