Can You Develop a New Habit in 21 Days?

The only one thing we’re struggling with right now is making a commitment. It’s 21 days’ lockdown and we’re getting crazy about what to do and how not to end up opening the refrigerator every half an hour. We have a plan for you guys. During these 21 days, why not do all the things we used to do as a kid? Remember how many things we wanted to do but we’re always short of time?

In these 21 days, revisit your childhood and behave like a kid (a sensible and responsible kid). Open your journal and see all the hobbies you used to pursue. And we’ll find our ‘Can we form a new habit in 21 days or not?’

Habit formation is directly proportional to repetition

It’s a proven fact that turning a behavior into a habit needs constant practice and repetition. By repeating something enough times in the same scenario, whether it is something good like going for a run each morning or something bad like biting your nails while watching television or moving your legs while working, a behavior will begin to feel instinctual.

It sounds crazy but train your brain

Your brain isn’t easy to manipulate and it’s the main player in helping you develop a habit. So in this 21 days’ lockdown, why not assign a time to an activity and do the same thing again and again? We have promised to do one hour of cardio every morning and paint for 30 minutes every evening around 5:30.

So to be a little scientific here, we want to tell you why we think this would work. Do you know anything about synapses? Synapses are spaces between cells that relay impulses in the brain. They are pretty hard and stubborn at work, helping to facilitate everything a person does or thinks.

So, if you do something over and over again, that pathway along the synapses becomes easy on you and a little more accessible. Hence, now it’s easier for those impulses (the habits we’re trying to develop) to travel through them. In simpler words, now your brain would put those impulses to the auto-pilot mode. This is the reason why you need that cup of chai or coffee around 4 o’clock in the evening because it has been put on the auto-pilot mode or has become a habit.

Habits depend on the habit of following

There’s no doubt that the behavior we want to convert into a habit actually takes great practice and follow up. Factors like dedication, persistence, concentration and will power hugely define the pace by which you develop a habit. There’s this story of a person who started playing a rummy game daily from 4 to 5 in the evening. Initially, he played the game of rummy just for fun as he was good with maths. In no time, he developed this habit and realized his leisure playing of card games had actually helped him enhance his cognitive skills.

Factors that affect habit formation include the complexity of the act of the habit, the time the habit takes and the level of exertion required. All these factors were satisfied by the game of rummy. This helped the person’s synapses to make way for formation of the perfect sets and sequences through his brain and he had fun while playing offline and online rummy games.

In this 21-day lockdown, try to develop a new hobby. You can even play rummy like this gentleman. Trust us, despite the factors that fight against habit formation, it is completely possible to create a good habit if you want to. To make things easy and less clumsy, try playing online rummy games on the Junglee Rummy app. You can enjoy practice games and soon you can switch to rummy cash games and make some quick bucks during this lockdown.