Post #4245864

2026-07-30 01:55 UTC

I have a ring that tracks my stress (among other things). The stress levels can be ‘peaceful’, ‘calm’, ‘focused’, or ‘tense’. I’m ‘calm’ most of the time, even while sleeping. Occasionally I’ll peak into ‘focused’ and very rarely into ‘tense’. However, I have been noticing when I’m working on a slide deck (PowerPoint), I’m ‘peaceful’. I don’t know how I feel about this.

Replies (1)

@AmeliasBrain@mstdn.ca 2026-07-30 16:19

@linux_mclinuxface@fosstodon.org "Zen and the Art of Powerpoint Presentations" ? Your ring (it's an Oura, right?) is tracking your average heartrate, heartrate variability, O2 saturation, temperature rise/fall, and hand motion. From there it's estimating respiratory rate, sleep/wake cycles, physical activity, and this stress level descriptor. Maybe they are factoring in slow, controlled movements (mouse/touchpad vs typing) as a sign of peacefulness when combined with the sort of slow deep breathing that comes from thoughtfulness about your actions? They have one published study about stress on their research page, but it uses heart & breath statistics during sleep (plus total sleep time) as a measure of overall daytime stress, so it's not directly comparable to tracking stress during daytime activities. But the relevant findings were that steady breathing, lower heart rate, and higher heart rate variability (heart rate rising/falling with breaths in/out) were linked to lower stress.

Open ##4245873