#39 My Wearable Was Wrong. I Believed It Anyway.
What if the most important health data you have isn’t on your wrist?
One morning I woke up feeling fabulous. Then I opened my recovery data, saw a score in the red, and within 30 seconds I had rewritten my entire day. It turned out my wristband had twisted around overnight and hadn’t measured a thing.
I research attention, cognition and the stories our brains tell us, and I still handed my felt sense to a device in under half a minute. In this episode I unpack why that happens, what the research says about the stories we attach to our data, and how high performers can use wearables as a guide, not gospel.
In this episode Kristy shares
• The twisted wristband morning, and how one wrong number derailed a day that felt great
• Why clients now open coaching sessions with their recovery score before saying how they feel
• How leaders are quietly moving big meetings based on a readiness number
• The paradox of the most measured generation in history
• Why a clean figure feels more trustworthy than your own interoception
• What consumer wearables do reasonably well, and what they cannot do for you: “the part that turns a number into a decision”
• The 2014 study where fake sleep feedback changed people’s cognitive performance
• Orthosomnia, when chasing a perfect sleep score costs you sleep
• Negativity bias, and why one red reading outweighs six good nights
• Why this is a decision quality issue for organisations, not a wellbeing footnote
• Her coaching rule: prioritise and personalise, don’t optimise
• How to read trends instead of daily noise, using heart rate Kathleenriability as the example
• Wellbeing fatigue, and why looking after ourselves has become one more thing to perform
• This week’s Power-Up: a 15-second check-in before you check the data
Key Quotes
“The interpretation step, the part that turns a number into a decision, that’s the part wearables can’t do for you.”
“There’s a fine line, I think, between bettering ourselves and bullying ourselves.”
“Trust the data enough to learn from it, but trust yourself enough not to be ruled by your data.”
Timestamps
(00:10) Are we over-optimising every part of our lives?
(01:39) The twisted wristband morning
(03:05) Why even a scientist hands over her interoception
(04:12) When the device’s language replaces our own
(05:43) This isn’t anti-data
(06:12) The paradox: more data, more vigilance
(07:23) Why we default to the number over the feeling
(08:52) The placebo sleep study
(10:10) Orthosomnia
(11:00) Negativity bias and the coffee stain
(11:26) The real cost: decision quality
(13:53) Prioritise and personalise, don’t optimise
(14:56) Read your trends
(15:47) Watch for wellbeing fatigue
(16:38) Guide, not gospel
(17:39) Bettering or bullying?
(18:33) This week’s Power-Up
Spacious Success with Dr Kristy Goodwin
Website: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kristy-goodwin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkristy/
Speaking enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/speaking
Coaching enquiries: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/coaching
References
Baron, K. G., Abbott, S., Jao, N., Manalo, N., & Mullen, R. (2017). Orthosomnia: Are some patients taking the quantified self too far? Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 13(2), 351–354. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.6472
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.4.323
Chinoy, E. D., et al. (2021). Performance of seven consumer sleep-tracking devices compared with polysomnography. Sleep, 44(5), zsaa291. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsaa291
Draganich, C., & Erdal, K. (2014). Placebo sleep affects cognitive functioning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40(3), 857–864. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035546
Other episodes you may be interested in
EP009 Wide Awake at 2:22am? https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149200659
EP002 The Stress Superstorm: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149200666
EP013 We Don’t Have an Ambition Gap. We Have a Wellbeing Gap: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149235056
EP038 The Third Space, with Dr Adam Fraser: https://www.drkristygoodwin.com/podcasts/spacious-success/episodes/2149277693