Guy Reams (00:02.318)
Greetings. This is day 86, and I want to talk today about habit creation and just how much time it takes. So I write about this a lot, because honestly, it was a hard lesson to learn. And because I learned it, I tend to focus on it a lot, because it had a big impact on me. It seems rather trivial.
But when I was younger, people had told me that it takes about 18 days to create a habit. And that was just completely not true. It takes 90 days to create a habit. It takes a good full three months or a full quarter of the year for a habit to really sink in. This is for more than one reason. First off, in order for you to really have a consistent habit, you need to keep that habit through the good and bad times.
You need to have changes in your life, travel, holidays, birthday parties, various other things that come up. You need to have unforeseen circumstances pop up. And it usually takes three months for one more of those to occur. Secondly, you have to kind of go through different seasons. You have to have at least one season transition from cold to hot, warm to summer to winter, winter to spring.
So you have to go through a transition to just see if you're able to maintain the habit. There's a lot of reasons why a habit will fall apart. And three months usually gives you enough time to know. Secondly, it takes about three months for you to really understand the benefit of the habit. 18 days is just not enough. A couple of weeks is not enough. You have to actually see the impact that the habit will have on you.
over a sustained period of time, because you may determine that this habit isn't actually good for you. Or you may determine that the habit doesn't have enough benefit, therefore it's not worth the commitment of time. Or you may start to see that the habit is so beneficial to you that you have to do it because the benefit is so great. Once you've recognized the benefit of something, your mind has less of an opportunity to sabotage you.
Guy Reams (02:30.828)
Let's be honest, the reason our habits fail is because we sabotage ourselves. We completely derail our ability to keep a habit because we have this thing in our head that is constantly telling us that it's okay not to do it today or to do it later or to do it tomorrow or whatever the case may be. Because our mind works against us so bad, it takes about three months for your mind to finally be convinced that you're going to do this no matter what.
I'll just use an example of running. When you start running every day, and I know you're supposed to take breaks, that's healthy to do. So I'm not, I consider a recovery day to also be running. So just to be sure. Now I'll do a light run, like maybe a mile, but you have to run every day. Every day is every day. and I, and you do need to give time for recovery. So I'm not saying recovery is bad. Recovery is
In fact, recovery is just an important part of the process. But let's just assume you wanted to create a habit called run everyday.
After three months of running every day, your brain will become convinced that you're going to do it. You're going to go running, whether it likes it or not. So it's just going to accept the fact that you're going to run. And your mind will no longer work against you. It'll actually work for you. It'll say, hey, it's time to go run. I'm used to running. Let's go do this thing that we normally do all the time. How come you're not running? You need to be out there running. That's what your brain will start to convert to. And you want that, because now you have a reinforced habit.
The brain actually feels like it's something you're supposed to do. Like if you were to wake up every morning at 5 AM, which I do usually, I had a habit every day where I woke up at 5 AM for 365 days in a row. By the way, I determined that that habit wasn't that great for me. I did not get as much benefit out of it as some people claim. But I did wake up at 5 AM every day for 365 days in a row. I concluded that that habit was not that great.
Guy Reams (04:38.958)
But because I built that habit, my brain now thinks 5 AM is the wake up time. And usually what happens is I get up at 5 AM, whether I like it or not, because my brain says this is normal. So now I get up at 5 AM. And what's good about that is I don't have to be doing anything at 5 AM. I can wake at 5 AM and meditate, ponder, think about things, take a walk, prepare food, whatever I want to do. I can just kind of meander through it for an hour or so, because my brain is just used to that time.
But that's the point. Now, your brain will start to work on other things. For example, I'm running every day. But when I get to mile five, my brain's like, that's good enough. We don't need to do any more. You've done your five miles. You don't need to do six or seven. You're good. Or you'll start running and your brain will say, you know what? A 13 minute per mile pace is fine today. You don't need to do the nine minute mile pace or the seven minute mile. You're good with just being slow.
Or you don't need to do sprints today. You're OK. This is how your brain will work against you. That's a different challenge. But it takes 90 days to get over the first challenge, which is to convince your brain. And when I say your brain, it's not just up here. It's everywhere, like your whole body brain. Convincing that body brain that it is time that you are going to be running every day, whether it likes it or not. It takes 90 days. It just does.
I've heard so many people say, you know, I tried that. It didn't work. I tried to do that, and I can't do it. And when I dig in deep to what they were saying, it's usually they tried it for a couple of days, a week or two. You cannot say that you've tried something until you've done it 90 days, at a minimum. If you've done it 90 days in a row, then you can say with confidence that I tried it.
And I'm telling you, I did not know this. This seems rather stupid obvious to me now, but I did not know this. And now I know. I cannot say that I've really got a habit until I've done it for 90 days in a row. And now I know. I know the habit is formed. I know the benefits of it. I know the disadvantages of it. And I've convinced myself that I'm going to do it every day. And I've overcome any objections. So I can now say that I've tried.
Guy Reams (07:07.852)
So I've got a long list of habits that I've tried. I'm probably up to 50 or 60 now. 50 or 60 life-changing habits that I've read about online or watched YouTube videos where people claimed there's some great benefit to doing this habit. So I've tried a lot of those habits for about 90 days. And I know for me, it may be different for you, but I know personally which habits work and which ones don't. So.
Remember that 90 days is what it takes and I mean maybe maybe you're different but for me it takes 90 days to beat it into my head that I'm going to be doing.