Here’s How Long It Really Takes to Form a New Habit

Forming a habit is a powerful tool. You integrate the new thing into your daily routine and, soon enough, it becomes automatic. That’s the dream, anyway – in reality, you have to work for it. But how long does it take to fully form a habit? Despite what you may have heard, it’s not necessarily just 21 days.

The number of days it takes to form a new habit depends on the habit, you, and the strategies you use to build and maintain the habit. Scientific estimates range from 21 days to eight months or more. Let’s take a look at why this range is so big and what you can do to build habits faster.

The myth of the 21 day habit

The idea that a habit takes 21 days to form came from a surgeon, Maxwell Maltz. He observed that it seemed to take about three weeks for a person to get used to their new body after an operation such as an amputation or plastic surgery, writes James Clear. (After having a few minor surgeries, I remember that it takes two to three weeks for the pain and swelling to go away enough that you’re not constantly thinking about the fact that you just had surgery; I wonder if that’s related.)

The surgeon’s idea was that it took people 21 days to dissolve and reform a “mental image” of themselves. This is not supported by research; It’s just a guy’s intuition. But I think it stuck because it resonated with a lot of our experiences.

Let’s say you want to get up early to exercise first thing in the morning. Well, from course you can do it once. But how to make it a habit? When I was in this situation – becoming a morning practitioner even though I wasn’t a morning person – I committed to a full week before I even allowed myself to complain about it or adjust my plan. I had to get up at 6 a.m. every day, five days in a row, which was non-negotiable. I enjoyed taking a break on the weekend, and then the second week was a lot easier. By the end of the third, it was truly my new normal. After that I kept it for at least a year.

Even though the 21-day rule isn’t based on science, it’s a good time frame to “try” a new habit. After all, one day can be a fluke. A week or two is a period of time we’ve been through before, and we can ride out a disruption to our normal life for that long (imagine a vacation or a crisis week before a work deadline). But after three weeks, or better yet, a full month, you’ve learned a few things about your new habit and how it fits into your life. Even the simplest habits are never In fact simple; you need to learn and practice a number of mini-skills in the process of creating almost any habit.

So after 21 days, you’ve done this thing several times. Most importantly, you’ve probably overcome a few interruptions or obstacles (like the weekend) and gotten back on track. This is probably a good rule of thumb for a period long enough to resemble “real life.” But that doesn’t mean it’s enough.

Research shows it takes months to automate a habit

Scientific research has attempted to measure the time it takes for a habit to become truly automatic. For example, this study asked participants to choose a habit and attach it to something they did once a day (e.g., “eat fruit for lunch”). The study lasted 12 weeks. Some participants felt that their new habit was automatic after just a few weeks; many others were not yet there at the end of the study. The researchers concluded that most people would automatically form a habit between two and eight months… in a model that, according to their calculations, would only apply to 62 (about 75%) of the participants.

That’s a wide range, and we don’t know if the rest of the people would have Never got to a point where the habit was automatic. Researchers also found that simpler habits (like drinking water) became automatic more quickly than harder or more complex habits (like doing 50 sit-ups).

A 2012 study looked at several other estimates and concluded that it would make more sense to tell people to wait at least 10 weeks for their new habit to become automatic, but also that it’s very helpful to know that any habit gets easier the more you practice it. These authors point out that expecting a habit to form in 21 days can discourage people, and that it is better to focus on the benefits of “working hard on a new behavior for 2-3 months.”

How to form habits faster

Setting time-based commitments can be a helpful tool, like spending the first week before changing the plan or using your new moisturizer every day until the bottle is empty. But another school of thought maintains that long-term behavior change is better described by “stages of change” than by calendar dates. There is a “contemplation” stage where you think about how you will adopt the new behavior, and a “preparation stage” where you gather supplies and test the waters, such as buying new running shoes or taking a fitness class to see how you like it.

In some cases, a habit takes longer to form than you expected. But maybe you can get into the habit of staying earlier than expected if you are intentional in how you form this habit. Consciously working on your new habit can also make it last longer, as we see in the maintenance phase.

What to do from the start to make a new habit last

Your initial habit-forming period — whether you want to think of it as 21 days, 66 days, or, heck, eight months — is what behavior change psychologists call the habit-building period. action scene. You’ve started the habit, but it’s not yet automatic and you may not be convinced that you’ll really continue. At this point, you can make your habit more likely to stick by doing the following:

• Remember your motivation for doing it. For example, stick your reminder card for your next dentist appointment on your bathroom mirror, so you not only remember that you should floss your teeth, but also Why you want to floss your teeth.

• Restructuring your environment to give yourself cues and support. For example, if you want to run every morning, take your shoes out the night before and ask your spouse to ask you how your run went when you return.

• Develop self-efficacy celebrating your small victories. This might involve checking off the days you’ve done that thing on a calendar, but it might also involve working on milestones (like total miles covered) or setting benchmarks for your progress (maybe you used to do your daily push-ups with your hands on a chair, but now you can do them on the floor).

• Plan in advance how you will maintain your habit even when you’re interrupted (we’ll talk about that in a minute).

How to maintain a habit beyond the first 21 days

Once you gain momentum, you are in the interview scene. You get into this habit, and maybe it starts to feel automatic, or at least more of a part of your life than before. During this step, you may need to do things like the following:

• Reevaluate your plan. Does running every day still work for you? It may make more sense to lengthen some runs and designate other days for rest, yoga, or strength training.

• Anticipate the obstacles you may face. If you go on vacation, will you continue this habit? If you end up falling off the wagon for whatever reason, how are you going to get back on it?

• Make sure your motivation will continue to work for you. For example, if you find it truly motivating to maintain a streak on the calendar, the real test will come when you inevitably interrupt your streak. At this point there must be something other than the streak that keeps you going. It’s often something intrinsic: you enjoy being the person who flosses every day. You can’t wait to sign up for a race with your running partner. You’re happy that your cholesterol levels have gone down because of the way you eat.

Building a habit isn’t about stopping it until you reach a magic number of days. It’s a process that requires effort all the time, even after five years. Habits are work, but the ones that last are the ones where the work is worth it.