Breaking the Habit – How Long Does it Truly Take

As the New Year is upon us, many will try and adopt new, healthier habits or eliminate bad ones. There’s a lot of information circulating about exactly how long it takes to adopt a new habit, and it seems to not be the 21 day span that many have come to believe.

The 21 day idea has roots in a book released in 1960 by plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz. In Psycho-Cybernetics, he wrote that it commonly took his patients about 21 days to get used to their new face, or the same for an amputee to adapt to no longer having their limb.

However, according to several articles, his thought was misunderstood and marketed in a surge of self-help and “pop-psychology.” The idea that you could break a bad habit or adopt a new one in about three weeks seems achievable and an easy sell.

More modern research finds that it takes much longer to form a new habit, about 66 days on average. A study from 2009 done by Phillippa Lally, a health psychology researcher, had a group of study participants adopt simple hobbies like drinking water at lunch or running 15 minutes a day. After about 12 weeks, the participants were assessed and reported on average, it took about 66 days for the habit to become second nature. The shortest span was 18 days, and the longest was 254 days.

Humans are creatures of habit, and once we get used to doing something it can be hard to change. There also can be a difference in results depending on if you’re trying to break a bad habit or pick up a new one from scratch. For example, if you’re trying to break a habit like drinking diet soda, you’ll likely need to replace your daily drink with something else like seltzer or water. The act of breaking a bad habit and forming a new one can be trickier than adding something entirely new to your routine – like meditating before bed or eating vegetables at every meal.

"It's much easier to start doing something new than to stop doing something habitual without a replacement behaviour," says neuroscientist Elliot Berkman in an article on hopesandfears.com. "That's one reason why smoking cessation aids such as nicotine gum or inhalers tend to be more effective than the nicotine patch."

One thing is pretty much certain; it takes a combination of willpower, personality, motivation and circumstances to make breaking or forming a habit a success. However, a two month window seems to be a good starting point for making something happen, or stop happening. Patience is also key, experts say. Only in rare circumstances do people snap out of a habit extremely quickly, like if you suddenly become allergic to whatever toxin you ingested or what you consume or use becomes unavailable suddenly.

Another factor to remember is the amount of time you’ve already been doing something. If you’ve been smoking for 20 years, that habit is entrenched into your brain as a regular occurrence, as it has been happening for so long. But in time, all things can become a habit, even the reverse of what you were doing before.

Be strong, be patient, but don’t expect change in a few weeks.

Sources:

http://metro.co.uk/2016/12/30/how-long-does-it-take-to-change-a-habit-6351291/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-happiness-project/200910/stop-expecting-change-your-habit-in-21-days

http://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-how-long-it-takes-to-break-a-habit-according-to-science

http://www.hopesandfears.com/hopes/now/question/216479-how-long-does-it-really-take-to-break-a-habit

http://examinedexistence.com/how-long-does-it-take-for-something-to-become-a-habit/