The 21-day myth: Study looks at how long it actually takes to form a habit

If your friend successfully cultivated an exercise routine within a couple of weeks and you’re still struggling to develop a consistent schedule for doing your laundry, there’s no need to feel like a failure — according to a new study, there’s no one timeline for forming a habit, and it varies widely depending on the task at hand.

How long does it actually take to form a lasting habit?

If your friend successfully cultivated an exercise routine within a couple of weeks and you’re still struggling to develop a consistent schedule for doing your laundry, there’s no need to feel like a failure — according to a new study, there’s no one timeline for forming a habit, and it varies widely depending on the task at hand.

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology studied two specific activities that can be habit forming in order to get a better idea of the mechanisms of training oneself to fall into that pattern.

They found that to form a gym habit took an average of about six months.

But on the other hand, it took health-care workers an average of just a few weeks to get in the habit of washing their hands as frequently as the job requires.

“You may have heard that it takes about 21 days to form a habit, but that estimate was not based on any science,” Colin Camerer, a professor of behavioural economics at Caltech and one of the study authors, said in a news release. “Our works supports the idea that the speed of habit formation differs according to the behaviour in question and a variety of other factors.”

“There is no magic number for habit formation,” Anastasia Buyalskaya, one of the study authors and now an assistant professor of marketing at HEC Paris, added in the release.