According to Sethi, the shock doesn’t hurt and it’s slightly uncomfortable at its very worst, but it shouldn’t be used by people with a pace-maker, children and pregnant women. However, if you don’t want to get zapped when the Pavlok catches you going out of line, you can simply set it to beep or vibrate.
The method used by the Pavlok tracker is based on the theory of classical conditioning and its most prominent researcher, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov – the guy who conducted a famous experiment in which conditioned dogs to salivate whenever they hear a bell ring because their brains have paired the sound of a ringing bell with feeding.
Classical conditioning is a learning process that occurs both in animals and humans alike when two stimuli are repeatedly paired (such as the bell ringing and the feeding, or a particular behavior and the electric shock), so that the response originally elicited by the second stimulus (the secretion of saliva that originally occurs in the presence of food or the unpleasant sensation that follows an electric shock) is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone (meaning that after a number of repetitions, the sound of the bell is enough to make the dog salivate like it does in the presence of food and the engagement in unwanted behavior is enough to make you feel the same discomfort an electric shock would cause).
So if you wear the Pavlok device for a certain amount of time and keep enduring daily shock treatments, you should become able to overcome a certain bad habit that prevents you from becoming your best – in our case, it will train you to work out as regularly as needed in order to achieve your most elusive fitness goals.
In addition, the Pavlok also has the standard functions of other fitness trackers, meaning that it will record all of your activity and sleeping patterns. It also allows you to connect to your social media accounts where you can have your friends follow and support your progress.
This innovative gadget will cost you $200, which perhaps is a justifiable price when you take into consideration all of the times you’ve failed at sticking to your own plans. After all, when traditional tools prove to be relatively inefficient, maybe a bit of shocking is the only way to get back on track!