Why was that a good thing? Sometimes good things come in roundabout ways.
- Problem: I couldn’t sleep through the night.
- Solution: I bought a Fitbit One to help me track my sleep (and activity).
Fitbit gave me a lot of raw data. I was either “awake” “restless” or “asleep” in tiny slices throughout the night, oftentimes each slice only one minute long. All this raw data was hard to make much sense out of, but one thing I did know: on a good night, I only get about 6 hours of sleep. Enough to not be a zombie, but not enough to sustain my creativity. At the end of a workday, I was always wiped out, and I certainly did not have enough creativity left in me to do things like writing or blogging.
- New Problem: I lost my Fitbit. I wanted to replace it.
- Solution: I looked for a new sleep tracker. Preferably something better.
I had two qualifications:
One, it had to have good reviews for sleep tracking.
Two: it had to share data with my Apple HealthKit app. The fact that Fitbit did not share such data was a huge strike against it, and was a mistake I did not intend to repeat.
I wanted to get a tracker for my daughter as well, because I suspected she had sleep issues, and another one for my husband, because he was holding his Fitbit Charge together with superglue. Literally.
So when I saw the Misfit Charge had great reviews, communicated with HealthKit and it was only 20 dollars, it was a no-brainer.
Why is it so cheap? Turns out, the Misfit Charge is also being marketed as a smart button, and Misfit really wants them to be useful enough for you to want two or three of them. So I did buy three of them, one for every member of the family, plus I bought a five-pack of wristbands.
And thus, the reason why the loss of the Fitbit was a good thing: thanks to the improved sleep analysis of my Misfit, I discovered that I am a light sleeper. That should have been obvious, I guess, but the raw data from the Fitbit was really difficult to analyze. Once I realized that miscellaneous outdoor noises were waking me up, I started playing with white noise apps, and my sleep problems are almost over.
Oh, I still get the occasional stomach ache and headache, but I can hardly blame my Misfit for that.
As for my creativity? Well, over the weekend I wrote almost 5000 words for an entirely new story. And tonight, I wrote this blog post.
I’d say it’s back.
Yay! I am a light sleeper too, and tend to wake on and off during the night. The cats don’t help 🙂
I downloaded an app called White Noise. I currently use a mix of the “Stream” and “Brown Noise” sounds because they have low tones to counteract barking dogs and the thrum of the railroad tracks (which are miles away, but the sound really carries).
Funny but I don’t see anything of the sort on the misfit site. Charge?
It’s a Misfit Flash, which I think they are now calling a Shine. I bought it on Amazon. They seem to have discontinued it on their website, but is readily available on Amazon.
How confusing. The Shine 2 is much more expensive.