Can you build a habit in 21 days?

Hi everyone,
This week I thought I might talk about building habits and the time fames around these.
I had originally planned to write this blog about the ’21 days’ theory to building new habits as it was something that Amy and I had been talking about recently and something that we have believed in for years. We have used this time frame ourselves before as a base time frame to kick start new habits, and wanted to share that with every one.

Soon after I started doing some research to link to the blog I came to find that the ’21 days’ is a complete myth!
You can imagine my surprise, here I was completely ready to write about something only to find it’s a myth.

Shouldn’t be surprising considering the massive amounts of invalid information that circulates in our world, especially in the health & fitness realm.
Turns out that the 21 day myth comes from a study by a Dr. Maxwell , who was himself trying to prove that 21 days is what it takes, but was unsuccessful. I guess people just wanted it to be true so bad that it slowly just became a thing.

All of a sudden I had a tad more interesting topic to write about so here’s what I have found:

The best study I could find, and it seems to be the study that all other articles currently quote is (Lally 2009 How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world http://repositorio.ispa.pt/bitstream/10400.12/3364/1/IJSP_998-1009.pdf)

The quick takeaways from that study was that forming a habit can in fact take anywhere from 18 to 254 days, that missing one opportunity to complete the said habit wasn’t detrimental for the formation, that the average time taken to form a habit in this study was 66 days, and most importantly was that it is entirely individual and you can’t really work to a time frame.

Now I know your saying to yourself “Gee, 254 days is a long ass time” but some things just take time and if they are important then you will succeed no matter what. In saying that, 254 days IS a long ass time so I looked into some ways to help quicken the process of forming habits.

Basically, you have synapses (spaces between cells that relay impulses) in your brain that you need to train. After doing something over and over and over again, you make these synapses more accessible for these impulses and essentially put that impulse on auto-pilot.

That’s fine you say, but how do you do this and what are the best ways to make it set?

Lets have a look at a few things that might help:

• Start Small. Plenty of studies have shown that starting small with one or two habits is more likely to succeed than a complete overhaul. If it’s a health goal maybe start with simply cutting out soft drinks or chocolate. Starting with a completely new diet on day 1 will be extremely hard to stick to. If it’s a fitness goal then you could start with 3 days a week of exercise for a while and once you have stuck to that then increase it. If you have a bad week then don’t worry, get back on the horse next week and keep going.
• Know your reason for the change, and have it written down. This is an important one. The first few days or even a week or two can seem relatively easy, depending on the habit change. Whatever motivated you into this new habit will be fresh and easy to recall in a tough moment, but after that initial period, it will get a lot tougher. Having your ‘WHY’ written down gives you the rock to hold onto when you start to get a few of the really bad days. Also knowing that this rough period is coming and not being blindsided by it will help immensely.
• Don’t freak out if you miss a day or two. We are all human and the world would be SUPER boring if we were all perfect. The worst thing you can do is miss a day then punish yourself mentally. If you miss a day, that’s cool, just get back to it the next day and keep working!
• Be prepared for it to take time. Great things simply don’t come easily, and why would you want them to? If everything was easy, where would the resiliency and lessons in life come from? As we found out earlier, the average from the study was 66 days. We also learnt earlier that building habits is completely individual so that time frame doesn’t mean much but if you’re prepared for it to take a longer time than you think than you will be much better set up for success.

These are just a couple of helpful ideas for habit building. They aren’t nice little tips and tricks that take a few days because those things don’t exist. Don’t fall for the trap. There is only ONE way to make great changes in your life and that is to PUT….IN….THE….WORK.

I won’t say good luck in your next change of habit because you won’t need it, instead I will say great planning, great execution.

Pound the stone
Dice