A nudge you can ignore
Julian Reyes
Co-founder and CTO
The easiest thing to build is a reminder that goes off at a fixed time. It is also the easiest thing to resent. Within a week it is background noise, and background noise is the first thing people mute. So the engineering problem behind Sundial is not how to send more nudges. It is how to send far fewer, at the right moments, in a way you never learn to tune out.
Timing over frequency
Sundial learns the rough rhythm of your real days from the lightest signals you choose to share, and how you respond when it does speak. A nudge to step outside is worth little at a random hour. It is worth something when the light is still good and you have a gap. We spend our effort on the timing, because a nudge that lands is a nudge you do not have to be told twice.
Small, and easy to refuse
Every nudge is one small thing, phrased as an offer, never a command. If it does not fit your day, you let it pass, and that is information too. Sundial does not punish a skipped nudge. It simply updates its sense of your day and tries a little more gently next time.
- A few nudges a day at most, never a stream.
- Each one small enough to say yes to in the moment, or easy to ignore.
- Your data stays yours: kept only for what Sundial needs, never sold, and deletable at any time.
The measure of a good nudge is not that you obeyed it. It is that, once in a while, you were glad it was there.
Quiet is the hard part, and it is the part we protect first. A tool that helps your days feel like yours should never be one more thing shouting for your attention.
Written by the team at Sundial. We build gently, and we write the same way. Your ordinary days are yours.