100-Day Theory
It is said to take 21 days to form a habit, 90 days to make it a “permanent” change and 10,000 hours (~416 days) to become an expert. This is fitting for the American tradition of reflecting on the United States’ president’s first hundred days in office.
The First 100 was first tracked with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had inherited an abysmal economy from Republican Herbert Hoover in the 1930s, and promised a New Deal to coax Americans out of the Great Depression. He called Congress into a special session for his first three months or so in office and in that brief time passed 15 bills to provide relief. He coined the term during a radio interview.
“[W]e all wanted the opportunity of a little quiet thought to examine and assimilate in a mental picture the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal,” he said.
The meditative focus resulted in what many agree was a success in preventing total catastrophe, although the New Deal is still criticized for not ending the Depression.
In an effort to perfect the habit-forming process, let’s first breakdown the behaviors that form habits:
Cue.
Craving.
Response.
Reward.
Understanding the subtleties of how we make choices in our day allows us to choose wisely.
Next, pick one habit — good or bad — like mask-wearing as a daily focal point, and journal your reflections (you’ll see mask-wearing, DC Statehood and selfies from around the world on this web journal). At any point along the process, we may introduce a change that shifts the trajectory of our behavior.
For example, if dessert is the reward for lunch, I may delay gratification until basic needs, like drinking a glass of water to cleanse the palate before dessert, are fulfilled. Dessert, if at all possible, may then be savored a bit more wholeheartedly.
After 21 days of this, that automatic craving for sugar quells and I may go for a walk instead of indulging because I’ll have the time and awareness to choose, instead of mindlessly reaching for those vegan fudge brownies. After 90 days, I may start to recognize that the calorie boost to get me through emails gave way almost entirely to fresh-air walks and quick phone calls. By 10,000 hours, the extra oxygen may have refined my palate so much that I’ve taken a French cooking class at one of those covid-safe pop-up studios. And just like that, my relationship goes from “It’s complicated” to “Married,” or whatever we’re saving dessert for.
Now, as for how this applies to government spending, well, that’s above my current pay grade but given the zeal with which our democracy was attacked, it may behoove us all to at least pledge commitment. Perhaps by this summer we’ll’ve become such mask experts that we won’t have to wear them.
Photo by Artem Podrez