“Stir Drinks With Butter Knives”: 30 Life Hacks That Made A Difference In These Women’s Lives

There isn’t one single ‘magic’ number for how many days it takes to build a habit. It depends on a lot of factors, including your genetics, your environment, how intensely you pursue things, and the difficulty of the habit itself. 

Current research from Caltech shows that it takes roughly 6 months to establish a new exercise routine. Meanwhile, something like getting into the habit of washing your hands if you’re a healthcare worker, is easier. It takes weeks, rather than months, for the behavior to become automatic.

Bored Panda wanted to learn more about habits, so we reached out to Alan Castel, Ph.D., a UCLA psychology professor and the author of 'Better with Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging.'

Dr. Castel, walked us through why some people might resist making everyday changes, even if they're small and seem to require little to no effort.

"We often get stuck in a routine, often without thinking about why we have this particular routine," he explained to Bored Panda via email.

"However, with small changes to these routines, we can begin better habit formation," the author of 'Better with Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging' said that even small changes can have lasting effects.

"This can be as simple as taking the stairs or walking more whenever possible, or limiting how much time we are on our phone/screen, or sitting at a desk, or the food that we eat," Dr. Castel shared what some of these small routine adjustments might look like. Of course, what someone prioritizes will depend on their current habits and goals.

"Changes in habits can lead to long-term benefits as often habits can remain with us well into older age," the expert told Bored Panda.

According to the psychology professor, we should all prioritize those habits that can improve our happiness and well-being.

"This can have big benefits," Dr. Castel said, adding that these habits can range "from being better connected with friends and family and engaging in exercise or other stimulating activities."

Some of us don’t have the patience to commit to cultivating healthy habits. We want the positive effects right now! And we’d prefer it if we could achieve them through a burst of effort rather than doing it slowly, over a very long period of time. However, that’s not how life works.

If you want to be healthy, you have to commit to a healthy lifestyle. That means changing your eating habits, getting plenty of movement, and ensuring that you get enough sleep. Exercising super hard at the gym one time or avoiding fast food for a week, while a good start, won’t be enough to make long-lasting positive changes.

When it comes to building habits, less is more. Many of us have so many things going on in our lives: work, studies, meeting up with awesome people, parenting, passion projects, etc. So it can be exhausting to think that we now need to free up however many hours of our time to work on our health, wealth, or new skills.

That’s why making small, deliberate, subtle changes to our daily routines is so powerful. It requires very little effort on our part. We slowly start to form the habit. And our efforts quickly compound over time. But this means having the patience to stick with it.

It might sound laughable to, for instance, do a single pushup today and then one more every next day. But the entire point is to form the habit. The point is to do whatever it is you want to do, no matter how good or bad or not in the mood you feel.

The same goes for any other habit, whether that’s practicing the piano or learning to juggle. Even a couple of minutes of effort, at first, are more than enough. Think of it this way. If you’re not the type of person who can do even a couple of minutes' worth of practice, you won’t suddenly become someone who’ll be able to dedicate hours on end to that activity.

Start small. Be patient. Slowly ramp up your efforts. By the time you’re putting in large chunks of your free time, things will seem easy because you’ve already formed the foundations of the habit.