Habits take longer than you think

A commonly quoted figure is that it takes 21 days to form q habit

But there’s little meaningful evidence for this. More robust data comes from Phillippa Lally at University College London. In 2009, she recruited 82 participants and asked them to start a new habit. These were simple behaviours, such

as drinking a glass of water with lunch or doing a press-up after

brushing their teeth. On average it took 66 days until those behaviours were completed unthinkingly, which was Lally’s definition of a habit. But that single figure masked sizeable variation - 95% of people formed a habit in somewhere between 18 and 254 days. If you’re trying to reshape behaviour, don’t rely on a short burst of activity. You need more sustained interventions. So, if you’re trying to create habits remember the six key principles : identified by behavioural science: