In our last couple +1s, we’ve been having fun hanging out with our glymph and adding some elbow grease to the ol’ brain washing process by eating our last meal earlier in the day. (You test it yet?)
Today I want to talk about another little thing I started doing as I have fun seeing if I can game my Oura ring to produce consistently awesome results.
First, quick context. (Plus an unpaid ad. 🤓)
Oura rings are pretty awesome. I’ve had mine for over 6 months now. I’ve gotten some interesting data from it on my resting heart rate and heart rate variability along with estimated amounts of deep sleep and REM sleep.
Their algorithms take a bunch of that data and give you a “Readiness Score” for the day. Over 90 is pretty epic. 80s is fine. 70s means you need to do some work. And 60s? I’ve only showed up there a couple days and I definitely needed to do some work after those days.
Anyhoo…
I never really took the data that seriously until I started running the brain washing experiment by eating earlier.
When I saw my resting heart rate drop so significantly (from 45 to 41) and my heart rate variability go up so significantly (from ~50 to ~70), I started paying a little more attention.
In fact, I started seeing what I could do to kinda game the ol’ ring to see if I could consistently get a Readiness Score in the mid-90s.
As discussed, the early last meal (combined, of course, with an early shutdown complete plus digital sunset) moved the needle considerably.
Then I decided to deliberately try to get some more sleep.
Specifically, I decided to test a little “sleep extension” as outlined in this study from Stanford in which athletes’ performance skyrocketed after they spent 10 hours in bed. (This research is discussed in all sleep books including Why We Sleep and Sleep Revolution.)
I mean…
I figured if I was willing to eat my last meal FOUR hours before going to bed, why not test staying in bed for 10 hours and seeing what that did to my quantitative Oura Readiness Score and my qualitative “Let’s do this!” score?!
And…
Well…
It worked.
My Readiness Score went from a (surprisingly low) 77 average in June (had some bad nights of sleep, apparently—lol) before I started experimenting with this and really paying attention to my last meal/sleep time to a (surprisingly high) 94 over the last week as I’ve been rocking it.
And…
I feel great.
But enough about me.
Today’s +1.
Got any little experiments you can run?
Get on that.
Here’s to adding some +1s to our Readiness Scores!
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