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Famous Wendy Wood Quotes

“In psychology, we have a name for the automatic scripts our brains piece together when we repeatedly do the same thing in the same way: procedural memory. It’s such an important repository of information that only the most frequently repeated patterns get stored like this. It functions somewhat separately from other memory systems, and the specific information encoded isn’t accessible to consciousness. This kind of cognitive coding is a sort of mental equivalent of admin-only files on your computer. Your computer’s best functioning relies on you not naively messing around in its most fundamental code, which it stashes away behind several layers of obfuscation. This is why we don’t know much about our habits. The information we learn as a habit is to some extent separated from other neural regions. Procedural coding protects information from change. This is the advantage to the way our minds encode habits. You don’t forget how to ride a bike regardless of how well you learn to ride a skateboard or surf. You can do it years after stopping. You balance and push the pedals without thinking. While cycling, you can even talk to others or enjoy the scenery. Your bike-riding habit didn’t get overwritten by new thoughts and experiences. Other habits are almost as sticky. Speaking a second language, playing a musical instrument, or cooking a favorite dish are skills that fade only slowly as you fail to use them. Past procedural learning is well preserved.”

LearningMemoryHabitsHabit Formation
Book:Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick
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“They were not struggling with themselves to play just one more round of a computer game or keep reading their Twitter feed. For them, sleep was not a battle of self-control. Instead, high “self-control” people performed better at the more habitual, automatic tasks than low “self-control” ones. High “self-controllers” were simply proficient at automating.”

Self ControlHabitsAutopilotHabit Formation
Book:Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick
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“Repetition, then, should be thought of not as some kind of magical primer for habits, but rather as a way to induce speedy mental action. The second time you do something takes less time and mental effort than the first. The third takes less than the second. And so on. This creates a favorable mental condition for a habit to come in and take over. By the tenth time (or the sixty-sixth), you’re barely thinking about it at all, and presto: a habit has been created.”

HabitsHabit FormationRepitition
Book:Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick
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