Five weeks of flossing every night and it still feels like a decision I have to actively make, sometimes twice, standing in the bathroom. I keep reading 21 days and 66 days and getting different numbers everywhere. Is there a point where it becomes automatic, or is it always going to be a small negotiation?
Five weeks is early, and nightly habits are slower than morning ones because your evening is more variable: different times, different tiredness, sometimes not even home. Morning habits automate faster almost entirely because the context is more consistent.
Track it for eight weeks and then look at the sheet rather than at how it feels. Feeling automatic lags the behaviour badly, and people quit at week six convinced nothing has changed while looking at 38 out of 42 days.
Reduce the size of the decision instead of waiting it out. My rule for the first few months was that two teeth counts. I have never once actually stopped at two teeth, but knowing I'm allowed to removes the part where I'm negotiating about the whole task.
Nice trick, and it works for the reason the alternative doesn't. The negotiation is about effort, not outcome.
@bedtime_bargain · last yr. · 3 replies
The 21 days number comes from a misremembered observation about something else entirely, so ignore it. The 66 days figure is a median from a real study, but the range in that same study ran from under three weeks to well over two hundred days depending on the person and the behaviour, and that's the part everyone drops when they quote it.
What actually predicts automaticity is consistency of context, not the count. Same time, same place, same preceding action does far more than doing it often at random times. Flossing immediately after brushing, always in that order, will automate faster than flossing at some point before bed.
Five weeks with a persistent decision usually means the cue isn't tight enough. Chain it to something already automatic and make it physically in the way: floss sitting on top of the toothbrush, sequence is brush, floss, done, with no gap where a decision fits.
Also, some things never go fully automatic and still get done. I've flossed for twelve years and there's still a small moment of do I have to. It just got very cheap to answer.
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@weekly_review_wes · last yr.
Matches my experience across a few habits. The decision doesn't disappear, it just stops being expensive and stops being interesting.
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@rebalance_rita · last yr.
It got very cheap to answer is a much more useful goal than it becomes automatic. Recalibrating.
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