January is wrapping up. And if you are a New Year’s resolution person, I have some not great news for you. February is kind of where resolutions go to die. In fact, some studies show that 88 percent of New Year’s resolutions fail in the first two weeks. Partly it’s due to a common but largely debunked idea that it takes about 21 to 30 days to form a new habit. So in theory, if you started some new personal improvement commitment on January 1 and you really stuck to it (every day!), by February 1, it might be transformed into a habit.

That’s not how it usually goes. And the long window to changing a habit is only part of the issue.

There are a couple of challenges to most resolutions. First, it does take time to change behavior. And a lot of resolutions require behavioral changes that cannot be worked on every day. If you are trying to eat out only once per week, you will need far longer than 30 days to create new lasting behavior. The temptation likely doesn’t come up every single day. Second, you might be doing it, but it’s a process. For example, you want to learn to cook 30 new recipes this year. But you probably aren’t literally cooking a new recipe every night in January. So the practice hasn’t hardened into a habit yet.

But a 2009 study also showed that new habits take far longer to form than 21 days, or even 30. In fact, the range was 18 to 254 (at........

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