Something about the title suggested it was going to be much less than 21 days; maybe it's the domain name biasing my reading of the title.

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.

This whole question revolves around the effort/reward ratio of a behavior. When people talk about ~21 days, they're talking about doing a hard thing until it's second nature and seems easy.

But there are other ways to make something seem easy, and there is another component in the ratio: reward. That is, even if effort stays the same, you can wire a habit by making the behavior more rewarding. (This is why people are able to get addicted to a substance after one dose -- because they can't forget the state they entered ... and it was so easy to get there.)

So the takeaway here is the you can wire habits by decreasing the amount of effort to do something that you think is good for you -- eg if you want to hydrate more, place a glass near the sink so you drink water when you get out of bed in the morning -- *and* by increasing the reward. The whole trick is getting the ratio right.

Cliche Silicon Valley example. I did an ice plunge, and it gave me a day long plunger's high. I didn't need to plunge for 21 days to get the habit. I started doing it 3 times a week after that, because I knew what I had to do to feel good.

This actually gets to something Huberman calls "duration-path-outcome". Getting clarity on what you have to do (path); how long it will take (duration); and what the payoff is (outcome), can do wonders for motivation. Confusion kills action (and for that matter, all deals, since habits are just deals we make with ourselves). If you can get clarity, reduce the effort, and increase the amount of reward and your confidence in it, I think you can get to new habits really quickly.

Fwiw, I wrote a little bit about forming habits here: https://vonnik.substack.com/p/state-changes-work-and-presenc...

Edit: took me 1 day to drop the remaining sugar, and plants in general.

(Addictions are a different story of course.)

However, as the article says, it really depends on what habit we are trying to establish.

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.

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.

It also has a Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho-Cybernetics

People are neurotypical rarely if ever understand what those with ADHD go through. The best description I've heard is that people with ADHD don't have habits: we have trauma.

The meaning of that is that neurotypicals have the capacity to simply go into a rom and do something. It almost passively happens. ADHD people do not. Even getting up in the morning involves 50 questions being mentally asked and answered. Do I need to take something to the bathroom? Did I run the dishwasher? Did I leave the heating on? Do I need to do laundry today? And I'm 5 seconds into my day.

A brain that seeks novelty quickly gets bored with reptition. The only way you form habits is by the trauma of the consequences of not having that habit.