Habit forming

Since I am now taking my blogging seriously, I have been looking into the subject of forming habits. I am not talking about substance abuse, although that is an interesting subject too - as an example a study published in 2007 in The Lancet journal showed that Alcohol is the 3rd most addictive drug (of the 10 studied). The two more addictive are Heroin and Cocaine. The least addictive drug (on their list) is MDMA (3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) , more commonly known as Ecstasy as it can induce a feeling of euphoria and reduce anxiety and depression. The interesting thing for me from this study is that alcohol is almost twice as addictive as ecstasy yet alcohol is sold legally, while ecstasy is illegal! Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a glass or two of fine wine, its just interesting how certain products are so intertwined into human history and behavior that they have escaped the control of governments and regulatory bodies. Nevertheless, I digress. Perhaps this will be a good subject for a future blog posting.

Back to my original topic on forming habits. Various web-sites offer various suggestions on what it takes to form a new (good) habit and how long it takes. There seems to be a consensus that practicing the action is important (go figure). Some sites stress the importance of measurement to assess whether progress is being made, while others suggest that there should be rewards to improve motivation.

How long does it take? In the 1960's, a plastic surgeon - Dr Maxwell Maltz, observed that it took 21 days for patients who had lost a limb to stop feeling phantom pains. He postulated that it took 21 days for the brain pathways to be rewired. Since some amputees continue to feel these pains life long, and since people with congenital limb loss also sometimes feel these sensations and pains, the science behind it is probably a lot more complicated, however the principle of forming new neural pathways is sound. Here's a link to more information on Dr Maltz's work.

A more contemporary study looking at the time taken to form new eating habits, published in 2010 in the European Journal of Social Psychology by Phillippa Lally et al showed an exponential curve shaped relationship between time and automaticity - the degree to which the test subjects did the action without thinking. This data suggests that performing the new habit in the first few days has a greater impact than performing it later on. The time to plateau (the time where little further gains were made) ranged from 18 days to 254 days indicating that the actual time to form a new habit was highly variable, and in some individuals can be a very lengthy process. The study also showed that missing a day had little effect on the overall outcomes.

So what's all this got to do with blogging?

I guess the bottom line is that if I want to succeed this time with this blog I need to practice it (preferably daily) until I can perform the action without thinking?! No that's not right, the very nature of the blog requires thought! Perhaps after all I need to view this blogging thing like a habit-forming drug, something that once your hooked you can't easily give-up?!

Perhaps some of you out there who are long term bloggers can give me some thoughts on ensuring longevity of a blog?