Smart Stacking is a method for developing incremental progressions. As the name implies it’s the idea of stacking abilities on top of each other as you acquire them, with the goal of developing more complex abilities over time. It’s a method to countering the mindset that we should be good at something right away, or comparing our “beginner” self or developing self to how the final outcome should look like.
What are the main principles of Smart Stacking?
- Simplify the complex by breaking them down and reducing them into small achievable practices and routines.
- First Principles thinking – understand and become an expert on the basics, foundations and essentials of the practice you are trying to master.
- Automaticity – With every action you acquire, they will start to become automatic. The once new, difficult and uncoordinated activity will become innate, intuitive and instinctual.
And each new “Stack” will go through a developmental process to acquisition.
- Mechanics – The most rudimentary physical, mental, intellectual mechanics of the practice you’re trying to acquire. It will feel awkward, uncomfortable and inefficient but simply going through the action without judgment or criticism is the first step to acquisition.
- Mental Priming – As the mechanics become more comfortable and natural, more space in your mind will start to free up, allowing you to think less about the mechanics and more on the mental aspect of the practice. Mental aspects including…
- Efficiency – Efficiency through subtraction, what can I minimize or stop doing, what is a drag, what is hindering me, what is taxing my energy, focus and clarity, taking energy away from a more optimized practice.
- Optimization – Optimization through addition, what practices, mindsets, execution, performance can I add to make my practice more productive and fruitful, continuing the path of growth and development.
- Maximum Potentiation – Now once you’ve gone through the Efficiency and Optimization phase now you can start to think about Maximizing Potentiation, that is, in what areas can I start to take qualitative and quantitative measurements – such as increasing intensity, focus, output, work, time, energy, quality.