Wearables aren’t ineffective; they’re unfinished. It’s exciting to think about what wearables could achieve if they were built around mindfulness as well as scientific data collection, and the positive impact they could have. Crowdfunding is helping make those ideas a reality: for example, Olive syncs with your calendar to track activity alongside physical stress reactions.

Imagine, instead of the wearable that vibrates when you’re stressed, a wearable that asks you questions through the day – little prompts to check how you’re feeling. These prompts aren’t hard; it’s what current mindfulness or happiness apps do through push notifications. Your wearable regularly asks you what’s going on and how you feel, then collates the information alongside physical data.

After two weeks of recording, you look at the charts and see unusual activity at a similar time every day; your heart rate and breathing exhibit signs of stress, and your charted feelings include words like ‘worried’, ‘nervous’ or ‘angry’. You check the activity log and there’s the answer: every day you see a colleague who winds you up, and every day your physical and emotional data shows a reaction.

It might sound too obvious a situation to be built into advanced technology – of course you’ll know that colleague pisses you off. But why does it happen?

A perceptive friend will be able to point out a problem we just can’t see, despite feeling the symptoms very strongly. Medical professionals help us find causes of symptoms that are alien to us, even when we intimately understand the effects. The right, mindful wearable can do the same, and help us work on those causes.