At this time of year people often focus on new habits of behaviour, changing existing patterns or learning new skills. For example, some seek to more exercise, some to eat more healthily or learn a new skill, or maybe even meditate every day. The question is, how often does it need to be performed before it no longer requires huge effort or massive self-discipline? How many days or weeks does it take for a new habit to become ingrained?
The popular myth is that it takes somewhere between 21 and 28 days. However there does not seem to be any real evidence for this number at all. The figure might have originated with the observations of a surgeon, a Dr Maltz, who wrote that amputees took, on average, 21 days to adjust to the loss of a limb. He abstracted from this to argue that all people take 21 days to adjust to any major life changes.
Now unless the change you intended for 2010 involves major surgery, this does not seem to be the case. More helpful is the study carried out by Phillippa Lally and colleagues from University College London in 2009. She did some research on 96 people who were interested in forming a new habit, such as eating fruit with lunch or doing a 15 minute jog every day. The participants were asked each day how automatic their new behaviours felt. For example they were asked whether the behaviour was 'hard not to do' and could be done 'without thinking'.
On average, the participants reported that the behaviours felt automatic after 66 days, or after over two months. In other words it had become a habit. This was the average, with some reporting as early as 20 days and others 254 days. It seems related to the type of new behaviour being tried, some being harder to acquire than others. Finally it seems that some people in the study were slower than others in their attempts to start new behaviours, suggesting that there may be personalities more resistant to change.
A bit different, then, from the popular optimism which infects people around New Years Eve and which momentarily presents itself as the answer to all our discontents.
