The number of days it takes to form a new habit depends on the habit, on you, and on what strategies you’re using to build and maintain that habit. Scientific estimates have ranged from as little as 21 days, to eight months or more. Let’s look at why that range is so big, and what you can do to build habits faster.
The surgeon’s idea was that it takes 21 days for people to dissolve and re-form a “mental image” of themselves. This isn’t backed by research; it’s just one guy’s gut feeling. But I think it stuck because it fits a lot of our experiences.
Even though the 21-day rule isn’t based on science, it’s a good timeframe for a “trial run” of a new habit. After all, one day can be a fluke. One or two weeks is a timeframe we’ve been through before, and we can ride out a disruption to our normal life that long (imagine a vacation, or a week’s crunch time before a work deadline). But by the time you get to three weeks, or better yet, a full month, you’ve learned some things about your new habit and how it fits into your life. Even the simplest habits are never actually simple; you need to learn and practice a bunch of mini-skills in the process of building almost any habit.
Research shows it takes months to make a habit automatic
Scientific research has attempted to measure how long it takes for a habit to truly become automatic. For example, this study asked participants to choose a habit and to attach it to something they did once a day (for example, “eat a piece of fruit with lunch”). The study lasted 12 weeks. Some of the participants felt their new habit was automatic after just a few weeks; many others weren’t there yet at the end of the study. The researchers concluded that most people would form an automatic habit anywhere between two and eight months...according to a model that they calculated would only apply to 62 (about 75%) of the participants.
A 2012 review looked at several other estimates and concluded that it would make more sense to tell people to expect at least 10 weeks for their new habit to become automatic, but also that it helps a lot just to know that any habit keeps getting easier the longer you do it. Those authors point out that expecting a habit to form in 21 days can make people discouraged, and instead it’s better to focus on the payoff of “working effortfully on a new behavior for 2-3 months.”
In some cases, a habit takes longer to form than you hope. But you may be able to get a habit to stick sooner than expected if you are intentional about the way you form the habit. Working consciously on your new habit can make it last longer, too, as we see in the maintenance stage.
What to do early on to make a new habit stick
Remind yourself of your motivation to do it. For example, stick your reminder card for your next dentist’s appointment on your bathroom mirror, so that you remember not just that you should floss your teeth, but also why you want to floss your teeth.
Build self-efficacy by celebrating your small wins. This could mean checking off the days you did the thing on a calendar, but it could also involve working toward milestones (like total number of miles run) or making benchmarks of your progress (maybe you used to do your daily pushups with your hands on a chair, but now you can do them on the floor).
How to sustain a habit beyond the first 21 days
Once you’ve built some momentum, you’re in the maintenance stage. You’re doing the habit, and maybe it’s starting to feel automatic, or at least more of a part of your life than it used to be. In this stage, you may need to do some things like the following:
Think ahead to obstacles you might face. If you go on a vacation, will you continue the habit? If you end up falling off the wagon for whatever reason, how will you get back on?
Building a habit is not a matter of white-knuckling it until you hit a magic number of days. It’s a process that takes effort the whole time, even when you’re five years in. Habits are work, but the ones that last are the ones where the work feels worthwhile.
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