How Many Days To Make A Habit A Lifestyle

So there s individual variation in the time it takes for a behavior to become a habit.
How many days to make a habit a lifestyle. A 2009 study by phillippa lally a health psychology researcher at ucl entitled how long does it take to form a habit found that on average it takes 66 days for a habit to become ingrained. In fact the most recent significant study shows that it can take anywhere between 18 and 254 days to form a new habit which averages to about 66 days. It can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit and an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. On average it took participants about 66 days to make a habit automatic analysts using the results of the study extrapolated that it could take as long as 254 days to change a heavily ingrained bad habit so 21 days may be a bit of an understatement of the time it takes to break a habit.
The median length of time it took for a habit to become automatic was 66 days. What s more an interesting pattern emerged. How many days does it take to form a habit then. In fact about half of the subjects did not perform their chosen action consistently enough to create a habit.
Interestingly increased repetition of an action does not always yield stronger habits. Anywhere between 18 days and 8 5 months.