It took me a couple of months to learn to floss my teeth every day (break the habit of avoiding the floss). And just as in real life, a practice which is typically experienced as two steps forward, one step back😊.
Bringing the latter into reality, one popular method to build habits is called the 21/90 rule. Which is a quite simple one: commit to a personal or professional goal for 21 straight days. … Once you’ve established that habit, you continue to do it for another ninety days. This number comes from a widely popular 1960 book called Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon who noticed his patients seemed to take about 21 days to get used to their new faces.
60 years later the researchers from University College London examined the new habits of 96 people over the space of 12 weeks, and contrary to the 21/90 Rule, found that the average time it takes for a new habit to stick is actually 66 days; furthermore, individual times varied from 18 to well over 200 days.
If you stick with it for longer, you’ll end up with a habit you can keep without thinking. Commitment and a strategy are key to succeed.