“To give life to beauty, the painter uses a whole range of colours, musicians of sounds, the cook of tastes -- and it is indeed remarkable that there are seven colours, seven musical notes and seven tastes.” - Lucien Tendret (1825-1896)
Every week I meal prep for my family. It has become a part of my weekly routine and one of my daily activities for "Move-Create-Relate." I get joy in the creation of cooking, the imagination, and the trial and error. After about a year of doing meal prep, I realized I could increase the joy by adding a "music theme" for each week's meal prep session. It allows me to revisit music I don't often listen to and then trains my Spotify to determine "new to me" music that I might enjoy - diversifying my collection.
As James Clear discusses in Atomic Habits, "habit stacking" is a technique where you build new habits by taking advantage of old ones. Combining music & meal prep is a natural combination for me - and now I habit stack "cleaning" within that structure. With the music pumping and the water boiling, I vacuum the living room. While the eggplant bakes, I mop the floor. Understand this, I hate to clean... it is definitely not a habit or anything routine - it's more on an emergency basis. Through habit stacking it is now a part of the Meal Prep routine. Here's to you finding ways to stack some habits to add new things into things you already do!
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