Is it true that any habit is formed in 21 days?

The myth is very popular that you can get any habit if you repeat some action 21 days. We checked whether this is really so.

Each of us from time to time thinks that it would be nice to start running in the morning, do exercises or go to bed early. But how to make it not to be the result of efforts, but is a habit? They say that for this you need to repeat a specific action 21 days, and then we will begin to perform it on the machine. But where did this number come from? And if it is true, why does the formation of a habit take just so much time?

In 1960, a plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz published a book "Psycho -Kibernetics". In it, he spoke about his observations of patients and noted that a person needs at least 21 days to accept a new image of himself-after plastic surgery or amputation of any part of the body. Most likely, it was from there that the extremely common myth that any habit can be developed in 21 days. It is worth noting that Maxwell did not conduct any large-scale research, tests or experiments, he just described his observations. And, most importantly, he believed that people need “at least” so much time. But subsequently, the clarification that this is the minimum possible, and not at all the optimal and not accurate time, was somehow lost, and this statement has already acquired popularity in a categorical wording of 21 days, for which any habit can be brought up in itself.

In many books By self -development, articles And posts In social networks on this subject, a certain NASA experiment is mentioned, allegedly confirming the results of the study. The authors write that the astronauts asked to put on glasses that turned the image upside down with their eyes. It is alleged that 20 participants in the experiment wore these glasses around the clock, and after about three to four weeks their brain was so adapted to the inverted image that he began to perceive it as ordinary, without signs of any disorientation. It would seem that this partly confirms the myth of the 21st day-it was not possible to find any official or scientific publications on conducting such an experiment. The only document on the NASA website, more or less close to the described, is thesis Two researchers from the University of Nevada, who really studied the perception of the human brain of an inverted image. However, this experiment was conducted at several students of the university, and not at all on astronauts, and in its results there is no data on 21 days (or 30 days, or three or four weeks, or all other versions of this myth).

Similar experiment With glasses that turned the picture with a visible eye, he spent even earlier, in 1962, Professor Theodore Erissman from the University of Innsbruck. He put on such glasses on his assistant and student of Ivo Kalra. At first it was really uncomfortable to even move, but after ten days he was so used to inverted vision that he could calmly ride a bicycle without any problems with orientation in space. Scientists removed documentary about this movie. But even in this study there is not a word about 21 days.

Anne Greibil, a neurobiologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, He thinksthat the formation of a habit is a long and complex process that requires positive reinforcement. And since the brain of every person is unique, there is no universal number of days, which would be fair for each person, even when it comes to the same action. Someone will need a week to develop a habit-good or bad, and someone will need much more time.

In 2009, a health researchist from the University College of London Philip Lally spent experimentwho confirmed the opinion of Greibil. 96 volunteers chose one habit that they were supposed to educate in themselves for 12 weeks. Every day they performed their tasks and recorded the results in the diary. Someone chose simple actions, for example, drinking water at breakfast, someone more complex, such as regular sports. As a result, Lally found out that from 18 and 254 days, the average time was 66 days to create habits for the subjects. That is, yes, someone really took the same 21 days, but for the majority-much more.

Thus, the time that every specific person needs to form a habit is individually dependent both on himself (his lifestyle and brain reactions), and on what exactly he is trying to get used to. There are no universal terms that would suit everyone, and the same myth about 21 days is uncritically perceived information torn from context. 

Most of the untruth

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Maxwell Maltz. Psychokibernetics
2. Is it true that sugar is addictive?
3. Is it true that the habit of crunching with fingers leads to arthrosis?
4. Is it true that the human brain can remember information in a dream?