It is often said that to forge a new habit are needed 21 days. However, according to a study recently published in PNAS, usually much more is needed. The legend comes from the calculation of a plastic surgeon, named Maxwell Maltz. In the 1960s, he observed that his patients needed at least 21 days to adjust to their new faces. Therefore, he extrapolated his observations to unsuspected limits and, without further investigation, established what is necessary to form a new habit.
Despite the little scientific support for his observation, it became very famous. A multitude of self-help books or even some television programs have revolved around this belief for decades. To make matters worse, Maltz’s statement was changed, since he established a minimum of 21 daysbut it began to spread that this was the exact figure.
However, psychologists often disagree. For this reason, some have carried out laboratory investigations that contradicted the 21-day hypothesis. Against these studies it can be said that they were not carried out in real environments and that everything depended on the subjective observations of its participants. And that’s what makes it so special. just published a team of Caltech scientists. In it, they demonstrate in non-laboratory settings that, for some habits, much more than 3 weeks are needed. In fact, there is no magic number, as much as we want everything to be countable.
The myth of the 21 days
To carry out their study, these scientists observed the behavior of 30,000 gym attendeeswho exercised 12 million times over 4 years, and 3,000 hospital workers, who washed their hands 40 million times in nearly 100 shifts. Both going to the gym and washing your hands require a habit, although the former usually requires more effort. That’s the first sign that there are no magic numbers.
In any case, to verify it, they used an artificial intelligence algorithm capable of find patterns in behavior of the participants. Gym attendees had to pass their identification through the entrance turnstile, as is customary, while toilets used an identification card every time they washed their hands.
The goal of the algorithm was to find predictable patterns in his behavior. And it is that forging a habit, in reality, consists of that. In developing a pattern that, to some extent, can be predicted over time.
Thus, they saw that gym attendees required on average 6 months to make it a habit. Instead, the health workers acquired the habit of washing their hands in just some weeks.
Routines with little variety
Starting a habit around exercise is often tricky. So it stands to reason that it takes much longer than 21 days to make going to the gym a routine. But the good thing is that it becomes so routine that, although there may be isolated variations, there even comes a time when they are chosen the same hours and days of the week.
That’s what artificial intelligence detected. In addition, it was seen that most of the participants tended to prefer Mondays and Tuesdays. And, of course, each case is different. It took 6 months on average to get into that habit, but some people took much more or less. In fact, that is something that had already been demonstrated. in a previous study, carried out under laboratory conditions, in which the participants were asked to associate a signal with breakfast, until it became a habit. It took about two months on average, but there were people who invested between 18 and 254 days.
In short, if you are trying to make a habit with something and after 21 days you have not even found the motivation, Do not get frustrated. It may take longer. But, at some point, you will reach your goal. It is about being persistent, not about crossing out days on the calendar.