It takes 30 days to create a habit

Tomorrow I start the fourth week of my internship. Have three weeks already past?! My plan for this summer was to pick up some good habits like coding on something everyday (outside of work), read more, working out etc. I’ve told myself – “As soon as I get this done, or that calms down, then I’ll start regularly”. Well, seems to me this reasoning isn’t working out too well.

The problem? Well, everyday life never really slow down. As soon as you complete something, another thing pops up. As soon as some spare time appears in your schedule, that time is booked up instantly. Days will continue to pass, but the pace will not slow down. This made me think of a TED talk I saw a while ago, and I looked it up and watched it again. The gist of it is that it takes 30 days to build a habit, and it is the small changes that are the most sustainable.

I think that this is really spot on. Instead of trying to change everything, instantly, I should introduce new habits one at a time. My first thing on the agenda is to pick up running. I’ve been a decent runner, but that’s a long time ago. I figured this would be a really good habit to start with since I get a lot more energy when I work out. So today I went for a run in the neighbourhood. It was not a fast nor a long run, but it was a start.

“I use the app RunKeeper to track my workouts”

When I got back from my run I sat I goal (with RunKeeper) for myself of running a total of 80 km until the end of my internship. I sat this goal with the intent of creating a habit. Instead of saying what pace, or which distance in one run I figured that a total distance would be the correct metric for creating a habit. In 30 days we’ll see, then I should be halfway towards my goal distance.

This is the TED talk I referred to, it’s really short and succinct, take the small time to watch it!

/Sofie