Wendy Wood

“A habit happens when a context cue is sufficiently associated with a rewarded response to become automatic, to fade into that hardworking, quiet second self. That’s it. Cue and response. Notice that there’s no room in that mechanism for, well, you. You’re not a part of it, not as you probably think of yourself. You—your goals, your will, your wishes—don’t have any part to play in habits. Goals can orient you to build a habit, but your desires don’t make habits work. Actually, your habit self would benefit if “you” just got out of the way.”
― Wendy Wood, Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick

“We discovered that people learn concepts faster and remember them better when they can categorize them into groups. That’s prototypical top-down cognition.”
― Wendy Wood, Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick