Those of you who, like me are goal setting types and are already working on making our ambitions for this coming year come true will want to know this; PsyBlog presents a summary of a psychological study that shows that there is "a curved relationship between practice and automaticity" when it comes to forming a new habit.
In plain English, this means that "when we want to develop a relatively simple habit like eating a piece of fruit each day or taking a 10 minute walk, it could take us over two months of daily repetitions before the behaviour becomes a habit."
The study also showed that there was marked variation in how long habits took to form, anywhere from 18 days up to 254 days in the habits examined in this study and that early practice was rewarded with greater increases in automaticity.
So as you're working on setting business goals or personal goals, there are two things to keep in mind:
- 1) throwing yourself into achieving your goal(s) at the beginning of your program will pay off (as early practice gives the most bang-for-the-buck in terms of turning new behaviors into habits); and
- 2) perseverence is crucial. The average length of time to form a habit in this study was 66 days - that's over 2 months! And the harder the task, the longer it took to establish a habit. So don't despair. You have to keep doing it (and doing it and doing it) if you're going to succeed.
More on Goal Setting
- How to Set Specific Goals That You Will Achieve
- 10 Goal Setting Tips
- Get a Goal Buddy to Help You Succeed
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