| A new year is nearly upon us, bringing with it countless opportunities for self-improvement: learning a new language, lowering our cholesterol, finally cleaning that hard-to-reach spot behind the refrigerator. But, while resolutions are easy to make, they’re often difficult to keep. In 2019, the New Yorker staff writer Jerome Groopman asked whether we can harness the insights of brain science to change our behavior, curtailing negative patterns and building positive new ones. Simply knowing that an action is harmful or helpful isn’t sufficient, he writes, drawing on a variety of books and studies that reveal how our best intentions can be sabotaged (“Would you like fries with that?”) or boosted (a 1915 ad campaign that is credited with persuading Americans to brush their teeth regularly). Groopman, a professor at Harvard Medical School, observes that a key to success is converting conscious efforts into habit. The challenge is how. “To go about our lives,” he writes, “we need to make some behaviors automatic.” | 
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