Creating habits: how long does it take to form a habit?
Dr. Phillippa Lally is a behavioural scientist and health psychologist. During her PhD and fellowship at University College London, her work focused on habit formation and weight control. In an experimental study, her team investigated the process of habit formation in everyday life.
They enrolled 96 participants and asked them to choose an eating, drinking or other simple activity to carry out daily at the same time for 12 weeks.The results were very far from a fixed, universal number. In fact, the number of days it took to form a new habit ranged from 18 to 254 days. On average, it took about two months (66 days).