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>"If you’re trying a new diet, attempting to quit smoking or changing any daily routine, don’t expect new habits to be created in a week, or two or even three.
by pbhjpbhj 2y ago
>"If you’re trying a new diet, attempting to quit smoking or changing any daily routine, don’t expect new habits to be created in a week, or two or even three. Research suggests that the process requires 66 days (on average) and up to 8 months."
Something about the title suggested it was going to be much less than 21 days; maybe it's the domain name biasing my reading of the title.
- NoTeslaThrow 2y agoI had the same reaction. I think I'm just used to seeing headlines oversell their point.
- 0xTJ 2y agoI agree that the title implies (or even declares) that it takes fewer than 21 days. I'd argue that the articles says that it does take those 21 days, plus many more, making the title deceptive.
- lolinder 2y agoExactly, English semantics dictate that if it takes more than 21 days it must first take 21 days.
- cco 2y agoThere is a very clearly implied only in the title. I agree that it should be included but it is unnecessary to convey the meaning imo.
- crazygringo 2y agoThere is not. I too assumed it must mean it takes less, otherwise there would be an "only", or "It takes more than".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thih9 2y agoHow I understood it, “form” here means that a habit has been formed. As in: “Habits aren’t formed in 21 days“, just like “Rome wasn’t built in one day”.
- voidhorse 2y agoYeah same here. I think it's because (most of the time) headlines are optimized for sentiment. I would have expected a title like "It takes more than 21 days..." to indicate it takes more
- rzk 2y agoBut it doesn't necessarily take more than 21 days. According to the linked article, the average modeled time to plateau was 66 days, but the range was from 18 to 254 days.
- hammock 2y agoEffort is usually quoted as a minimum ("It takes 20 minutes to drive there" "It costs $100 to buy this") which leads to a strange quirk that the negative is then interpreted as being a lower minimum, rather than a higher one ("It does not take 20min to drive there, "it does not cost $100 to buy this")
- chimpanzee 2y agoYour examples make me wonder if the language of marketing has changed our assumptions about implied meanings where otherwise we'd recognize ambiguity. Or perhaps, marketing aside, it is just human nature to conjure implicit meaning rather than be confronted with ambiguity.
- taeric 2y agoGlad it wasn't just me. I have to think the research shows tighter distributions for some forms of habit?
- hansvm 2y agoThere's a tendency sometimes to leave certain words implicit. "It does not [even] take 21 days to form a habit." Some of those linguistic habits never leave their birthplace, giving you colloquialisms like "do you want to come with [us]" in the Midwest. Most don't have any regional association though, and sentences with dropped fragments sound perfectly normal, with your mind filling in the gaps. In this case, the sentence is correct (though ambiguous) as written, but it has the same words you often see from a longer phrase with an omitted word implied through tone and other vocal cues, a pattern used commonly enough that I'd wager most people interpret it the same as you.
- _dark_matter_ 2y ago"Do you want to come with" is a Midwest colloquialism?? Wow I say it all the time. Very weird to find out.