It took me a few days to become a smoker, and a few weeks to get to the point of not wanting to smoke again (some decades later).
It took me a week or so to start having a healthier breakfast and it become part of my routine, and I've been trying to have healthier lunches for years now (and still regularly fail, normally because at lunchtimes I'm tired, stressed and yearning for comfort foods like sandwiches and snack bars).
I think anyone who believed exactly 21 days was the magic number for all habits, for all people, was grossly naive.
But what I do find is that after 21 days it's no longer novel, it's just what you do, if somebody asks you what you do about X, you no longer say "I'm trying this new thing around X, and...", you tell them your new habit. Identifying that habit as part of who you are is key to it being sticky. For some people, and for some habits, that might be true after a week, or it might take a year, but it's an important step, and if you want that habit to stick you should get to it as fast as you can.
Jan 1, 2024, I made a resolution to change my diet (basically small, very simple meals with one cheat meal a week). I'd probably made a dozen such resolutions before without much success, but for some reason this one stuck right away. I never even had trouble sticking with it, and lost a pound a week over the next 10 months. Then I met my girlfriend and we went out to eat a lot, and that broke the habit. It seems like big life changes can reset habits.
I wish I knew how I did it, because I've been unable to regain that same "this is just what I do now and it's fine" level of acceptance that seemed to be the key.
> I wish I knew how I did it, because I've been unable to regain that same "this is just what I do now and it's fine" level of acceptance that seemed to be the key.
Sometimes it’s as simple as “doesn’t hurt enough yet”
My grandpa was a liter of wine per day (or more) kinda guy. Then he hit his 70’s and it didn’t feel good anymore. So he stopped and hasn’t had a glass of alcohol since. Just doesn’t feel like it. Even when others drink around him.
> I wish I knew how I did it, because I've been unable to regain that same "this is just what I do now and it's fine" level of acceptance that seemed to be the key.
Sometimes it helps to frame as gaining something more valuable in return for giving up something less something up. For instance, if you have preplanned meals of known calorie content, and only those foods in the house, you don't have to expend energy and time thinking about what you feel like eating today, the decisions are already made. Time is considerably more precious than most trivial, daily meal decisions.
I forget what book it was, it might have been the happiness trap, but a big point they made was that building new habits and changing your life has a lot more to do with your inner notion of identity and long-run values. It's much easier to change your habits when they align with who you believe you are, The mental model difference between "I'm trying to eat healthier," and "I am a healthy eater."
> a few weeks to get to the point of not wanting to smoke again
That's a shockingly short amount of time for smoking. For me, after a few weeks I'd say some of the worst cravings had passed. But for a good year or two afterwards they'd occasionally come back, albeit briefly. I quit about 15 years ago, but given the right situation I can still feel it.
I didn't actively fight it. What I did instead was note in my own head that I somehow wanted a cigarette and think to myself "OK, if I still want one in 20 minutes, I'll have one", and then went and did something else instead. An hour or two later I'd think "Oh yeah, that was weird, didn't I want a cigarette a while back?"
Very occasionally it comes back - a sunny day and a beer garden with a few pints and a pack of cigs feels like something I'd very much enjoy, for example - but it's brief and I can quickly rationalise it: "how strange a thought, for a non-smoker".
But then again, 21 days might be an optimistic number solely for the purpose of getting people started. Now we should do a study of how many people, armed with this belief, still managed to keep their habit after 21 days.
> Now we should do a study of how many people, armed with this belief, still managed to keep their habit after 21 days.
Or perhaps better still, how many people didn't give up during the first or second week, since they now expect it to take 3 weeks.
(And similarly, whether there's a statistically significant number of people who give up ay 22+delta days now assuming they'd made it to 21 days and if the habit isn't formed then they've failed.)
> Identifying that habit as part of who you are is key to it being sticky.
This has always been key to me. I've succeeded to identify myself as a runner, as someone who speaks French, as someone who reads books. But my identification as someone who has meaningful programming side-project, who has a garden and so on is to weak to succeed.
> I never really learned what is considered a healthy breakfast.
one of the big problems in the standard american diet is that we treat breakfast like a dessert.
1. cereal has around 15-30 grams of sugar in addition to various artificial flavors and additives.
2. pancakes and waffles? an irresponsible carb bomb that you douse in syrup and whipped cream.
3. breakfast sausage is basicly low quality meat mixed with fat. at least by itself its not high in sugar but then people normally have it with pancakes.
4. granola? na, more sugar.
Reality is that almost all "breakfast foods" are junk.
my advice is to steak to black coffee and a slice of fish or steak for most people. I like to have black coffee and sardines. seems to keep my mood stable througout the day.
