How to develop a habit
Posted by TeamPC on 30 Jul 2009
Habit forming occurs after 66 days.
That was the average time it took for volunteers in a study to begin doing automatically something they had adopted as a daily duty, such as eating fruit with their lunch or going for a run before dinner.
It means if you make a New Year’s resolution to exercise or eat healthily and do it daily until March 7, it is likely to stick. In the research, being reported in the European Journal of Social Psychology, the researchers set out to investigate how long it took for the repetition of behaviour to reach a stage of ‘automacity’, where it is performed whenever the situation is encountered without thinking, awareness or intention.
The volunteers who took part in the study were asked to choose a healthy eating, drinking or exercise behaviour that they would like to make into a habit. It had to be done in response to a particular cue, such as eating a piece of fruit with lunch, drinking a bottle of water with lunch, or running for 15 minutes before dinner. Participants were asked to try to carry out the behaviour every day. Each day they also completed a test designed to measure features of habits which are central to automaticity, including lack of awareness and lack of control. Results showed that whilst the average time to form a habit was 66 days, more complex behaviours took longer, whilst an exercise habit took longer to form than a healthy eating or drinking habit.
So each member of our team is going to give it a try…..and see what happens!
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