How to jump-start building a new (good!) habit
Last week, I received an invitation to join in a 21-Day Challenge designed to help me, and I quote, “build a new life-long habit of daily restorative stretching.”
I politely declined, not because I don’t need restorative stretching; I probably do, but because I know that establishing a new life-long habit will take longer than 21 days.
Twenty-one days is the gold standard that gets thrown around as the amount of time habit creation takes.
Whether it’s building a new habit or eliminating an old one, lasting change in your life takes more than 21 days.
Where the “21 Days to a New Habit” idea came from
In 1960, a plastic surgeon named Maxwell Maltz noted it took his patients a minimum of 21 days of looking at themselves with their new noses, chins, or eyelids for the “old mental image to dissolve and a new one to jell.” He noted this in a book he wrote, Psycho-Cybernetics, which sold 30 million copies and still sells today. Even though he used the words “a minimum of 21 days,” people ignored the “minimum” and kept the 21 days.
This meant now people had a number they took to heart: 21 days, which is the same number of days it takes a chicken to hatch. Pretty remarkable.
With this way of thinking, in three short weeks, you could establish a new habit or eliminate an old one, and you’d be on a path to a new (in some way) you.
Thus was born the idea of “21 Days to…” which has been the basis for magazine articles and books ever since.
Think: “21 Days to Thinner Thighs,” or “21 Days to High-Performance Leadership.” The number of books alone is staggering. A recent check on Amazon revealed over 50,000 titles with “21 Days to…” in them.
I haven’t looked into each of the books, but I’m guessing at some point in the introduction of many of these books, the 21 days to a new habit “fact” is mentioned.
The unfortunate truth here is that it does not take 21 days to build a new habit. It actually can take much, much longer. A 2009 study by Phillippa Lally at the University College in London found it takes between 18 and 254 days for a new habit to be formed, with the average being 66 days.
Just over two months.
So, if you have ever felt bad because it has taken you longer than 21 days to build a habit, there’s good news! You have not failed. Not in the least.
You just have to expand your timeline a little. Different habits take different amounts of time to build or replace. The harder the habit, the more time required.
While you might be able to put small habits in place in 21 days, habits that represent significant changes in your life are going to take a long longer. This doesn’t mean the 21-day concept has to be thrown out.
Twenty-one days is an excellent way to start working on a habit. More importantly, those first 21 days impress upon you the power of consistency. Overtime (in some cases, a lot of time), this is how habits are built and locked into your lives. After the first 21 days, you may have to do three or 10 or even 21 more sets of 21-days to firmly cement the habit into your life. Luckily those first 21 days give you a great base to work from.
You can make it easier to be consistent, especially when you’re deep into building your habit but not quite there, by tracking your progress. Whether you use stickers on a calendar, check marks in a planner, or digital high-fives on an app, tracking your habit building is essential.
Visually tracking each day you successfully work on your habit will help you stay committed to your goal and will help to keep you just as committed to your habit on Day 132 as you were on Day 12.
Just so you know, I’m not anti-21-day challenges. On the contrary, I participate in them all the time for work, fitness, and fun. Heck, I’ll be running my own 21-day Accountability Challenge in January. I know they are a great way to get started working on a goal since they provide support and camaraderie. They give you a boost towards making a change, but it’s up to you to keep going.
Use a challenge as a very strong jump-start to building a habit, knowing that it is just the beginning of your habit foundation. Adjust your expectations, and you’re off to a great, habit building start.
