I wanted to like this.<p>I liked the review of the history of habit-improvement thinking. The problem is that I felt we wandered too far afield in historical trivia not supported by the thesis, which although it was repeated at the top and bottom of the essay, could have used a lot of support in the rest of it.<p>It&#x27;s fun riding around in a bus looking at cool sights. But an essay gives us a destination. The sights we see are part of a journey from where we started to our goal, proceeding in some kind of self-consistent narrative order. This felt more like riding around in a tour bus where the guide calls out one random piece of trivia after another.<p>Having said that -- and I realize it was harsh -- I could see the structure. It was in there. The author just needed to turn up the contrast a bit.