Samantha Dion Baker

I’ve always wondered how long it takes to create a habit. I'm learning sketching and committed to 4 hours a day. Many days later I've only missed one day. I'd say the habit was established by about that amount of days. I picked up running 30 years ago and I reckon it took 10 weeks before I was feeling the full benefits and felt like I wanted to run. Trying to stop snacking between meals and stop eating when I wasn't hungry. I managed to establish it as a habit in only about a month but it did "stick" and has lasted so far 1 year. So I guess it's not just about you and your innate ability to form habits (or not) but also what you are trying to make habitual.

I have found the most effective way to add a new habit is to not add a new habit. At least that's how your mind perceives the new addition to your life's routine. Rather than treating it as a new addition that requires mental nurturing, treat it instead as a mere alteration to an existing, long-established habit. For example, if you want to add a 4-hour urban sketching to your daily routine, you might tag it onto an existing well-established morning routine which now becomes sketching + exercise + pool + shower + wash/tidy-up before leaving for work. Another instance might be to tag 20 minutes of meditation onto your well-established morning run so that the original task of morning run has now been altered to become run/meditate and it will be approached as a single two-part task from here on. The key is in the mind's perception of the new addition. An expanded existing habit is so much easier to accommodate than the challenge of a whole new additional habit. Tagging a new habit onto an old habit in this way removes the mental gymnastics of 'will I/won't I?' because in your mind's eye all you've really done is expanded an existing habit which had already evolved to require no mental struggle over its doing. It may not work for everyone but it works a treat for me.

My goal: sketch 4 hours a day for as long I feel like it...… (más)