Mine is a bowl of old fashion oats, frozen mixed fruit (I like a blueberry/blackberry mix), and maybe some non-fat plain greek yogurt and/or a glass a of plain soy milk.
Alternatively, a couple of scrambled eggs with a piece of toast and a bananna is fairly healthy.
A fried egg on an English muffin also isn't a terrible way to start the day.
Target ~400 cals, Try and get some protein and fiber in there. Watch out for saturated fats and high sodium (see the DASH diet for tips). If you are diabetic or risk diabetes, check out the glycemic index and shoot for low GI foods.
That'd be my advice (I'm not a doctor, what I'm suggesting could be 1000% wrong.)
I think part of the problem is we don't really know what a healthy diet looks like. We can point to what is probably unhealthy: eating tons of sugar filled items is probably bad, eating a lot of fried food is at least questionable, but beyond that we really don't know. The research is either poorly done, impossible to do, or you can find studies that go both ways.
Porridge with prunes, pears and cinnamon in the winter.
Fresh fruit or high-protein granola with kefir, fruit and a tiny drizzle of honey in the Summer.
Sometimes it'll be very high on protein, but also on fats: bacon (back, UK-style), sausage and egg.
The key is to get away from ultra-processed food, and I'm Type 2 diabetic so I want to reduce the amount of sugar and carbs I have. For me, I normally feel fructose > lactose > carbs > sucrose > desxtrose, and often replace lactose (dairy) with non-dairy equivalents, or make sure it has some other benefit (like kefir).
I want to make sure I feel full through to lunchtime, so protein is useful. I don't mind some carbs, if it means I have something I enjoy and don't feel I need to snack mid-morning.
TLDR: I avoid breakfast cereals (other than some high-protein granolas), add fruits like prunes, pears, maybe banana, and I don't have bread or other ultra-processed foods.
mine is also simple, 6 eggs, sometimes with a toast on the size and tuna and some fruits. been eating that for 12 years or so (eggs dont cost much here).
I've found that habits tied to emotion (like seeking comfort or relief) are always the hardest to rewire. It's not about willpower, it's about replacing the feeling you're chasing with something that actually works long-term.
It only takes a couple of days for a habit to stop, too. It's real easy to go from "I am a person who does this thing every day" to "I last did it half a week ago and I dunno".
If I'm counting the days to form a habit, I'm not really interested in forming that habit. That's just a means to an end for me. Maybe I'm waking up earlier to have more time for myself, or I'm developing a reading habit so I can finally finish reading Hegel.
In all these cases the habit is secondary. It's all discipline and pain.
But I think there is a better relationship to be had with habits. One that isn't unfairly tied to productivity. One that I can just enjoy the struggle until I form that routine, or I build up the familiarity or the skill to do something. That kind of attention changes something fundamental about my relationship with what I'm trying to internalize and make a part of myself. It's to learn to be constantly learning and improving without making it a burden or a chore.
I happen to be taking a Team Lead course, and forming habits came up yesterday. 21 days weren't mentioned explicitly, the time frame was "a few weeks". We were given 6 criteria when forming a habit:
1. Tangible - you need to pick a tangible action that is observable. If you're trying to fix a part of your behavior you can't pick "I'll pay more attention" as a habit to correct yourself, instead you should write a note or say some phrase.
2. Up to me - don't form a habit that requires outside factors. If you want to start jogging, don't ask your neighbor to jog with you. Each time he's not available, you'll have an excuse not to jog.
3. Swallow the frog - don't push it off. This isn't a well defined criteria, the idea is to minimize excuses (like #2).
4. Daily - a habit needs to be formed by taking action every day.
5. Trigger - your action needs a trigger. This can be an internal (feeling hungry), external (a timer on your phone), or contextual (every morning, every time you walk into a conference room).
6. New - it's very hard to form a habit if you've already tried and failed. Pick an action that you haven't already tried.
There was also an important note that changing behavior often requires multiple steps. The instructor gave the example of using dental floss. It's hard to go from nothing to flossing every day, so break it into:
1. Every time you go into the bath room in the evening, pick up the dental floss, and put it down.
2. After picking up the floss becomes a habit, cut a piece of floss, and throw it out.
3. After cutting the floss becomes a habit, floss a few teeth.
What has been most reliable for me has been instead of going from bad habit A to good habit Z, I just replace A with the easiest alternative that is less bad than A.
Obviously, this means going from A to Z can take years instead of weeks. Though, from my own personal experience and from what I see of others, trying to go too quickly from A to Z just results in whiplash and irractic behavior--where I have seen it work is when there is an existential crisis demanding that the behavior change.
I suspect there're other factors to forming habits.
Forming a running habit is probably harder than say heroin.
