The Anatomy of Habit: 21 Days and Counting

Firstly, how do you define a habit?

“Habits are behaviours which are performed automatically because they have been performed frequently in the past. This repetition creates a mental association between the situation (cue) and action (behaviour) which means that when the cue is encountered the behaviour is performed automatically. Automaticity has a number of components, one of which is lack of thought” – Phillippa Lally, University College London

It has become common knowledge, among anybody who has briefly delved into this topic, that the length of time needed for a behaviour to become a habit is 21 days.

At this point the cue and the behaviour have a strong enough mental association so to create automation of the behaviour.

There’s a lot of truth in this statement, but as with everything, things are not as clear cut as they may seem.

The reason as to why the ’21 days’ theory has stuck is possibly due to a study by plastic surgeon Dr Maxwell Maltz in his 1960 book which claimed that amputees, on average, took twenty-one days to adjust to the loss of a limb.

Maltz argued that if a person can adjust to the loss of a limb in this slim time period they would be able to cope with any other major life change in the same period.

As you may expect, making and breaking habits work in exactly the same way.

A common example involves the most simplistic of habits: having your morning glass of orange juice.

If every morning for two years you woke up and had a glass of orange juice, to wake up one day and skip this act would have a noticeable impact on you throughout the morning, possibly even throughout the entire day.

Even if you didn’t notice directly that you skipped it (though this would be unlikely for a two-year old habit) you would feel like something’s missing, creating anxiousness throughout your whole body.

This, to most degrees, makes sense. It is easy for us to understand, just as it’s just as easy for us to comprehend that yes, if you were then to go without the orange juice for a further twenty mornings you would no-longer be reliant on it. You would have broken the habit.

The issue of the time-period you need to adjust to a new way of being, a new habit, arises when you look at less trivial subjects.

Research undertaken by Phillippa Lally of University College London (and of quote at the start of this article, fame) in 2009 suggested it takes three times longer than Maltz 1960 study, 66 days, to form a habit.

In Lally’s study, she described the 66 day period as the time it took people to reach “a limit of self-reported automaticity for performing an initially new behaviour (that is, performing an action automatically)”.

Participants in the study had to rate the strength of their behaviour using statements, a common one being “I do this without having to consciously remember”. The statement would then be rated to indicate how much they agree, or disagree, with it.

Lally went on to say that the creation of simple behaviours into habits lies heavily on the behaviour being performed in the same situation time and time again, “It is important that something about the setting where you perform the behaviour is consistent so that it can cue the behaviour. If you choose a context cue, for example after lunch, we don’t think that it matters if you eat lunch at different times in the day”.

She went on, “Breaking habits is very difficult. The easiest way is to control your environment so that you do not encounter the cue which triggers your habit. It is difficult to break any habit even when you are motivated to do so. If you are ambivalent about breaking it then you will be less likely to succeed.”

(Note: Despite avoiding the cue to your habitual behaviour being the easiest way to break your habit, if the cue is something either unavoidable or that you would not wish to avoid (eg. the sight of your car, or a favourite restaurant), you can break this cue by continually keeping contact with it and making a concious effort to avoid the behaviour associated with it. The behaviour will soon become unassociated with the cue).

Thankfully, Lally’s research also indicated that missing the opportunity to form a habit every now and then does not have a significant impact on formation of the habit.

So if you miss out on your glass of orange juice one morning, you will not automatically stop pouring yourself a glass from that day forward – you will simply pick up where you left off.

If, however, you are inconsistent in keeping up with the creation of your habit (for example, only pouring yourself a glass of orange juice 1-3 times a week, at varying times after various meals on random days of the week) the habit will soon be broken.

To break a habit, as touched upon briefly before, is often more effective than piling on more and more new habits. Less is more, to remove a bad habits helps create simplicity. Create a not-to-do list, similar to the one Tim Ferriss wrote himself in 2007.

Break free from habits by reverse-engineering the process of creating one.

Disassociate the behaviour from the cue.

21 days and counting into your process you will be on your way to a simpler lifestyle.

Down with orange juice! I’ve always been more of a tea and crumpets man, anyway.

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Quoted material courtesy of Phillippa Lally of University College London unless otherwise stated.

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