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.
TwoWhy 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.
ThreeThe 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.
FourWhat 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.
Two paths on this in the app.
Habits — An Introduction is a seven-day path through the small set of moves that actually install a new habit, drawn from BJ Fogg and Charles Duhigg. The Science of Habits is the longer Concepts-level reading — Duhigg, Fogg, and the identity layer in sequence. Around ten minutes a day. Narrated by a person.
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.
The way to learn something properly.
On the schedule you actually have. About what you actually want to understand.