Off-court training is a significant part of my tennis life. Because of that, I have a fairly legitimate small-footprint home gym. Regardless of how much tennis I play on any given day, I typically augment that with an hour or so in my gym. I frequently quip that one of the most important pieces of exercise equipment I own is a television, but that isn’t actually a joke. Screen time carries me through the cardio.
I watch a lot of tennis while working out. In fact, when there is a match I want to watch and know I will be unable to remain unspoiled about the result, I have been known to rearrange my entire day so I can watch it live while working out. On many days, there is a match that I am interested in streaming, particularly in the early rounds of tournaments and doubles matches that don’t ever seem to find the light of the broadcast day.
However, occasionally the list of matches that I want to watch runs dry. The recent period between the end of Wimbledon and the kickoff of the North American hard court swing was particularly uncompelling to me this year. It was a real conundrum to figure out what to do when there are no matches that I genuinely want to watch.
I have been a MasterClass subscriber for the past couple of years, which says as much about the effectiveness of their marketing as it does about my viewing habits. I am pretty good about monitoring upcoming renewals of my streaming services and cutting out the ones that I am not using. MasterClass sits in a unique aspirational position for me.
Every year when I consider canceling that subscription, I scroll through the ever-growing list of classes that genuinely interest me, convince myself that this will be the year I finally watch them, and renew for another twelve months. The problem has never been a lack of interest. It has been finding the right time and place to watch that content. As a result, I have been continuously paying for a subscription that I rarely used, and becoming increasingly more annoyed with myself in the process.
Over the past couple of months, I decided to try to work through my MasterClass course backlog while exercising. The change required almost no effort because I wasn’t creating a new habit. I was attaching new content to an existing one.
Behavioral researchers call this habit stacking. Rather than relying on willpower to build another routine, you pair something new with something you already do consistently. The existing habit becomes the catalyst for doing the new one.
The MasterClass content is really good, and on the days when I view those classes, I feel like I am exercising my mind in addition to my body. Many of the ideas from those courses are enriching how I think about work, professional mentoring, and coaching. With so much content on writing and storytelling, it definitely benefits this site. An hour that previously served one purpose now accomplishes two.
The habit stacking concept extends well beyond the home gym and onto the tennis court. Our sport is littered with small pockets of time that can be paired with something else that improves our performance. Being the first to arrive for a fun tennis match is the perfect time to hit a few practice serves rather than sitting on the bench scrolling social media. Waiting for the fourth to show up is a great time to experiment with a new three-person drill you have been wanting to try. Even the drive home after a match can be used to analyze it and identify opportunities for improvement.
None of those activities require finding additional time in the day. Rather, they just make better use of time that already exists. That is ultimately what habit stacking is all about. Rather than asking, “How can I fit one more thing into my schedule?” it asks, “What am I already doing that could be tweaked to accomplish just a little bit more?”
That doesn’t mean every spare minute needs to become productive. In fact, one of the more interesting lessons from Cal Newport’s Rebuild Your Focus MasterClass is the importance of protecting genuine downtime. Sometimes the best choice is to enjoy the tennis match, listen to music, read a novel, or simply let your mind wander. Rest has value too.
The lesson is not to squeeze every ounce of productivity from every waking moment. It is to become more intentional with the small fragments of time that often disappear unnoticed. Those little pockets rarely seem important by themselves, but add up over the long term.
Ironically, that realization finally solved my MasterClass problem. I didn’t need to find more time in my week to watch those courses. I just had to discover the opportunity that had simply been hiding inside another habit all along.
