Habits
On the actual science of how habits form — and why streaks are the wrong tool for change that lasts.
What actually makes a habit
The cue–routine–reward loop and where it lives in the brain. Charles Duhigg's journalism, Wendy Wood's research, and the part most popularisers leave out.
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Why streaks mislead
The case against streak-based habit apps — what the engagement-loop literature actually shows, and why a broken streak teaches the wrong lesson.
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The environment, not the willpower
Wendy Wood's forty years of research point one way — habits live in context, not character. Move the kettle; don't try harder.
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What to do when the streak breaks
The recovery, not the run. What the research says about resumption after a missed day — and why the second miss matters more than the first.
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The popular literature on habits — Atomic Habits, the four-laws taxonomy, the productivity-podcast version — is downstream of an academic literature most readers never reach. The four short pages here lean on the upstream sources: Wendy Wood at USC on context and habit memory; BJ Fogg at Stanford on the behaviour design that James Clear later popularised; Charles Duhigg's actual reporting on Ann Graybiel's MIT lab. The popularisers are not wrong. They are downstream.
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