How Long Does It Take to Form a Habit? Research Says Longer Than You May Think
There’s an enduring belief that it only takes 21 days to form a habit—at least that’s what plastic surgeon Maxwell Matz insisted upon in his 1960 self-help book Psycho-Cybernetics. He claimed that it took his patients about 21 days to adjust to their new appearance after surgery and, though no formal experiment was conducted to verify this further, Matz’s observation eventually became an enduring myth in the popular imagination.