I also recall from the "atomic habits" book, that you can chain habits together.
The idea was that if you already have a habit of getting out of bed in the morning, you could hydrate. Just say "as soon as I get out of bed, drink a glass of water" and it is easier to form the habit.
I lost about 60lbs last year because I was officially "obese" and I wanted to be a bit healthier.
While the exact time that I formed the healthier "habit" is harder to quantify, I definitely felt like the first three weeks were the hardest. It did feel, almost overnight, by the beginning of week four it was relatively easy to keep my calorie intake lower.
Oh, that kind of habit. The good kind. It can take much less than 1 day to form a bad habit. I wonder how that asymmetry really is - were ancient humans less exposed to addictive substances and had no need to evolve a way to stop that? I have no idea what I'm talking about so, I'll end the comment here.
My theory is that we don't come from a history of plenty or safety, so, in a pre-historical sense, if something feels good that's supposed to be the signal to keep doing it because it is going to go away and you can't really get too much of it.
We were supposed to overeat because we wouldn't often get a chance. If we could be lazy and survive, then we should be lazy and preserve those calories because a time was going to come when we couldn't. It's the modern world that has all those natural predispositions screwed up. We can enjoy ourselves to excess in ways that we would never be able to in the wild, which then puts us in danger.
Maybe it's still a honeymoon thing for me but I've been trying out keto diet for few weeks and, anecdotally, now whenever I eat carbs I get a weird high. If you told me that people started farming to do it consistently, I'd believe you. Similarly, if I avoid carbs at all cost even for a day, by night I feel so bad that I must have some. Point is that as far as I can tell eating carbs is a habit/addiction as well, but much good has come from maintaining it.
I don't remember where I got this quote, but it makes sense to me: "Grains are a cheap caloric source that's allowed for the growth of tightly packed, heavily populated cities. Grains are good for civilizations. They are bad for individuals."
Readit News
It took me a week or so to start having a healthier breakfast and it become part of my routine, and I've been trying to have healthier lunches for years now (and still regularly fail, normally because at lunchtimes I'm tired, stressed and yearning for comfort foods like sandwiches and snack bars).
I think anyone who believed exactly 21 days was the magic number for all habits, for all people, was grossly naive.
But what I do find is that after 21 days it's no longer novel, it's just what you do, if somebody asks you what you do about X, you no longer say "I'm trying this new thing around X, and...", you tell them your new habit. Identifying that habit as part of who you are is key to it being sticky. For some people, and for some habits, that might be true after a week, or it might take a year, but it's an important step, and if you want that habit to stick you should get to it as fast as you can.
I wish I knew how I did it, because I've been unable to regain that same "this is just what I do now and it's fine" level of acceptance that seemed to be the key.
Sometimes it’s as simple as “doesn’t hurt enough yet”
My grandpa was a liter of wine per day (or more) kinda guy. Then he hit his 70’s and it didn’t feel good anymore. So he stopped and hasn’t had a glass of alcohol since. Just doesn’t feel like it. Even when others drink around him.
Sometimes it helps to frame as gaining something more valuable in return for giving up something less something up. For instance, if you have preplanned meals of known calorie content, and only those foods in the house, you don't have to expend energy and time thinking about what you feel like eating today, the decisions are already made. Time is considerably more precious than most trivial, daily meal decisions.
That's a shockingly short amount of time for smoking. For me, after a few weeks I'd say some of the worst cravings had passed. But for a good year or two afterwards they'd occasionally come back, albeit briefly. I quit about 15 years ago, but given the right situation I can still feel it.
I didn't actively fight it. What I did instead was note in my own head that I somehow wanted a cigarette and think to myself "OK, if I still want one in 20 minutes, I'll have one", and then went and did something else instead. An hour or two later I'd think "Oh yeah, that was weird, didn't I want a cigarette a while back?"
Very occasionally it comes back - a sunny day and a beer garden with a few pints and a pack of cigs feels like something I'd very much enjoy, for example - but it's brief and I can quickly rationalise it: "how strange a thought, for a non-smoker".
Or perhaps better still, how many people didn't give up during the first or second week, since they now expect it to take 3 weeks.
(And similarly, whether there's a statistically significant number of people who give up ay 22+delta days now assuming they'd made it to 21 days and if the habit isn't formed then they've failed.)
This has always been key to me. I've succeeded to identify myself as a runner, as someone who speaks French, as someone who reads books. But my identification as someone who has meaningful programming side-project, who has a garden and so on is to weak to succeed.
And there are certain thresholds from the article that I can identify with. 21 days to a month as the main hurdle to pass obviously.
But then some place around 6 months, where you realize that it is impossible that this day, today, is the day I will end my streak.
