Most people are learning the hard way. I realized we are full of habits and even when we know is not opportune to start an action, the inertia and the comfort of what you know has much more gravity than the effectiveness factors. Here might arrive a discrete nudge from your phone or watch or other smart device.

I was reading about a company trying to find the perfect timing spot for training professional athletes*. Instead of relying on our motivation to move to another level, it detects in your body the perfect confluence of chemical conditions and you get a nudge. Maybe that is enough, maybe it will rekindle the motivation, maybe is enough to fill-up your reserves. Our brain is known to tend to preserve the energy, we have thousands of years where energy was in short supply, but today if you want to get to high performance level it might be enough to kick in System 2 (as in Kahnemann lingo).

It sounds strange “the machines” are becoming closer to your inner working system than simply executing menial jobs. Maybe our vision of what a robot/intelligent machine could be needs an upgrade. A machine can read your “inner-workings” and analyzing your data (or not only) could decide you need a nudge.

That is a threshold I did not foresee for a “robot”. Instead of being programmed to execute it will become a warden of your physical being, ready to introduce stimulus and even coerce you to go on another path. It opens the can of legal liability or, worse, if hacked can deviate you from “the goal”.

Summary: New IoT devices can do more than blindly collect data, they can interfere with your inner will (or what you will do in the next few seconds/minutes).

Note*: Please see Humon , a show case where you can use data collection to monitor for ideal confluence of physical conditions.