How to build habits that last
What the research says about how long a habit takes, why a cue and a tiny first step matter, and how to recover from a missed day. A method with an example.
A habit is something you do with little thought, set off by a cue. To build one, pick an action small enough to do on a bad day, attach it to something you already do, repeat it in the same place and time, and expect it to take weeks to months before it feels automatic.
The method in a few lines
- Choose one habit. Make the first version very small.
- Attach it to a cue you already have: "After I pour my coffee, I will stretch for one minute."
- Say when and where, in a sentence.
- Check it off every time, so you can see what actually happens.
- Expect it to take a long time, and expect a missed day. Plan for it.
- After two weeks, look at the record, then adjust the plan instead of dropping it.
Why it works
It takes longer than three weeks
In 2010 Phillippa Lally and colleagues followed 96 volunteers who each chose a new health-related behaviour, in the eating, drinking or exercise family, and did it daily in the same context for 84 days. They reported on a website whether they had done it, and rated how automatic it felt. Reaching a plateau of automaticity took 66 days on average. People ranged from 18 days to an estimated 254, the longest being a projection beyond the 84 days of the study. Exercise took about one and a half times as long as eating or drinking behaviours.
The same study found that missing a single day made little difference. Missing many days, even spread out, lowered the level of automaticity people reached. Automaticity was self-reported, so treat the numbers as an average of how people felt, not as a clock.
A cue and a plan help
Peter Gollwitzer's research on implementation intentions looks at plans of the form "If situation X comes up, I will do Y". A 2006 meta-analysis38002-1) by Gollwitzer and Sheeran covered 94 independent tests and found a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals (d = .65). A plan with a when and a where decides in advance, so you do not have to decide in the moment.
Start tiny
BJ Fogg, who directs the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford, built the Tiny Habits method on a recipe with three parts: an anchor (something you already do), a tiny version of the new behavior, and a moment of celebration right after. The idea is that the tiny version gets the cue and the action to meet every day, so the habit exists before you make it bigger.
How to do it, step by step
Take an example: you want to read more in the evening.
- Pick one habit. Not "read more", but "read". If you are starting several, start with the one that matters most.
- Shrink it. The first version is one page. You can do one page on the worst day of the month.
- Find the anchor. Something that already happens every evening: brushing your teeth, putting the phone on the charger. "After I plug in my phone for the night, I will read one page."
- Write the sentence down. Include the when and the where. Put it where you will see it.
- Check it off. Each time you do it, mark it. A record turns a feeling ("I think I'm doing well") into a fact.
- Celebrate in a second. A small, real moment of satisfaction right after. In Fogg's method this feeling is what wires the habit in.
- Raise it slowly. After a couple of weeks of doing the page without effort, read for five minutes. If it stops working, go back one step.
| Instead of | Try |
|---|---|
| Exercise more | After I get home, I put on my running shoes |
| Eat better | After I pour my coffee, I eat one piece of fruit |
| Be more organized | After I sit at my desk, I write down the three things for today |
When a miss happens, do not repair it with a double dose. Do the next scheduled one. Lally's result says one missed day is not what breaks a habit. What breaks it is stopping.
Mistakes to avoid
- Starting too big. A habit of thirty minutes needs thirty minutes of motivation. A habit of one minute needs almost none.
- Starting five at once. Each habit needs its own cue and its own attention. Add the next one when the first is routine.
- No cue. "Whenever I can" has no trigger, so it rarely happens.
- Expecting a habit to take 21 days. Lally's volunteers needed about 66 days on average, and some needed far longer. Plan on two months or more.
- Judging yourself by the streak. A missed day resets a streak to zero, which can feel like starting over when it is not. Look at how many of the last 30 days you did it.
- Changing the plan every few days. Give a plan two weeks before you judge it.
- Skipping the recovery plan. Decide in advance what you do after travel or an illness: which day you restart, and at what size.
In Prior
The Habits space has everything the method needs.
- Add a habit from the Habits space, or start from a template: Drink water, Read 20 min, Take a walk, Meditate, Stretch, Journal, No phone in bed, Work out (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) or Weekly review (Sunday). Picking one opens the editor pre-filled so you can adjust it. Habit templates lists them.
- A habit repeats every day, on specific days, or at a custom interval, with an optional end date. Choose a time in the Starts field to get a cue. See Habit schedules.
- Under Settings → Notifications, Habit reminders notify you at each habit's time on scheduled days you have not checked in yet. See Reminders.
- Check off a habit on Today or in the Habits space. The week strip lets you fill in a day you forgot, and on phones you swipe a row right to check it.
- Open a habit's details for Current streak, Best streak, Last 30 days, Since the start and a 12-week history grid. A missed scheduled day resets the current streak in Prior too, so the Last 30 days figure is the one to watch. Habit history explains each figure.
Pick the template closest to your habit, make it smaller than you think it should be, and give it a time. Create a habit walks through the form. The weekly review is the place to look at the record and adjust.