Aneela Idnani hid her stress-induced hair pulling for 20 years. “I thought I was weird. I thought I was alone,” Idnani says. “I didn’t want people to think lesser of me.” That feeling was exacerbated once she and her husband started looking for ways to control her habit and couldn’t find any user-friendly options. So she founded a company, HabitAware, to create one. Its flagship product: Keen, a sleek, smart $149 bracelet that users program to pick up on repetitive motions, such as hair pulling, skin picking or nail biting. Keen vibrates when it catches users in the act. That kind of awareness-building, experts say, is key to kicking compulsions for good. Keen is now on track to pass $1 million in sales this year, and in June, HabitAware secured a $300,000 grant from the National Institutes of Mental Health to further its research into breaking bad habits. —Jamie Ducharme
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