or rubbing your spouse’s neck. Whether rote or romantic, habits allow us to carry on in a world that’s plenty complicated enough without needing to second-guess ourselves constantly. But the neurological downside of habits is as powerful as the upside. The same feature that allows us to perform a good habit without thinking about it makes it hard to change a bad habit even when we are thinking about it. Picture a wagon wheel in a rut. It takes no effort at all to stay in the rut. But it takes incredible