A popular piece of self-help folklore might be more complicated than we thought. New research finds that it takes significantly more than a month for a new habit to form.
Scientists at the University of South Australia conducted the study, a review of the existing evidence on habit forming. They found that habits typically begin forming after about two months. For some unlucky people, though, it could even take up to a year.
With 2025 still fresh off the stove, there are undoubtedly lots of people who have begun a new exercise regimen or other healthy lifestyle change in recent weeks. And you might have heard that it takes 21 days for a routine to start becoming engrained into our lives; others might have heard 18 or 28 days instead. Some studies, however, have suggested that this supposed rule isnât quite so simple.
To get at the root of this topic, the University of South Australia researchers analyzed data from 20 studies that examined the forming of healthy habits like routine exercise, drinking water, or flossing teeth; these studies collectively involved over 2,500 participants. One specific question these studies sought to answer was how long it took for a habit to reach something called âautomaticityââthe point at which people perform it regularly and without too much thought being put into it.
The researchers found that habits formed around 106 to 154 days on average. The median length of a habit forming was roughly 59 to 66 days (the median is the midpoint in a group of numbers in case you forgot). That said, the study did reveal plenty of outliers. The shortest reported length of habit adoption was four days, while the longest was a whopping 335 days.
âEmerging evidence on health-related habit formation indicates that while habits can start forming within about two months, the time required varies significantly across individuals,â the researchers wrote in their paper, published last month in the journal Healthcare.
The researchers say they were only able to find a relatively small number of studies to analyze, and most of the studies included were judged to have a high risk of potential bias. So more and better quality studies are needed to better understand the duration and other aspects of habit forming, they say.
At the same time, the researchers believe their findings should reassure people who are feeling discouraged about not having adapted to their new routine or habit as quickly as they would expect from the popular wisdom. They also note that there are science-backed ways to improve the odds of a lifestyle change sticking.
âWhen trying to establish a new healthy habit, success can be influenced by a range of things including how frequently we undertake the new activity, the timing of the practice, and whether we enjoy it or not,â said lead study researcher Ben Singh in a statement from the university. âIf you add a new practice to your morning routine, the data shows that youâre more likely to achieve it. Youâre also more likely to stick to a new habit if you enjoy it.â
Iâm personally very encouraged by that advice, given my new healthy habit this year of rubbing my face into my catâs belly every morning.
I feel like most people would be absolutely horrified if you told them this
Yeah tbh Iâm halfway to âitâs a useful/polite fiction to just tell people itâs 3 weeks because if itâs 8 weeks a lot of people arenât even gonna tryâ
thatâs a good point! power of placebo and all that.
Iâve given up on habit forming for the most part tbh. I donât know if itâs the ADHD or whatever but doing something every day has never stopped taking effort for me, even when Iâve managed REALLY long streaks; the second I break the streak Iâm back to square one. Iâm trying to make peace with inconsistent efforts and getting things done Some of the time being better than None of the time.
: me with literally Any daily meds 
its the worst
i donât give a FUCK about breaking the chain or not seinfeld you stupid hack
No thatâs absolutely a good approach. Iâve had the same experience with streak-based anything
Morning routine is a good one because being able to chain a new habit into an existing habitual action is a very good way to fast-track it. The only reason I can keep the litterbox as clean as I do is because itâs in our bathroom such that every time I have to go, I see the box, and itâs pretty easy to pause for a scoop before washing my hands.
And the best piece of advice I got for like, forming a habit, is to not treat a streak-break like the end of the world. I forget what the metaphor was, but you have to treat it permeably - it Matters to not break it when youâre on a roll, but once you break it, you should make it as easy as possible to step back on. A curb, instead of a tightrope.
see this is the thing: it doesnât feel like the end of the world? itâs just more like I can do something every day for years and then one day I wonât do it and then Iâll never do it again, because the streak was broken, and that doesnât bother me on an emotional level but it does seem to shatter some kind of magic spell. habit-forming just seems to slide off me like oil and water. itâs hard to explain 
I literally had this conversation yesterday with my siblings
older sister and I say weâre both incapable of forming habits, based mostly on the factoid that it âshouldâ take a month
Yeah, exactly like that!
Itâs weird to bring up I think but even FFXIV which I played for a full decade left no mark on me, habit-wise. I genuinely spent YEARS logging on for dailies nearly every day and I donât even get a mild impulse to do so now that I dropped it.
My month-long sports initiatives stand no chance compared to thatâŚ
yep same except replace FFXIV with GW2! itâs genuinely kinda weird isnât it?
Maddening is what it is 
from what Iâm given to understand, a habit should be, if not fully automatic, at least make you automatically remember to do a thing. Experiencing that would be so useful
yeah my understanding of it is that it becomes something you no longer have to put conscious effort into doing/remembering to do, but Iâve literally never in my life experienced that. everything is a conscious effort to remember to do. I have to put irl dailies on my todo list cause otherwise they simply donât occur to me, even if Iâve successfully done them every day for years :S I guess this is why I suspect it might be somehow related to the ADHD but I donât know really.
Yep, everything consciously. It sucks lmao
And yeahâmy older sister is diagnosed ADHD, and Iâm, uh, peer-reviewed autistic. I wouldnât be surprised if itâs got something to do with that.
and having to remember EVERYTHING consciously sucks so much ass when youâre working with spoons!!
anyway I feel for you. youâre not alone in the âeverything is hard and my brain is slipperyâ club :(
none of my so-called âhabitsâ have ever passed into the realm of unconscious doing; I do them (or donât in some cases), I mark them on my little table in my weekly journal, and every so often I evaluate and try to figure out where I can reduce friction to the doing. sometimes itâs because I forget, sometimes itâs because I hate some aspect of it, sometimes itâs something else entirely.
the fact that this is a meta-analysis and the researchers state that more, higher-quality research is needed is a good indicator that trying to pin a definitive specific time period on it is a bit foolhardy at this juncture, I suppose.
Iâve had this happen where I justâŚimmediately dropped something I figured was habitual as soon as like any roadblock presented itself. Iâve absolutely stopped playing games because of this. Thereâs a lot of things that just skate on momentum tbh, if that happens then it probably means you werenât enjoying it that much.
yeah, I guess if it hasnât reached a level of automaticity you canât really call it a habit 
at the very least I seem to have developed a decent system for getting certain stuff done Most days (even if it does still take effort) so the inability to habit form no longer hinders me as much as it once did
What counts for me as a habit isnât always âthis happens automaticallyâ but also âI feel like thereâs something missing if I donât do itâ
Like Iâd say brushing my teeth is something that requires me to Choose to do it, and I do also skip it in times of friction (mostly when Iâm on a boat). But like. The sense of âoh I am skipping somethingâ is there, and the niggling itch of an unfulfilled task is there. As opposed to like, the complete absence of reaction/feeling of not doing a thing that has completely dropped from my life, like an old video game.
yeah I was thinking on it more and that definition makes sense to me, because Iâve observed the same in my gf! she definitely gets that. I donât seem to, which as far as I can tell is Odd.