How Long To Form A Habit

This article on pschblog was asking how long it took to make a habit. Most people think it is 21 to 28 days, but that is only what a doctor wrote in a book because he noticed his patients recovering from an amputation. The end result was that everyone is different and it depends on what you want to make a habit of. In this article they had 96 participants to try to make eating a piece of fruit with lunch or doing a 15 minuete jog everyday a habit. They then were asked to record how automatic it was for them to do this each day. The graph of these recordings showed that it was easier to make a habit of eating a peice of fruit with lunch then running 15 minuets, but the average amount of days to make a habit was 66 days. Even though this study showed that it took about 66 days, creating a habit could take anywhere from 18 to 254 or maybe even longer. They also noticed that if you miss a day it doesn't have a major effect on forming an habit.

This is a very interesting article because in our freshman orrientation class we learned that it takes 30 days to create a habit. It is very interesting because now I know that my class didn't give me correct information and that it makes me think that that class wasn't that good for me to be in.