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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
