I was going to note something else, but due to a vague sense of familiarity, I googled the title and re-discovered the truism: the seeds of almost all interesting ideas in psychology were first described by William James.

The Principles of Psychology is online and I think we should consider Chapter 4, Habit required reading for the lab.

Motivational quotes:

Organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity of this sort; so that we may without hesitation lay down as our first proposition the following, that the phenomena of habit in living beings are due to the plasticity [2] of the organic materials of which their bodies are composed.

Yes, this.

The first result of it is that habit simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue.

Man in born with a tendency to do more things than he has ready-made arrangements for in his nerve-centres. Most of the performances of other animals are automatic. But in him the number of them is so enormous, that most of them must be the fruit of painful study. If practice did not make perfect, nor habit economize the expense of nervous and muscular energy, he would therefore be in a sorry plight.

James takes habits into the realm of morality as well:

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson’s play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, ‘I won’t count this time!’ Well! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes.

And lest you think James’ 19th century insight precludes 21st century psychological research, he does occasionally get one wrong:

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

Not so!  And importantly, for understanding adult acquisition of skills throughout the lifespan.

P.S. “In praise of habit” doesn’t actually occur in James’ chapter.  Things that include that phrase cite him, though.  Maybe it was in one of the Graybiel reviews?  Aristotle is even older school than James, science-wise.