Задание №18 — Чтение

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Forming a habit

Waking up at the crack of dawn and going for a run might feel intimidating when you start trying to make it a habit. Weaving a significant new activity such as this into your regular routine obviously takes determination and time – but howmuchtime is really needed to make that habit stick?

One popular idea suggests that it takes 21 days to solidify a habit. A three-week time frame might sound easily reachable to someone making a resolution on New Year’s Day. Then people tend to feel extra motivated to start a new habit or kick an old one. Yet every January 21 very few people can boast that they have kept their resolutions. One survey showed that only 9 percent stuck to their goals in 2023.

Recent research has shown that this idea is actually a myth. A hallmark 2009 study on habit creation found that habits developed in a range of 18 to 254 days; participants reported taking an average of about 66 days to reliably incorporate one of three new daily activities – eating a piece of fruit with lunch, drinking a bottle of water, or running for 15 minutes before dinner. Consistent daily repetition was the biggest factor influencing whether it would become part of an automatic daily routine.

The type of activity is also a factor. Teaching yourself a completely new skill or process obviously takes longer than remembering to drink more water in the morning. A 2015 study found that new gym-goers had to exercise at least four times a week for six weeks in order to develop an exercise habit. And last year, machine-learning models analysed vast amounts of data on repeated observations of a behaviour and evaluated different variables that may influence a person’s decision to continue that behaviour. The results showed that creating a handwashing habit took a few weeks, compared with the half year it took for people to develop an exercise habit. Handwashing, the study noted, is less complex than exercising and offers more opportunities to practise. The researchers also suggested that habit formation depends on the effort that a person puts into practising an activity, and on the presence of environmental cues that would remind them to carry out the behaviour.

When it comes to keeping a resolution, it can be hard to stay motivated once the initial excitement of a “new year, new me” subsides. This can easily lead to lapsing or even dropping the activity completely after a couple of weeks. Creating a specific plan to perform an activity (for example, “study Spanish grammar for 20 minutes, three times a week”) and having some type of accountability (an app tracker or a like-minded friend) can help monitor progress and push you to keep going. Additionally, people are more inclined to keep a resolution that they are interested in doing, rather than one that they simply believe they should do.

Rewards are great motivators, but people often make the mistake of delaying gratification. For example, they treat themselves to a shopping trip on Saturday after going to the gym all week. A reward is far more effective if received duringthe task. For instance, a person with an exercise goal could watch a newly released movie while running on the treadmill instead of waiting until the end of the week. Researchers in 2014 had people listen to popular audiobooks that could only be accessed at the gym during the experiment and they found that the participants initially went 51 percent more frequently than the control group.

So don’t kick yourself if you didn’t reach your goal by the 21st of this month, or even by the end of February. As long as you keep at an activity, you will get better at it – no matter how long it takes.