tracking without anxiety
Written by Desmond Olubunmi · Founder of Sunya
Using sleep data as a tool for honest self-knowledge — without allowing the numbers to become a new source of sleep anxiety.
Sleep trackers measure proxies — movement, heart rate, and temperature — not brain states directly. The data is approximate. But used intelligently, patterns in the data reveal what you cannot observe consciously: whether certain foods, exercise timing, or alcohol are degrading your deep sleep despite feeling fine.
The danger is orthosomnia — the ironic condition of being kept awake by anxiety about your sleep scores. Data informs. It does not dictate.
Use a wearable or tracker that provides at least heart rate and sleep stage estimates. Check trends over weeks, not individual nights — a single bad night is meaningless.
Look for correlations: does alcohol consistently destroy deep sleep? Does late eating fragment your night? Let patterns guide adjustments. If checking your sleep score first thing in the morning is creating anxiety, turn off the feature or stop tracking. Your body’s felt experience — energy, mental clarity, mood — is more honest data than any device.
Desmond has written more extensively on sleep in The Sleep Rhythm Reset, an Amazon #1 bestseller in its category.
Occasional writing on the levers, the practices, and how to actually work with them.
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