All these past days just keeps pushing me on like a steamroller that picked up pace.
one of the big problems in the standard american diet is that we treat breakfast like a dessert.
1. cereal has around 15-30 grams of sugar in addition to various artificial flavors and additives.
2. pancakes and waffles? an irresponsible carb bomb that you douse in syrup and whipped cream.
3. breakfast sausage is basicly low quality meat mixed with fat. at least by itself its not high in sugar but then people normally have it with pancakes.
4. granola? na, more sugar.
Reality is that almost all "breakfast foods" are junk.
my advice is to steak to black coffee and a slice of fish or steak for most people. I like to have black coffee and sardines. seems to keep my mood stable througout the day.
Alternatively, a couple of scrambled eggs with a piece of toast and a bananna is fairly healthy.
A fried egg on an English muffin also isn't a terrible way to start the day.
Target ~400 cals, Try and get some protein and fiber in there. Watch out for saturated fats and high sodium (see the DASH diet for tips). If you are diabetic or risk diabetes, check out the glycemic index and shoot for low GI foods.
That'd be my advice (I'm not a doctor, what I'm suggesting could be 1000% wrong.)
Steel cut overnight oats
Cottage cheese with fruit
Leftovers from the night before
Fresh fruit or high-protein granola with kefir, fruit and a tiny drizzle of honey in the Summer.
Sometimes it'll be very high on protein, but also on fats: bacon (back, UK-style), sausage and egg.
The key is to get away from ultra-processed food, and I'm Type 2 diabetic so I want to reduce the amount of sugar and carbs I have. For me, I normally feel fructose > lactose > carbs > sucrose > desxtrose, and often replace lactose (dairy) with non-dairy equivalents, or make sure it has some other benefit (like kefir).
I want to make sure I feel full through to lunchtime, so protein is useful. I don't mind some carbs, if it means I have something I enjoy and don't feel I need to snack mid-morning.
TLDR: I avoid breakfast cereals (other than some high-protein granolas), add fruits like prunes, pears, maybe banana, and I don't have bread or other ultra-processed foods.
(Addictions are a different story of course.)
In all these cases the habit is secondary. It's all discipline and pain.
But I think there is a better relationship to be had with habits. One that isn't unfairly tied to productivity. One that I can just enjoy the struggle until I form that routine, or I build up the familiarity or the skill to do something. That kind of attention changes something fundamental about my relationship with what I'm trying to internalize and make a part of myself. It's to learn to be constantly learning and improving without making it a burden or a chore.
1. Tangible - you need to pick a tangible action that is observable. If you're trying to fix a part of your behavior you can't pick "I'll pay more attention" as a habit to correct yourself, instead you should write a note or say some phrase.
2. Up to me - don't form a habit that requires outside factors. If you want to start jogging, don't ask your neighbor to jog with you. Each time he's not available, you'll have an excuse not to jog.
3. Swallow the frog - don't push it off. This isn't a well defined criteria, the idea is to minimize excuses (like #2).
4. Daily - a habit needs to be formed by taking action every day.
5. Trigger - your action needs a trigger. This can be an internal (feeling hungry), external (a timer on your phone), or contextual (every morning, every time you walk into a conference room).
6. New - it's very hard to form a habit if you've already tried and failed. Pick an action that you haven't already tried.
There was also an important note that changing behavior often requires multiple steps. The instructor gave the example of using dental floss. It's hard to go from nothing to flossing every day, so break it into:
1. Every time you go into the bath room in the evening, pick up the dental floss, and put it down.
2. After picking up the floss becomes a habit, cut a piece of floss, and throw it out.
3. After cutting the floss becomes a habit, floss a few teeth.
And so on.
Obviously, this means going from A to Z can take years instead of weeks. Though, from my own personal experience and from what I see of others, trying to go too quickly from A to Z just results in whiplash and irractic behavior--where I have seen it work is when there is an existential crisis demanding that the behavior change.
Forming a running habit is probably harder than say heroin.
I also recall from the "atomic habits" book, that you can chain habits together.
The idea was that if you already have a habit of getting out of bed in the morning, you could hydrate. Just say "as soon as I get out of bed, drink a glass of water" and it is easier to form the habit.
While the exact time that I formed the healthier "habit" is harder to quantify, I definitely felt like the first three weeks were the hardest. It did feel, almost overnight, by the beginning of week four it was relatively easy to keep my calorie intake lower.
We were supposed to overeat because we wouldn't often get a chance. If we could be lazy and survive, then we should be lazy and preserve those calories because a time was going to come when we couldn't. It's the modern world that has all those natural predispositions screwed up. We can enjoy ourselves to excess in ways that we would never be able to in the wild, which then puts us in danger.