He claimed to have observed that amputees took an average of only 21 days to adjust to the loss of a limb. Therefore, he reasoned — deploying the copper-bottomed logic we've come to expect from self-help — the same must be true of all big changes.
And therefore it must take 21 days to change a habit, maybe, perhaps! This is, of course, poppycock and horsefeathers, as a new study by the University College London psychologist Phillippa Lally and her colleagues helps confirm.
On average, her subjects, who were trying to learn new habits such as eating fruit daily or going jogging, took a depressing 66 days before reporting that the behaviour had become unchangingly automatic. Individuals ranged widely — some took 18 days, others — and some habits, unsurprisingly, were harder than others to make stick: one especially silly implication of the or day rule is that it may be just as easy to start eating a few more apples as to start finding five hours a week to study Chinese.
Another myth undermined by the study is the idea that when forming a new habit, you can't miss a day or all is lost: missing a day made no difference. Dopamine is the reward that strengthens the habit and creates the craving to do it again. One strategy, Volkow suggests, is to identify the places, people, or activities that are linked in your mind to certain habits, and then change your behavior toward those.
This can help you achieve your goal of abstaining from using that substance. Another strategy is to replace a bad habit with a good one. For example, instead of snacking on potato chips, consider swapping for unsalted, unbuttered popcorn. Instead of reaching for a cigarette, consider trying a new flavor of chewing gum or a flavored hard candy. It can take anywhere from 18 to days for a person to form a new habit and an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic.
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